him how to shut off the detectors with a key to a box in the wardrobe. She had also borrowed a night-vision scope.
“You don’t leave a lot to chance,” Blomkvist said, pouring coffee for her.
“One more thing. No more jogging until we crack this.”
“Believe me, I’ve lost all interest in exercise.”
“I’m not joking. This may have started out as a historical mystery, but what with dead cats and people trying to blow your head off we can be sure we’re on somebody’s trail.”
They ate dinner late. Blomkvist was suddenly dead tired and had a splitting headache. He could hardly talk any more, so he went to bed.
Salander stayed up reading the report until 2:00.
CHAPTER 23
Friday, July 11
He awoke at 6:00 with the sun shining through a gap in the curtains right in his face. He had a vague headache, and it hurt when he touched the bandage. Salander was asleep on her stomach with one arm flung over him. He looked down at the dragon on her shoulder blade.
He counted her tattoos. As well as a wasp on her neck, she had a loop around one ankle, another loop around the biceps of her left arm, a Chinese symbol on her hip, and a rose on one calf.
He got out of bed and pulled the curtains tight. He went to the bathroom and then padded back to bed, trying to get in without waking her.
A couple of hours later over breakfast Blomkvist said, “How are we going to solve this puzzle?”
“We sum up the facts we have. We try to find more.”
“For me, the only question is: why? Is it because we’re trying to solve the mystery about Harriet, or because we’ve uncovered a hitherto unknown serial killer?”
“There must be a connection,” Salander said. “If Harriet realised that there was a serial killer, it can only have been someone she knew. If we look at the cast of characters in the sixties, there were at least two dozen possible candidates. Today hardly any of them are left except Harald Vanger, who is not running around in the woods of Fröskogen at almost ninety-three with a gun. Everybody is either too old to be of any danger today, or too young to have been around in the fifties. So we’re back to square one.”
“Unless there are two people who are collaborating. One older and one younger.”
“Harald and Cecilia? I don’t think so. I think she was telling the truth when she said that she wasn’t the person in the window.”
“Then who was that?”
They turned on Blomkvist’s iBook and spent the next hour studying in detail once again all the people visible in the photographs of the accident on the bridge.
“I can only assume that everyone in the village must have been down there, watching all the excitement. It was September. Most of them are wearing jackets or sweaters. Only one person has long blonde hair and a light-coloured dress.”
“Cecilia Vanger is in a lot of the pictures. She seems to be everywhere. Between the buildings and the people who are looking at the accident. Here she’s talking to Isabella. Here she’s standing next to Pastor Falk. Here she’s with Greger Vanger, the middle brother.”
“Wait a minute,” Blomkvist said. “What does Greger have in his hand?”
“Something square-shaped. It looks like a box of some kind.”
“It’s a Hasselblad. So he too had a camera.”
They scrolled through the photographs one more time. Greger was in more of them, though often blurry. In one it could be clearly seen that he was holding a square-shaped box.
“I think you’re right. It’s definitely a camera.”
“Which means that we go on another hunt for photographs.”
“OK, but let’s leave that for a moment,” Salander said. “Let me propose a theory.”
“Go ahead.”
“What if someone of the younger generation knows that someone of the older generation is a serial killer, but they don’t want it acknowledged. The family’s honour and all that crap. That would mean that there are two people involved, but not that they’re in it together. The murderer could have died years ago, while our nemesis just wants us to drop the whole thing and go home.”
“But why, in that case, put a mutilated cat on our porch? It’s an unmistakable reference to the murders.” Blomkvist tapped Harriet’s Bible. “Again a parody of the laws regarding burnt offerings.”
Salander leaned back and looked up at the church as she quoted from the Bible. It was as if she were talking to herself.