Blackeberg School grounds bring the novel’s private and public dangers into the same everyday space. Rumors about a murderer and a Soviet submarine circulate among the pupils, while the building’s corridors and classrooms later become the setting for Oskar’s nighttime preparations and, after the pool deaths, a police investigation. The school shifts from a place of lessons and playground routines into a landscape marked by fear, secrecy, and absence.

Setting and everyday life

The school includes classrooms, corridors, a yard with playground equipment, and a pool. At night, a lone spotlight falls across the yard, where cracked Ping-Pong tables lie under slush; a few illuminated windows indicate evening classes. The ordinary details make the grounds feel familiar, but also leave the darker parts of the building and yard outside the light.

The school’s social life is shaped by children’s observation and rumor. A teacher hears news on the radio during recess and passes it on, so by lunchtime the pupils are discussing the Soviet submarine that has run aground. In the previous week, talk had centered on the Vällingby murderer: children claim to have seen or been attacked by him, and an older man crossing the school grounds is mistaken for the suspect until pupils recognize him as a local alcoholic. The grounds are therefore not just a backdrop to fear; they are where frightening news is repeated, misread, and temporarily contained by recognition.

Rumor and the submarine crisis

The submarine story gives the pupils a new subject for imagining danger. During lunch, Oskar asks Johan whether the Russians have a nuclear bomb and whether one could be on the submarine. Johan answers that missiles could be fired from different places, prompting Oskar to ask whether submarines could carry them. Their exchange turns a distant international crisis into a question about what might happen to the people and buildings around them. The school’s everyday conversation thus carries a larger uncertainty into the children’s immediate world.

Oskar’s nighttime return

On a later evening, Oskar enters the school through a side door left unlocked because classes are being held. He moves through the dark corridors to his homeroom and pauses to look at the desks, imagining the classroom as a place inhabited by ghosts. He sprays T-Rod onto Jonny’s and Tomas’s desks, but leaves Micke’s desk alone. The distinction makes the act selective rather than indiscriminate: Oskar directs his retaliation at two classmates while choosing not to include another.

Before leaving, Oskar sits at his own desk and gathers belongings into his bag, including his copy of Firestarter, a story he has written in an exercise book, and his favorite pen. He then makes a final circuit of the classroom, enjoying the quiet and the feeling of being there in peace. The visit combines preparation for retaliation with a brief claim to a space in which he is alone and unobserved. By night, the familiar classroom has become both a refuge and the setting for his planned attack.

Investigation and absence

On Friday the thirteenth, Gunnar Holmberg sits in the empty principal’s office trying to organize his notes after spending the day at the school. He has studied the crime scene and spoken with students, while technicians and a bloodstain analyst continue securing evidence by the pool. Two youths have been killed there, and a third boy, Oskar Eriksson, is missing.

Holmberg recognizes Oskar as the pupil who answered a question about heroin in class three weeks earlier. He remembers expecting the boy to come out to the police car, where he might have offered him a ride and tried to bolster his confidence, but Oskar never appeared. The school’s ordinary routines of teaching and adult attention are now set against a conspicuous absence: a pupil remembered from class is missing while the grounds are being treated as a crime scene.