Robert Modin’s flight from Löderup

Robert Modin’s flight from Löderup turns an unexplained electronic warning into an urgent search. After Modin leaves in a car, Kurt Wallander must decide whether he has simply panicked or is in immediate danger; the clues at the house and on a nearby road make the threat difficult to dismiss. The episode ends with Modin found safe in Ystad, but does not explain who warned him, what he feared, or where he intended to go.

Warning and sudden departure

At Modin’s house, Wallander and Martinsson examine the computers after Modin has left. His mobile phone lies beside them, switched off. Martinsson considers whether someone called him, or whether Modin himself received frightening news; the phone’s presence means neither possibility can be confirmed. The unanswered question of what happened after Modin contacted the police becomes the immediate uncertainty surrounding his departure.

The computer provides a more definite clue. Martinsson finds an incoming message that says Modin has been traced, followed by Modin’s own message to the investigators. No later messages are present. The sender’s identity is hidden behind scrambled codes, and the server is identified as Vesuvius. When Martinsson tries to reply as Modin, the address is reported as unknown. The warning is therefore concrete enough to alarm Wallander, but its sender and source remain concealed.

Other papers show Modin trying to make sense of an unfinished problem. His hard-to-read notes contain incomplete equations and phrases, with the word delay appearing several times, sometimes underlined or marked with a question. He has also written questions about a programming completion date and whether an insider is necessary. The pages do not explain why he leaves, but they place the warning amid his efforts to understand a technical scheme and its possible participants.

Wallander’s response and the search

Wallander does not treat the departure as a matter to settle later. He tells Axel Modin that the investigators are still trying to discover why Robert is afraid, while privately recognizing that the hidden-source email and the case’s pattern of secrecy and killing make the danger credible. He decides that the risk of underestimating it is too great. Because Robert is an unpractised driver, Wallander thinks he may not have gone far and could have been involved in an accident. He calls Ann-Britt Höglund at the station, asks her to send patrol cars around Löderup, and obtains the car’s registration number and description from Axel.

Wallander also follows a lead visible from the room. Looking through binoculars, he had seen a distant road winding between fields. He borrows Martinsson’s car and drives there, too fast over the muddy ground, then stops where the view from the house had directed him. Rain has nearly passed, but fog is thickening. Tracks are faint because the rain has almost washed them away; nonetheless, Wallander believes another car stopped nearby. If someone had watched the house from that road, the person could have seen Modin leave.

That possibility sharpens Wallander’s sense of responsibility. He has involved Modin in the investigation and now fears that doing so exposed him to danger. Earlier, Modin had panicked and wanted a gun before deciding to leave by car. Wallander returns to the house without finding him. Axel has no idea where his son might have gone, and Wallander’s reassurance that the police are looking does not convince him. The search remains open, with the investigators unable to establish either Modin’s destination or the reason for his flight.

Recovery in Ystad

The search ends when Hansson runs to Wallander and Höglund with news that Modin has been found. A patrol car spotted him while returning to change shifts. He is in Ystad, parked at the corner of Surbrunnsvägen and Aulingatan, by the People’s Park. The patrol officers reach him first, and Hansson confirms that he is all right. At 3:55 p.m., the immediate fear that Modin may have vanished or been harmed gives way to relief.

The recovery resolves the practical emergency without solving the underlying mystery. The episode establishes that Modin is safe and that he did not remain at the house, but it supplies no account of why he chose that particular place or what he planned to do next. His unexplained departure remains linked to the warning on his computer rather than to any confirmed account of the threat.

Significance within the investigation

The flight changes the investigators’ task from interpreting a message to protecting the person who received it. The concealed sender, failed reply, and uncertain server leave the source of the danger out of reach; the search instead depends on ordinary police work, including a car description, patrol coverage, and a possible route through the fields. A technical warning becomes a physical problem measured in roads, weather, and time.

The episode also makes surveillance a live possibility rather than an abstract concern. Wallander’s inspection of the road yields only weather-damaged tracks, not proof of who was there, yet the possibility that someone watched Modin drive away intensifies his responsibility. The patrol’s discovery closes the search, but not the question raised by the email: whether Modin’s fear came from a genuine pursuer, and how much of the investigation that unseen source already knows.