Kalle Ryss

Kalle Ryss is a hardware-shop worker and Sonja Hökberg’s former boyfriend. Though their relationship had ended at least a year before her death, he still missed her and was frightened by what had happened to her. His account gives the investigation a more personal, complicated picture of Hökberg than Eva Persson’s version had provided, while also revealing how little he knew about Hökberg’s life after their separation.

Identity and Introduction

Ann-Britt Höglund tracks Ryss down at the hardware shop where he works after learning that Hökberg may have had a boyfriend. They speak privately in the storeroom. Unlike Eva Persson, Ryss answers Höglund’s questions apparently straightforwardly, but he cannot explain much about Hökberg’s later life. Their paths had rarely crossed since the break-up, even though they lived in the same small town; he usually drove to Malmö at weekends, where his new girlfriend lived.

Relationship with Sonja Hökberg

Ryss says he fell in love with Hökberg as soon as he first saw her. Their relationship nevertheless faltered because, as he describes it, she showed no interest in sex. He eventually tired of the relationship, which had been over for at least a year by the time Höglund spoke with him. His recollection makes the separation more than a simple biographical detail: it is through the intimacy he once shared with Hökberg that he learned something she had not disclosed to the police.

The Disclosure and Its Significance

Ryss tells Höglund that Hökberg had said she was raped a few years earlier and remained traumatised. He identifies no perpetrator, and his account is testimony about what Hökberg told him, not independent confirmation of the assault. Höglund checks police files but finds no case involving Hökberg. The disclosure therefore opens a new line of inquiry rather than resolving it.

Ryss also supplies the name Jonas Landahl, whom he believes Hökberg had been seeing. He knows little about Landahl beyond his name and the location of his large house on Snappehanegatan. Höglund follows this lead to the house, beginning the search for a man whose apparent disappearance will become important to the investigation.

Investigative Role and Limits

Ryss’s disclosures redirect the inquiry on two fronts. The information about Landahl leads Höglund to a previously unknown connection in Hökberg’s life; the account of the rape prompts her to consider whether the murder of the taxi driver could have been an act of revenge against his son, Carl-Einar Lundberg. That remains a theory, not a fact established by Ryss. His importance lies in providing the investigators with leads they could not obtain from Persson, while the limits of his knowledge—especially his distance from Hökberg after their break-up—leave the central events unresolved.