Karl Lundström’s film collection

Karl Lundström’s film collection is a seized archive of sexual-abuse recordings whose potential evidentiary value becomes newly urgent when Jeanette Kihlberg considers whether it might contain a recording connected to Ulrika Wendin’s account of an assault in a hotel room. The collection is not only a record of Karl Lundström’s crimes: it may also help identify and prosecute other perpetrators, even after his death.

Identification and access

Jeanette turns to the archive after speaking with Ivo Andrić, who promises to return to Ulrika Wendin’s apartment with a forensics team. Still holding the telephone receiver after the call, she realizes that Lundström’s films might contain material relevant to the search for Ulrika. In particular, she wonders whether the recording from the hotel room could be among them. Because she has never doubted Ulrika’s account, Jeanette regards the possible film as vital evidence, and recognizes that Karl Lundström’s death does not rule out charges against the other men involved.

Jeanette calls Lars Mikkelsen to ask whether anyone can review the material seized from Lundström. Mikkelsen says the team has more than enough work already. Jeanette therefore offers to go through the films herself, despite briefly wondering whether she truly wants to take on the task. Mikkelsen agrees that there is no official reason to prevent her, but imposes strict conditions: she must sign documents agreeing not to disclose the contents, and the films must remain inside the building. Many are still on VHS and have not been digitized, so Jeanette will have to examine the seized material there herself.

Her willingness to do that work is sharpened by her sense that the investigation has been treated as a low priority. She thinks that more resources would have allowed the team to investigate more thoroughly. The archive thus arrives as both a possible breakthrough and a measure of what the investigation has so far failed to examine.

Inventory and classification

The archive is arranged with a grim procedural order: most films are filed by the date of the assaults, or, when that date is unknown, by the time of seizure. Their titles make the subject matter plain, among them Photo Lolita, Little Virgins, Young Beautiful Teens, and That’s My Daughter. One cassette carries a Post-it note describing a girl tied down and assaulted by an animal. The labels and filing system turn evidence of individual violence into an inventory, but they also make the archive navigable enough for Jeanette Kihlberg to search it for a particular recording.

The seizure locations form a map across the country, from major cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö to smaller towns including Linköping, Falun, and Gävle, as well as villages she does not recognize. Jeanette notices that the places range from north to south and east to west, with no community apparently too small, remote, or prosperous to be represented. The shelves are filled with men’s names: common surnames such as Svensson and Persson sit beside names that sound more aristocratic. Jeanette also registers how few names seem foreign, and frames that observation through a comparison between physical abuse and sexual abuse. The archive’s geography and naming system thus complicate any assumption that the crimes belong only to one kind of place or one visible social group.

When Jeanette finds a box labelled KARL LUNDSTRÖM, she lifts it down and opens it almost holding her breath. It contains about ten films. Several were filmed in Brazil in the 1980s and, as Lars Mikkelsen had told her, are regarded as cult films in paedophile circles. They do not interest her for the search she is conducting, so she puts them back and carries the remaining films to a young police officer’s office. Her selection is purposeful: the collection is vast, but the immediate question is whether any item can illuminate Ulrika Wendin’s account.

On the officer’s screen, Jeanette sees a photograph of a bare-chested man beside a bed where a naked Asian boy lies. The man’s face is distorted; Jeanette thinks someone may have tried to conceal his identity. The image makes the problem of the archive concrete: its contents may preserve evidence of abuse while obscuring the people responsible. The films are not merely incriminating objects in a seized box; they are potential links between recorded violence, unidentified perpetrators, and an investigation still trying to establish what happened.

Reviewing the recordings

The work of searching the archive proceeds alongside a separate, grim discovery. A young officer tells Jeanette Kihlberg that a seizure in the Hässelby area may have been in Fagerstrand, and identifies the dead woman as Hannah Östlund. He says he will bring Jeanette anything he finds on Hannah’s computer. The information does not establish a connection between Hannah and Karl Lundström’s films, but it places Jeanette’s examination amid an investigation in which new evidence and deaths continue to arrive together.

Left alone with the cassettes, Jeanette surveys a desk crowded with a computer, video players for different formats, a mixer board for pausing and moving through footage frame by frame, a zoom switch, an image-sharpening control, and cables. The equipment offers fine control over the recorded image, but it cannot make the material easier to confront. In the room’s sudden silence, she hesitates before choosing a tape. She rests her hand on the wheel that will stop playback, likening it to a train’s deadman’s handle: a safeguard she can operate if watching becomes unbearable.

The first film shows exactly what Karl Lundström had said it contained. Jeanette can endure only about a minute before switching it off. She knows she must review the whole tape, however, and resumes by looking alongside the screen while fast-forwarding. The footage remains blurred at the edge of her vision, visible enough for her to detect a change of scene without studying its details. After twenty minutes the machine stops with a loud click and begins rewinding automatically. Jeanette knows what she has just seen, but does not want to believe it. In this encounter, the archive ceases to be a set of labels and possible leads: the cassette’s duration, the playback controls, and the involuntary limits of Jeanette’s attention make the recorded abuse an immediate evidentiary burden.

Reviewing the recordings

Before Jeanette begins, the work is interrupted by news from the investigation elsewhere. A young officer tells her that a seizure connected with the search may have taken place in Fagerstrand, and identifies the dead woman as Hannah Östlund. He says he will bring Jeanette anything he finds on Hannah’s computer. The discovery is not shown to establish a link between Hannah and Karl Lundström’s collection; instead, it places Jeanette’s examination within an inquiry where potential evidence, unresolved crimes, and further deaths accumulate at once.

After Kevin leaves, the room becomes completely silent. Jeanette faces a desk equipped to handle multiple recording formats, with a mixer board that can stop footage and move through it frame by frame, controls for zooming and sharpening the image, and a tangle of cables. The machinery offers precision, but no protection from what it may reveal. She hesitates over the stack of cassettes before selecting one, then keeps a hand on the wheel that can stop playback. She thinks of a train’s deadman’s handle, a device that halts the train if its driver has a heart attack: the comparison gives her a means of imagining an emergency stop even as she prepares to watch.

The first film contains precisely what Karl Lundström had said it did. Jeanette switches it off after about a minute, unable to endure more, but knows she must examine the entire tape. She resumes by looking alongside the screen and fast-forwarding, keeping the images blurred at the edge of her vision. She can still tell when a scene changes without looking directly at its details. After twenty minutes, the machine stops with a loud click and begins rewinding automatically. The recording’s duration and mechanical routine continue beyond what Jeanette can bear to watch plainly. She knows what she has seen, yet does not want to believe it. At that point the archive is no longer merely a classified collection that might yield a lead: it has become evidence she must confront, while the playback controls and her averted gaze register the limits of that confrontation.