Erik Lundberg's murder, the killing of a taxi driver referred to in the investigation as Lundberg, becomes more than a question of who struck and stabbed him. As Kurt Wallander and Ann-Britt Höglund revisit the case, they consider whether Sonja Hökberg acted out of revenge against the victim’s son, Carl-Einar Lundberg, and whether her flight from police custody concealed a connection to the larger investigation surrounding Tynnes Falk. The revenge theory gains support, but the evidence presented does not settle every question about motive, complicity, or the murder’s wider significance.

The murder and its first interpretation

The investigation initially treats Hökberg as the person who killed the taxi driver. In a call with Erik Hökberg, Wallander speaks of the difficulty of understanding why Sonja killed him, while Erik struggles to make sense of both the killing and his stepdaughter’s own death. At this stage, the murder appears to be an act committed by Hökberg and Eva Persson, but the reasons for it remain unclear.

Wallander’s working view is that the taxi driver’s murder may be incidental to the central chain of events involving Falk. That distinction matters: the killing may have its own personal cause while also intersecting with a separate, more consequential matter. The investigators therefore continue to ask not only who killed Lundberg, but what Hökberg might have known about Falk.

The revenge hypothesis

Höglund’s inquiry into Kalle Ryss, Hökberg’s former boyfriend, supplies a possible motive. Ryss said Hökberg had told him she was raped a few years earlier and remained traumatised by the experience. He believed this lack of interest in sex was a reason their relationship ended. Höglund found no police file involving Hökberg, and the account of the rape therefore comes through Ryss rather than an official report or a direct statement from Hökberg in the evidence presented.

Höglund connects that disclosure to Carl-Einar Lundberg, the taxi driver’s son. He had been tried for a violent rape and acquitted, although the case contained indications of guilt. Höglund reasons that an acquittal would not rule out his having committed an earlier rape, and proposes that Hökberg may have killed his father as revenge. The investigators do not establish that Carl-Einar raped Hökberg: they consider it a possible explanation, noting that Hökberg may never have reported an assault and that the circumstances through which she might have identified the taxi driver as his father are uncertain.

Clues, identification, and limits of proof

A drawing made by Hökberg gives the theory a more concrete point of connection. Wallander shows it to Höglund, who recognizes the depicted man as Carl-Einar and recalls that he had a snake tattoo on his right wrist. Wallander says this turns the revenge explanation from a working hypothesis into a theory supported by a specific identification. The drawing links Hökberg to Carl-Einar, but Wallander also cautions that the police may never be able to make a charge stick; the clue strengthens their reconstruction without, by itself, proving the murder’s motive or every part of its circumstances.

The question of Persson’s role remains unsettled as well. Wallander allows that she may be telling the truth when she says Hökberg carried out both the stabbing and the striking, but he calls Persson a riddle the investigators must address later. Thus the emerging account places Hökberg at the centre of the killing without resolving the full extent of Persson’s knowledge or participation.

The murder’s wider implications

The revenge explanation changes how the investigators interpret Hökberg’s escape from the police station. They had assumed she fled to avoid punishment after confessing to Lundberg’s murder. Wallander now considers another possibility: she may have feared that someone would discover what she knew about a matter connected to Falk. In this reading, her flight could have been driven not only by the murder charge but also by danger surrounding a separate secret.

The case consequently holds two lines of explanation in tension. Lundberg’s death may have been personal vengeance for an earlier assault, while Hökberg’s possible knowledge of Falk’s affairs may have made her dangerous to someone else. The investigation develops the first line through Ryss’s account and the drawing, but leaves the second as a set of questions: what Hökberg knew, how it related to Falk, and who might have been worried that she would reveal it.