The result was a grainy picture with a minimal greyscale that showed a curtain, part
of an arm, and a diffuse half-moon-shaped face a little way inside the room.
The face was not Harriet Vanger’s, who had raven-black hair, but a person with
lighter hair colour.
It was impossible to discern clear facial features, but he was certain it was a woman;
the lighter part of the face continued down to shoulder level and indicated a
woman’s flowing hair, and she was wearing light-coloured clothes.
He calculated her height in relation to the window: it was a woman about five foot
seven.
He clicked on to other images from behind the accident and one person fitted the
description—the twenty-year-old Cecilia Vanger.
Nylund had taken eighteen shots from the window of Sundström’s Haberdashery.
Harriet was in seventeen of them.
She and her classmates had arrived at Järnvägsgatan at the same time Nylund had
begun taking his pictures. Blomkvist reckoned that the photographs were shot
over a period of five minutes. In the first pictures, Harriet and her friends were
coming down the street into the frame. In photographs 2–7 they were standing still
and watching the parade. Then they had moved about six yards down the street. In
the last picture, which may have been taken after some time had passed, the girls
had gone.
Blomkvist edited a series of pictures in which he cropped the top half of Harriet and
processed them to achieve the best contrast. He put the pictures in a separate
folder, opened the Graphic Converter programme, and started the slide show
function. The effect was a jerky silent film in which each image was shown for two
seconds.
Harriet arrives, image in profile. Harriet stops and looks down at the street. Harriet
turns her face towards the street. Harriet opens her mouth to say something to her
friend. Harriet laughs. Harriet touches her ear with her left hand. Harriet smiles.
Harriet suddenly looks surprised, her face at a 20° angle to the left of the camera.
Harriet’s eyes widen and she has stopped smiling. Harriet’s mouth becomes a thin