Sonja Hökberg and Jonas Landahl’s intimate relationship

Sonja Hökberg and Jonas Landahl’s intimate relationship is disclosed through the investigation rather than through either person’s direct account. Kalle Ryss identifies Landahl as someone Sonja had been seeing, and a message in Sonja’s voice on Landahl’s answering machine confirms that she had contacted him. By the time police reach his house, Landahl has left for the ferry terminal. The relationship thus becomes both a private connection in Sonja’s life and a route toward a wider, still uncertain inquiry.

Discovery of the connection

On Monday, October 13, Ann-Britt Höglund returned to the question of whether Sonja had had a boyfriend. Eva Persson continued to deny that there was one and named only Kalle Ryss, with whom Sonja had once been close. Höglund was unsure whether Persson was telling the truth, so she went to Ryss’s workplace, a hardware shop, and spoke with him in the storeroom. Their conversation supplied a name Persson had not given her.

Ryss said that his own relationship with Sonja had ended at least a year earlier. He still missed her, mourned her death, and was frightened by what had happened, but he knew little about the direction her life had taken after their break-up. Their paths had rarely crossed; he usually drove to Malmö at weekends, where his new girlfriend lived. It was in this limited, uneasy account of their past that he mentioned another man: Jonas Landahl, whom he understood to be someone Sonja had been with.

Ryss could provide little more than Landahl’s name and the location of his house. It stood on Snappehanegatan, near the corner of Friskyttegatan, on the left when approaching from town. He did not know Landahl’s occupation. The lead was therefore significant but incomplete: it established another intimate connection in Sonja’s life without explaining how long it had lasted, what it meant to her, or what Landahl knew about her death.

Landahl’s absence

Höglund drove directly to the address and found a modern, apparently deserted house. After she rang repeatedly and tried the rear door, a neighbour across the street approached her. Calling himself Yngve, he said that no one was home, including the boy. His account described a family that had lived there for about ten years, kept to themselves, and left the son alone for long periods while the parents travelled. The parents appeared not to have regular jobs, yet there was always money. Yngve said the last time he had seen them was sometime in September; a few days earlier, a taxi had taken the now-grown son away.

Höglund traced the taxi and questioned its driver, Östensson. He recalled picking up a young, friendly man shortly before 2 p.m. and taking him to the ferry terminal. The passenger had one small wheeled case, sat looking out of the window, and gave the driver a tip. Östensson thought the passenger’s name was Jonas; when Höglund asked whether he was going to Poland, the driver treated that as the likely destination. The details place Landahl’s departure in the days before the house search, but do not establish why he left or whether he knew the police were looking for him.

A call that confirms contact

After obtaining a warrant, Wallander and Höglund searched the house. Its orderliness offered no sign of a hurried departure: the rooms were clean and almost impersonal, with little personal property. A photograph on the mantelpiece showed a young couple with a newborn baby. On an answering machine, among a modem-company message and a wrong number, Wallander recognized Sonja’s voice: “I’ll call you again. It’s important. I’ll call you.” He saved the message, and they played it again. The recording confirms that Sonja had been in contact with someone at the house, although she did not identify herself by name. Wallander thought it was probably the call they had been seeking from around the time she escaped; Höglund framed that timing as a possibility, not a certainty.

The search also produced a dark blue Volkswagen Golf in the garage. Wallander asked Nyberg to examine it closely and said it could not be ruled out as the car that had taken Sonja to her death. That possibility links Landahl’s household to the circumstances of Sonja’s killing, but the car’s role remained unconfirmed in the evidence found during the search.

The house and the wider investigation

The second floor contained four bedrooms, though only two appeared lived in: one for the parents and one for the son. The parents’ wardrobe held neatly arranged clothes, a dog collar, and a short leather whip. The boy’s room, by contrast, was strikingly bare, with nothing on the walls or bed and a computer on a large desk. These details sharpen the sense of a household whose outward neatness disclosed little about the people living there; they do not, by themselves, establish what the relationship between Sonja and Landahl involved.

The computer initially seemed empty. Its files, including one named Correspondence, contained nothing, and there were no diskettes in view. Höglund found that its last recorded activity was October 9, the day after the taxi driver and neighbour placed Landahl’s departure. She explained that someone could have emptied the computer, and that erased material might remain recoverable until the hard drive was destroyed. The activity date left Wallander with two possibilities: Landahl had returned, or someone else had used the machine. The evidence did not resolve which.

On a later search of the room, Wallander noticed that a bookcase leaned toward the wall when viewed from the bed. Small washers had been placed beneath its sides, leaving a narrow space where he found a diskette. Its label read Jacob’s Marsh. The sole file had last been opened on September 29 and contained the words “Release the minks.” Wallander connected Landahl to Tynnes Falk through Falk’s earlier involvement in animal-rights activity and wondered whether Landahl had been among those who escaped detection. This clue broadened the investigation beyond Sonja’s personal relationships; it suggested a possible association, not proof of Landahl’s role in the activity or in the later crimes.

Significance and limits

The relationship is pieced together from partial testimony, a recorded call, and objects left in an empty house. Ryss supplies the name but admits how little he knows about Sonja’s later life. The answering machine establishes contact without revealing its full context, while Landahl’s departure, the possible connection to the car, and the hidden diskette all invite further inquiry without settling what happened between the two. For the investigators, the connection makes Landahl a person they urgently need to find; for the reader, it remains an important but incomplete strand linking Sonja’s private life to the larger case.