Eva Persson

Eva Persson is a fourteen-year-old whose participation in the attack on taxi driver Johan Lundberg becomes the first major crime investigated by Kurt Wallander. Her initial confession places her beside Sonja Hökberg in a robbery planned around a taxi ride; her later reversal, after Hökberg’s death, makes the question of what she knows as important as what she did.

Identity and Introduction

Persson is introduced through the facts of the case rather than through a substantial account of her home life. She and the nineteen-year-old Hökberg ordered a taxi from a restaurant at about ten on a Tuesday night and asked to be driven to Rydsgård. As the car reached the outskirts of Ystad, they arranged for it to stop. Hökberg, seated in the back, attacked Lundberg with a hammer; Persson, who had been in the passenger seat, stabbed him. The pair took his wallet and mobile phone and left. Despite his condition, Lundberg managed to call for emergency help over the taxi radio.

The attack was not simply an impulsive quarrel that began inside the taxi. In her interview, Hökberg described a prearranged switch of seats: Persson was to move into the back beside her, creating the moment when they would attack the driver. Hökberg also said that the weapons were already part of their plan. Her account placed Persson inside the design and execution of the assault, though it did not establish what Persson herself understood about its full consequences.

The two girls were arrested at home. Police found the weapons, and both initially confessed almost immediately. They gave the same limited explanation for the robbery: they needed money, without identifying any particular purpose. Lundberg had been carrying about six hundred kronor. The wallet was later recovered from a waste-paper basket after Persson helped police locate it, while the mobile phone was found in Hökberg’s bedroom. Those separate details tied the girls to the theft even as the motive remained strikingly vague.

Wallander learns that the younger girl had excellent grades at school, and later sees Persson as so small that she appears no older than twelve. That outward impression unsettles his attempt to reconcile her appearance with her alleged part in the attack. It does not, however, make her seem bewildered or passive: from the start, her place in the case is defined by the tension between an unremarkable surface and the deliberate violence described by the evidence.

Confession, Reversal, and Suspicion

The first account did not hold. After Sonja Hökberg escaped from the station and was later found dead, Eva Persson changed her story: she now said that Hökberg had planned and carried out the attack alone, and that there had never been a plan to rob a taxi driver or travel to Rydsgård. Instead, Persson said, Hökberg had suggested visiting an uncle in Bjäresjö. Police checked the detail; the uncle said he had not seen his niece for five or six years. Persson also recast the change of seats in the restaurant as a response to Hökberg complaining of a draught.

The timing made the reversal more consequential than its particulars. Persson had altered her account before news of Hökberg’s death had been released, and the investigators knew of only a small circle of people who could have told her. Wallander and Ann-Britt Höglund reasoned that Persson must have learned of the death from someone who knew what had happened—possibly the killer or a witness. They considered whether Hökberg herself might have contacted Persson after escaping, but Wallander found that unlikely. Persson’s new version therefore sharpened the central question: not only whether she had helped attack Johan Lundberg, but what she knew about Hökberg’s fate and how she had learned it.

In a later interview with Höglund, Persson held to the revised story. Höglund found that she answered quickly when prepared, but slowed into an apathetic manner when questions surprised her. Across two hours, she kept her account consistent; Höglund believed she was tracking her lies rather than speaking in confusion. Persson said she had first confessed because she feared Hökberg, who could be tough on her, and denied receiving calls from Hökberg or anyone else after the escape. She claimed to have been shocked by the death and could offer no explanation for why Hökberg had gone to the power substation or who had taken her there. Höglund nevertheless judged Persson cold and controlled, and suspected she had not been surprised by what happened.

Persson’s knowledge appeared limited in some directions and possibly concealed in others. She denied noticing anyone at the restaurant or seeing Hökberg contact anyone, and said she had never heard of Tynnes Falk; Höglund detected, at most, a slight hesitation on that name. She also said she did not know why Hökberg had gone to the substation and showed no evident fear that the same danger might reach her. Höglund’s assessment was that Persson had taken part in Lundberg’s attack but probably knew little about Hökberg’s other involvements. The distinction left her neither cleared nor fully explained: the investigators could distrust her account of the robbery while still treating her as a possible source of the information that exposed Hökberg’s death.

Family Conflict and the Allegation Against Wallander

Persson’s relationship with her mother was neither a reliable source of information nor a stable refuge. When Wallander questioned them together about where Sonja Hökberg might have gone, Persson first said she did not know. Her mother, who said she had never liked Hökberg, also claimed to know very little about her daughter’s closest friend. Persson then struck her mother repeatedly and shouted at her to get rid of the old woman. When Wallander tried to separate them, Persson bit his hand; he slapped her hard enough to knock her to the floor and left the room with his palm stinging. The confrontation exposed an immediate, violent hostility between mother and daughter, but it did not clarify what Persson knew about Hökberg’s escape.

The incident became a second dispute over Persson’s credibility. Persson and her mother later said Wallander had hit the girl without provocation, an account that conflicted with his description of intervening while she attacked her mother. A journalist had arrived early for a press conference and witnessed the aftermath; the resulting photograph showed a policeman appearing to knock a girl to the ground. The image made the disagreement visible in a way that Wallander’s account alone could not undo. Ann-Britt Höglund suspected that the mother was using the accusation to divert attention from her daughter’s alleged role in Johan Lundberg’s attack, but the suspicion remained an interpretation, not an established fact.

Persson’s lawyer, Klas Harrysson, reported Wallander and Chief Lisa Holgersson to the Justice Department ombudsman. Holgersson told Wallander that an internal investigation was under way and that she had to suspend him while it continued. Wallander insisted that he had not changed his account, and resented Holgersson’s refusal to accept it over the contrary testimony of Persson and her mother. The accusation thus widened the case beyond the girls’ actions: Persson’s account was now central both to the investigation of Hökberg’s death and to the inquiry into Wallander’s conduct.

A Small Clue and the Limits of What She Knows

A packet of spearmint gum found in the back seat of a car at Jonas Landahl’s house prompted Wallander to ask whether Persson chewed that kind and had shared any with Hökberg. Persson’s mother said her daughter chewed different kinds; Höglund considered it reasonable to assume that the girls might share gum. The detail offered a possible connection between Persson, Hökberg, and the car, but the evidence did not establish who had left the packet or when. Like Persson’s changing account, the clue narrowed the investigators’ questions without resolving what she knew about Hökberg’s journey to the substation.

Social Context and What Remains Unknown

When asked where Hökberg might have gone after leaving the station, Persson could not name a destination or anyone else she might contact. Her mother said that Persson usually spent time only with Hökberg, then identified Kalle Ryss as another possible friend and said he and Hökberg had once been together. Ryss later confirmed that their relationship had ended at least a year earlier and gave investigators the name of Jonas Landahl, whom he understood to be Hökberg’s more recent companion. This line of inquiry mapped part of Hökberg’s social circle, but it did not establish what Persson knew about Landahl or Hökberg’s other activities.

The investigators also learned that Persson’s father lived in a run-down shack between Växjö and Vislanda. Wallander set that information aside, saying the case had more urgent questions to answer. The discovery adds a fragment to Persson’s family circumstances, but the evidence does not develop her relationship with her father or connect him to the crimes. Her position in the case therefore remains sharply defined by what she said about Hökberg and by the gaps around that testimony, not by a resolved account of her wider home life.