Ulrika Wendin

Ulrika Wendin’s story exposes how a survivor can be failed first by an investigation and then by the forces seeking to keep the abuse hidden. Her account links an earlier rape case against Karl Lundström to the wider investigation, while her brief contact with Sofia Zetterlund and Jeanette Kihlberg offers a chance of being heard that she ultimately cannot sustain.

Earlier Case and Contact with Jeanette

Seven years before Jeanette Kihlberg questions her, Ulrika reports that Karl Lundström raped her. The case is dropped after Lundström’s wife, Annette Lundström, gives him an alibi. Kenneth von Kwist later acknowledges that he accepted the information without checking whether it was correct; his interview with Lundström, focused on whether Lundström had been present, left him with no suspicion that the alibi or Lundström’s account might be false. The procedural decision closes off Ulrika’s complaint without resolving what happened.

When Jeanette returns to the case, she tells Ulrika that the evidence against Karl is strong and that her earlier complaint could be reopened. Ulrika does not want to begin the process again. Her reluctance is not presented as a lack of significance in the case: the prospect of a renewed legal battle meets someone who has already seen her report set aside.

Ulrika also sees Sofia Zetterlund for treatment. Sofia plans to work first on stability and trust, then on remembering and addressing the trauma, and finally on separating past sexual trauma from present and future experience. During one appointment, Ulrika notices a photograph of Viggo Dürer and reacts with alarm, but denies knowing him. Sofia later learns that Ulrika has a new computer and substantial cash, including 500-krona notes, and suspects that Dürer may have tried to bribe her. These details connect Ulrika’s private treatment to the case’s larger pattern of pressure and concealed relationships.

Silencing, Captivity, and Death

After her contact with Sofia, Ulrika cancels her appointments. She is ashamed that she has allowed herself to be silenced, but the money she received—50,000 kronor—pays six months of rent and buys her a new laptop. She suspects that Kenneth von Kwist was upset she had sought treatment because therapy might bring to light what Viggo Dürer and Karl Lundström had done to her. She thinks Jeanette seemed trustworthy, yet wonders whether she should have told the detective everything.

The danger becomes immediate when a stranger appears in Ulrika’s kitchen and attacks her. She later wakes in an unknown, dark place, with no clear sense of where she is or how she got there. As the hours pass, her body weakens, and she concludes that her captor is unlikely to let her live. She tries to endure, holding on to the possibility that someone will find her; as her physical awareness diminishes, her thoughts turn inward and she imagines herself detached from the place where she is being held.

Meanwhile, Jeanette pursues evidence that might connect the earlier case to the broader investigation. A recording confirms that Ulrika was among the victims in an assault involving three men; one is Bengt Bergman, whom Jeanette had previously questioned on suspicion of rape before he was released after his wife supplied an alibi. The recording gives material confirmation to Ulrika’s account and exposes how the earlier investigation failed to establish the full truth.

Ulrika eventually escapes the enclosed space on her own, but the escape does not bring her to safety. Disoriented and exposed to severe cold, she continues until she can no longer go on and dies in the snow. The subsequent examination establishes that she had endured extreme sensory deprivation in an enclosed space insulated from light and sound. The pathologist notes how unusual it was for anyone to survive such conditions for more than a few hours, let alone escape without assistance. Her survival was remarkable, but it came too late to prevent her death.

A Witness at the Center of a Larger Pattern

Ulrika’s case reaches beyond her own complaint because Jeanette sees similarities between it and the handling of Karl Lundström’s case. The same investigator, Gert Berglind, had led both inquiries, and Kenneth von Kwist acknowledges that he had not checked whether Annette Lundström’s alibi was true before dropping Ulrika’s case. To Jeanette, these are not isolated procedural oversights: the repeated failure to examine claims against the same man leaves a pattern of abuse obscured rather than resolved.

The financial clues deepen that suspicion without establishing who arranged the payments. Jeanette knows that 500,000 kronor has been deposited in Annette’s account, with no source traced, while Sofia has reported that Ulrika had substantial cash and a new computer. The evidence suggests that Viggo Dürer may have tried to pay Ulrika to remain silent, but does not prove the origin of either sum. Jeanette also finds Dürer’s name in a letter Karl wrote to his daughter Linnea, where he is identified as a possible paedophile; Linnea’s childhood drawings point in the same direction. Ulrika thus becomes one strand in an investigation linking money, concealed abuse, and powerful people’s ability to evade scrutiny.

The evidence about the assault also changes how Jeanette understands the material already in the investigation. She recalls that Karl had admitted being present when other child-pornography recordings were made, though he had not mentioned the recording involving Ulrika. When a forensic image identifies Ulrika among the victims and Bengt Bergman as one of the men, the earlier case is no longer only an allegation dismissed after an unchecked alibi. Jeanette asks Ivo Andrić to conduct a more thorough examination of Ulrika’s flat, pursuing evidence that might clarify the relationship between the assault and the recordings.

Ulrika’s ties to help remain tenuous even before her disappearance. After cancelling her appointments, she wonders whether Sofia will notice her absence and whether Jeanette might have cared enough to ask. She also knows that her grandmother, Kickan, is not likely to worry immediately because they usually speak only about once a week. Later, Kickan contacts Jeanette, who remembers visiting Ulrika to discuss the rape and hopes, without confidence, that events might still turn out well for her. The gap between that hope and Ulrika’s fate gives the investigation a personal measure of its failure: people may care about her, but care arrives without being able to restore the safety she needed.

Treatment and the Possibility of a Future

Sofia Zetterlund’s treatment plan does not define Ulrika solely by what was done to her: its final stage is meant to distinguish past trauma from sexual experience in the present and future. Sofia is surprised when Ulrika describes picking up a stranger from a bar as a sexual encounter that had made her feel better. The detail complicates the story’s account of harm without diminishing the assault or its consequences; Ulrika’s experience cannot be reduced to a single identity as a victim. Yet the possibility of working through that distinction remains fragile. Ulrika cancels treatment before the planned work can continue, and her later disappearance and death leave the prospect of recovery unresolved.