Backåkra

Backåkra is a secluded estate by the sea, owned by the Swedish Academy, where the search for Robert Modin converges with an attempt to shoot Kurt Wallander. Its locked buildings, open grounds, and dense, shifting fog shape the scene: the police find the suspected attackers’ van, but not its driver, and the obscured landscape leaves the threat unresolved.

Setting and Approach

The estate includes a house and outer buildings, a car park, fields, and a small meditation garden bordered by a ring of stones. The house and grounds are secured, and Wallander finds no car when he first reaches the car park. A distant foghorn, the sound of the sea, and a nearby bird mark a landscape in which the fog makes distances difficult to judge and visibility minimal.

Wallander arrives carrying a shotgun borrowed from Axel Modin, Robert’s father. He searches the grounds because he believes Robert may still be nearby, though he has no clear idea where the young man has gone. From the meditation garden he calls Ann-Britt Höglund, who reports that Robert’s car is not at Sandhammaren either. The estate thus becomes one point in a broader, uncertain search rather than a confirmed refuge.

The Van and the Attack

As Wallander heads back, he hears a car approach and stop. The open car door and the quiet make him wary; he circles back rather than approaching directly. Near the entrance to the car park, he finds a dark blue Mercedes van with its driver’s door open. He recognizes it as the van used to return Tynnes Falk’s body to the cash machine. Its presence suggests that someone connected to the earlier crime may be looking for Robert—or may have followed Wallander instead.

A phone call from Elvira Lindfeldt interrupts Wallander’s watch. He lowers his voice and ends the call, then briefly wonders whether its timing could be connected to the danger around him. The suspicion is presented as an unreasonable thought arising from exhaustion, not as evidence against Elvira. When his mobile slips from his hand and he bends to catch it, a gun is fired from behind and above him. The movement saves his life. He abandons the phone, raises his shotgun, and crawls away through the fog; the shooter remains unseen.

Police Search and Significance

The police establish a temporary response around the estate and prepare for the possibility that the armed man may resist arrest. On Saturday, October 18, they wait outside the car park for the fog to lift. It disperses around 1:30 p.m., revealing the van and Martinsson’s car, but no suspect. The police infer that the driver has escaped on foot. A search of the van yields no identifying information about its driver.

Dog units pick up a scent leading toward the water, but lose the trail along the coast. Investigators seek fingerprints for comparison with evidence from Apelbergsgatan, Runnerströms Torg, the power substation, and Siv Eriksson’s flat, among other sites. Wallander also warns the search teams to watch for an armed, dangerous man and to avoid approaching him directly. Later, he gathers the team in the meditation garden and argues that the danger surrounding Robert, the attack at Backåkra, and the other events are connected to Tynnes Falk’s death and the contents of Falk’s computer. The estate’s importance lies in this convergence: it is at once a search site, a place where the unseen threat becomes physically immediate, and a vantage point from which the investigation turns back toward Falk’s computer.