Tynnes Falk’s Body Stolen from the Morgue

The theft of Tynnes Falk’s body from a morgue in Lund turns a closed, apparently ordinary death into a disturbing clue in the investigation of Sonja Hökberg’s murder. The corpse is gone, but an electrical relay has been left in its place: a conspicuous object that may link Falk to the power substation where Hökberg died, while raising the possibility that someone wants evidence about Falk’s death concealed.

Discovery and Circumstances

Martinsson first tells Kurt Wallander about the disappearance by telephone after Wallander returns from a lecture. The call comes from the coroner’s office in Lund, where the body had been kept. At about 8 p.m., an employee named Pålsson checks the morgue, finds a locker not properly shut, and discovers that the body has been removed from its gurney. In its place lies a broken electrical relay, large enough to stand out rather than pass as an incidental object.

The timeline narrows the theft to the two hours after the janitor, Lyth, left at 6 p.m. Pålsson finds that a rear entrance opening onto the yard has a broken lock. He contacts Malmö police, whose patrol arrives within fifteen minutes. When officers learn that the body came from Ystad and had been part of an investigation, they direct Pålsson to contact the Ystad team. The removal therefore crosses the boundary between jurisdictions, but its importance is immediately clear to the investigators: Falk’s body is not simply missing from their case file; someone has entered a morgue and taken it.

There are no reported witnesses, and the body is not found. The relay, meanwhile, is placed in a plastic bag, allowing Malmö investigators to examine it for fingerprints. At the time Wallander and Martinsson discuss the discovery, those results are still pending. They also consider whether Nyberg obtained fingerprints from the substation, since comparing evidence from the two sites might establish whether the relay came from there.

The Relay as a Clue

The object changes the meaning of the empty stretcher. Wallander does not initially know much about relays beyond their connection with electricity, but Martinsson explains that this one is large and that such relays are normally found in power substations. Wallander recognizes the implication: Hökberg’s body was found at a substation. Instead of offering a straightforward explanation, the theft supplies a material link between two deaths or suspected deaths whose relationship had not been established.

Wallander takes the relay as a message intended for the police, not as something accidentally abandoned. He recalls advice from his former colleague Rydberg: “Criminals often leave a greeting at the scene of the crime. Sometimes it’s deliberate, sometimes by accident.” In this instance, the object’s size and placement make an accidental connection seem unlikely to Wallander. The relay is not merely evidence to be tested; its conspicuous position on the gurney appears designed to make the investigators notice it.

That interpretation remains a working hypothesis, not a confirmed identification of the person responsible. The officers consider whether the relay might be a misleading clue, perhaps planted to suggest a connection after Hökberg’s death had become known. Martinsson reports that Malmö police describe it as large and heavy, making it difficult to imagine someone carrying it casually. Nyberg is to determine whether it originated at the substation, a test that could strengthen the connection but would not by itself settle what the theft means.

Concealment and Uncertainty

The relay points outward, toward Hökberg’s case; the stolen body points inward, toward something about Falk that someone may want hidden. Wallander reasons that removing the corpse could conceal the manner of death. He has heard of bodies being taken in cases involving unusual sects, but sees no particular reason to apply that explanation to Falk. Concealment seems more plausible to him, although the theft alone does not prove that Falk was murdered.

Martinsson explicitly cautions against treating the missing body as proof of homicide. Falk had been presumed to have died naturally, and Wallander acknowledges that this remains as likely as any explanation at that stage. Their difficulty is practical as well as interpretive: because the original case was closed quickly, they had not examined Falk’s life in depth or interviewed his children. His former wife had described him as nervous and as someone who claimed to have enemies, but the investigators have not yet followed those details through a fuller inquiry.

The theft thus exposes the limits of the earlier investigation. Wallander and Martinsson have to reconsider not only the cause of Falk’s death but also the connections among Falk, Hökberg, Eva Persson, and Lundberg. Wallander raises the possibility that Falk was already dead when Hökberg was killed and that, if Falk was murdered, the same man might have killed Hökberg. These are possibilities rather than conclusions; the missing body has widened the field of suspicion without resolving it.

Consequences for the Investigation

At the next team discussion, Wallander describes the disappearance and relay as a development that dramatically alters the investigation. The case had seemed to concern an unusually brutal but comparatively clear-cut murder; Hökberg’s escape from custody and subsequent death at the substation had already unsettled that account. Falk’s apparent natural death had, by contrast, been set aside as a closed matter. The theft forces the investigators to reopen that assumption and consider whether the apparent separation between the cases was false.

The team agrees to proceed on the provisional assumption that Falk and Hökberg may be connected, while resisting certainty about the meaning of the relay. Höglund suggests that the object could be symbolic; Hansson asks whether it could be a red herring. Wallander answers that the investigators must take the clues step by step, beginning with Nyberg’s examination of the relay. The body’s disappearance consequently becomes both a physical loss and a change in investigative method: the police must look again at Falk’s identity, his possible enemies, and the circumstances they had not investigated when they believed he died naturally.

The incident ends without a recovered body, a confirmed source for the relay, or proof of murder. Its significance lies in the deliberate-looking arrangement of absence and object: the corpse removed, the relay left behind. Together, those details turn an unexplained theft into a warning that Falk’s death may belong to the same tangled case as Hökberg’s, while keeping the central question unresolved.