Wallander and Elvira Lindfeldt’s first date and growing attraction

The first date between Kurt Wallander and Elvira Lindfeldt interrupts the careful isolation Wallander has built around work. A letter from a woman who answers his dating-agency advertisement brings him to the edge of contact and then retreat; when he finally calls, Elvira’s directness turns a guarded exchange into an evening of mutual disclosure. Their meeting does not settle into a lasting relationship within these scenes, but it gives Wallander a rare, immediate sense of happiness.

The Letter and the Hesitation

Wallander receives Elvira’s reply at home while doing laundry. The unposted envelope has no return address, and inside it is a second envelope without a name. At first he cannot make sense of the letter; then he realizes that it answers the advertisement he had placed through a dating agency. Elvira is 39, divorced, lives in Malmö, and works for the shipping company Heinemann & Nagel. She has enclosed her telephone number and hopes to hear from him. She has not included a photograph, but Wallander imagines her as beautiful, responding to the firm, elegant handwriting as well as to the possibility of meeting its author.

His first response is desire checked by self-doubt. He feels an almost ravenous urge to call, then decides instead that he should throw the letter away. He predicts that Elvira will be disappointed because she probably imagines him differently, and tells himself that he has no time for a meeting while leading the most complicated investigation of his career. After walking repeatedly around the kitchen table, he tears the letter into pieces and puts it in the bin. The decision does not end his interest: after a day of police work, he retrieves her number from his memory and finally calls.

The first call deepens rather than resolves his hesitation. Elvira answers after the seventh ring, and Wallander hangs up; a few minutes later, he calls again, and she answers immediately. He likes the sound of her voice. They speak briefly about the wind in Malmö, colleagues catching colds, and his own recovering sore throat. When Elvira suggests meeting, Wallander admits that he is not a believer in dating agencies, then regrets having said so. Her answer—that meeting this way is no better or worse than any other, and that they are both adults—meets his skepticism without turning it into a quarrel. She surprises him again by proposing that evening in Malmö. Though he thinks the invitation is too soon and that he has work to do, he accepts. They agree to meet at 8:30 at the Savoy bar.

The Savoy Meeting

The date exposes how much preparation Wallander has invested despite his attempts to lower his expectations. He spends too long choosing clothes, settles on a clean but unironed shirt, rejects a tie, and polishes his shoes. A call from Hansson finds him so brisk that Hansson asks whether he is pressed for time. Then Linda calls to say she may come and stay with him; Wallander nearly tells her where he is going, but claims he is on police business. On the drive, he stops for petrol outside Skurup and worries that he will be late, recalling an earlier date with Mona that ended when she left after he arrived ten minutes behind schedule.

He reaches the Savoy at 8:27 but waits in his car until almost 8:40, studying his face in the mirror and trying to suppress expectations. He imagines a brief drink, an early return home, and the possibility that the encounter will confirm his doubts about the agency. Instead, he and Elvira see one another at the same time. She is the only woman sitting alone, at a table in the far corner; she smiles as he approaches. Tall and dressed in a dark blue suit, she greets him, and they establish each other’s identity. Wallander turns his chair sideways, self-conscious about his appearance, while Elvira notices and asks if he needs more room for his legs. The small exchange establishes a contrast between her easy directness and his acute awareness of himself.

Elvira drinks white wine; Wallander sticks to mineral water because he is driving, although he wants wine. His restraint is also shaped by an ugly memory from his police career: colleagues once stopped him after he had drunk too much, and he knows that the incident could have cost him his job. At the table he worries about what to say and whether he has already done something wrong. Elvira, by contrast, speaks cheerfully about her previous dates and their familiar failures: mismatched humour, attitudes, expectations, pompousness, or too much drinking. She tells him he looks nice enough. He begins to relax, although he remains conscious of what she might know about his public image and the accusation that he assaulted a juvenile. It does not come up in their conversation.

Mutual Disclosure

Their conversation moves from work to the histories that have made each of them cautious. Elvira asks what it is like to be a policeman. Wallander answers truthfully, but notices that he keeps returning to the harsher aspects of the job, as if seeking her sympathy. Her questions are considered and sometimes unexpected, requiring him to stay attentive. In turn, she describes her work moving household goods for Swedish missionaries travelling abroad or returning home. Her boss is often away on business, and Wallander comes to understand that she holds a position of responsibility and enjoys the work.

As the evening continues, Wallander speaks about his failed marriage to Mona and the long periods he has spent alone. He tells Elvira about Baiba, the woman from Riga with whom he had once imagined starting over in the country. Wallander had made plans for a shared life, but Baiba wanted to remain in Riga while he wanted to stay in Sweden. Elvira suggests that his dreams may have been too ambitious and that he had been burned. He worries that he has said too much, yet finds her easy to confide in.

Elvira offers a parallel, but not identical, account of disappointment. She has been married twice and has two children, Alexandra, 17, and Tobias, 21. She says little explicitly about her first marriage, though Wallander gains the impression that her first husband was physically abusive. Her second husband was Argentinian. His passionate nature initially felt like a breath of fresh air but eventually became stifling. He vanished two years earlier; the last she heard, he was penniless in Barcelona. She helped pay for his ticket back to Argentina and had heard nothing from him for a year, while his daughter remained distraught. Their candour is not a promise of compatibility, but it gives the date a degree of intimacy beyond the polite exchange Wallander had expected.

The Evening’s Aftermath

They pay the bill at 11:30, splitting it at Elvira’s insistence. Outside, Wallander learns that she has never been to Ystad. He wants to ask whether he may call her, but cannot clearly name what he feels; the fact that she has not yet found too many faults in him is, for now, enough. He offers to drive her home. She lives in a Malmö suburb toward Jägersro, but prefers to walk for a while and then take a taxi. She says she takes long walks and hates jogging. Wallander agrees that he does too, but does not tell her that diabetes is the reason he has become an avid walker.

They shake hands and say good night. Wallander watches Elvira until she rounds the corner of the hotel, then drives back to Ystad with a cassette of arias by Jussi Björling playing in the car. As he passes the turnoff to Stjärnsund, where Sten Widén’s ranch is located, he finds that a recent pang of jealousy has eased. At home, close to one in the morning, he sits on the sofa and recognizes that he has not felt this happy in a long time; the last comparable moment was when he began to sense that Baiba returned his feelings. He goes to bed without thinking about the case. The change is temporary and no further commitment is established here, but the date marks a genuine opening: after trying to erase Elvira’s letter and bracing himself for failure, Wallander has allowed the possibility of connection to occupy an evening—and to carry him home in a different frame of mind.