The discovery of Tynnes Falk’s secret office at Runnerströms Torg transforms an apparent absence of evidence into a concrete connection: beside Falk’s computer lies a blueprint of the power substation where Sonja Hökberg was killed. The office’s sparse furnishings and the concealed chamber found during a later search make the room more than a second address. It is a physical record of work Falk had kept out of sight, while its most striking contents raise questions the investigation cannot yet answer.

The second address

The office comes to light after Kurt Wallander speaks with Carl-Anders Setterkvist, the owner of Falk’s apartment building. Setterkvist arrives expecting to speak to Falk about complaints from residents concerning loud visits by military men. Kurt Wallander explains that Falk is dead and that the apparent visitors are police investigating a burglary. In the conversation, Setterkvist refers to Falk’s flats in the plural. Pressed to explain, he says that Falk rented a small attic flat in an old building by Runnerströms Torg and needed it for his work.

That disclosure gives Kurt Wallander a plausible explanation for why Falk’s other apartment contained no computers and little to suggest that he worked there. Setterkvist produces a large set of keys and selects the ones for the office; he declines Kurt Wallander’s offer to write a receipt, saying that one must be able to rely on one’s own judgment. Kurt Wallander arranges for someone to seal the apartment he has just left, then goes straight to the second address. The discovery begins not with a technological breakthrough but with a landlord’s casual correction of a word: the plural reveals the existence of a place the police did not know to search.

The blueprint

The building at Runnerströms Torg is a three-storey, turn-of-the-century structure. As evening approaches, Kurt Wallander crosses the street to look up at its dark attic windows, checks that he is alone, and lets himself in. Music comes from one of the flats below. At the top of the stairs, he finds a single security door on the landing, with neither a name nor a letter box. He pauses to listen before entering; for a moment, the silence makes him think he hears someone breathing, but he recognizes that impression as his imagination.

The attic room is large and almost empty: a desk, a chair, and a computer. On the desk beside the computer is a paper that at first takes Kurt Wallander a moment to identify. It is the blueprint of the substation where Sonja Hökberg was killed. The document supplies the decisive connection between Falk and the substation, but it does not explain what Falk intended to do with it or how it relates to his death.

Kurt Wallander lays the blueprint back beside the computer and sees his own face reflected in the computer’s dark screen. The juxtaposition gathers several unresolved facts into one scene: Falk’s body was found beside an ATM, later disappeared from the morgue, and now his separate workplace contains a plan of the site associated with Sonja Hökberg’s killing. Kurt Wallander considers calling Martinsson, Ann-Britt Höglund, or Nyberg, but does not immediately pick up the phone. He wants to understand how the pieces fit before acting. The room offers a connection, not yet a pattern.

Searching the empty office

Kurt Wallander studies the room for what is absent as well as what is present. There are no shelves, binders, books, or even a pen. He directs the desk lamp’s beam along each wall, looking for a concealed space, then sits in the chair and considers the computer. Martinsson would have been glad to examine it, but Kurt Wallander does not dare touch it himself. He decides to call Nyberg instead, despite the late hour and Nyberg’s exhaustion after several days of work.

Nyberg arrives alone. Kurt Wallander helps him carry his equipment upstairs, and Nyberg asks what he should look for. The answer is fingerprints and secret compartments. The initial search yields no immediate explanation, but the request to inspect for hidden spaces proves well founded. On a later return to the attic, Nyberg has begun measuring the room because a section of wall projects at an unusual angle. In an old building, renovations can alter a floor plan; here, measurement and close inspection expose a deliberate concealment.

The chamber behind the wall

Nyberg taps the walls and hears a hollow sound. He notices that the skirting board has been sawn loose and finds a narrow crack in the wall from which he has removed part of painted-over tape. He waits for Kurt Wallander before opening it. When they peel away the remaining tape, a low door, about 1.5 metres high, appears. It opens silently onto a hidden room roughly eight metres square, with no window and only a small air vent.

The chamber contains little: a table resembling an altar, two candles, and a photograph of Falk on the wall. Kurt Wallander thinks the picture may have been taken in that very room. In it, Falk looks directly at the camera with a serious expression; what catches the investigators’ attention is the object in his hand. Looking more closely, Kurt Wallander and Nyberg conclude that it appears to be a remote control. The objects and arrangement invite an interpretation, but do not establish one. Nyberg wonders aloud whether Falk worshipped himself; Kurt Wallander says he does not yet know.

Kurt Wallander removes the photograph with rubber gloves and checks its back, finding no writing. Nyberg suggests there might be further concealed rooms, but their search finds only solid walls. Back in the main room, Nyberg says it appears to have been cleaned recently. Kurt Wallander recalls that Falk was fastidious, a detail consistent with earlier information from Falk’s diary and Siv Eriksson. The hidden chamber therefore enlarges the mystery without supplying a key: it reveals a carefully concealed, sparsely furnished space and an image of Falk holding what looks like a control device, while leaving the room’s purpose uncertain.

Significance and unresolved questions

The two discoveries—the substation blueprint and the chamber—change the meaning of Falk’s office in different ways. The blueprint is a direct investigative clue linking Falk’s private work to the place where Sonja Hökberg was killed. The chamber is more ambiguous. Its hidden door, altar-like table, candles, and portrait make Falk’s work space feel organized around a private display, but neither Kurt Wallander nor Nyberg can say what that display meant. The apparent remote control adds a specific object to the puzzle, not an explanation.

The episode also establishes a practical next step. Kurt Wallander wants Martinsson brought in to examine the computer, which he has left untouched; Nyberg will return to finish the search. The investigation has moved from suspicion about a missing item and a burglar’s possible purpose to evidence concealed in Falk’s own premises. Yet the discovery does not resolve the relationship between the blueprint, the secret room, Falk’s death, or the disappearance of his body. Its force lies in narrowing the field while making the central pattern more elusive.