Jonas Landahl Killed and Dumped in the Ferry’s Propeller Shaft

Jonas Landahl’s murder aboard the ferry turns the journey to Ystad into a crime scene and reveals how close the killer remained to the investigation. The coroner placed Landahl’s death roughly three hours before the ferry’s arrival, leading Kurt Wallander to recognize that the murderer could have been among the passengers who disembarked unchecked. The later identification of Hua Gang as the killer tied the murder to Carter’s organization.

Death aboard the ferry

The coroner’s estimate placed Landahl’s death about three hours before the ferry arrived in Ystad. At first, that timing left open the possibility that the killer had remained aboard—or that Landahl had jumped ship. Wallander concluded that the police should have checked the passengers before allowing them to leave, acknowledging that the omission had been his mistake. The ferry’s arrival thus marks not only the end of Landahl’s journey but also a missed opportunity to identify his killer immediately.

The discovery of Landahl’s butchered remains sharpened the urgency of the case. When Robert Modin fled in panic, Wallander saw a dangerous parallel: Landahl, too, had fled, but someone had caught up with him. The comparison made the search for Modin feel like a race against the same threat that had already reached Landahl.

Identifying the killer

The police later established that Fu Cheng was Hua Gang’s real name. His fingerprints and witness reports confirmed that he had killed both Landahl and Sonja Hökberg. The identification transformed Landahl’s death from an apparently isolated killing into evidence of the reach and violence of Carter’s organization.

Hua Gang had long been involved in organized crime and had been suspected in murder cases in Europe and Asia, though he had never been convicted. Wallander suspected that money from bank robberies in Frankfurt and Marseilles had helped finance parts of the operation. The evidence showed that Hua Gang acted under Carter’s direction, and possibly Falk’s as well. With Carter and Falk out of the picture, the organization was considered essentially defunct, although investigators still had work to do in mapping its full reach.