Friday the 13th (13 November 1981)

Friday the 13th (13 November 1981) is the date of the epilogue, placing the novel’s closing perspective on the morning after the violence at Blackeberg School. The date is announced as Friday the thirteenth, giving the aftermath a stark calendar marker while the characters’ immediate crisis gives way to police investigation and uncertainty.

The Epilogue’s Date and Setting

On Friday, Gunnar Holmberg sits in the empty principal’s office at Blackeberg School, trying to organize his notes. He has spent the day examining the crime scene and speaking with students. Two technicians and a bloodstain analyst from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science remain at the pool, securing evidence. The institutional work of recording and interpreting what happened contrasts with the absence of the boy at the center of the investigation.

The Previous Night’s Aftermath

Holmberg’s review establishes that two youths were killed at the school the previous night and that a third, Oskar Eriksson, has disappeared. He has also spoken with Marie-Louise, the class teacher, and recognizes Oskar as a student who had answered one of his questions about heroin three weeks earlier. The epilogue thus links the missing boy to an earlier, ordinary encounter at school, making his disappearance concrete within the police investigation rather than resolving it.

Holmberg’s Recollection and the Unresolved Ending

Holmberg remembers Oskar as a boy he had expected to approach the police car. He had imagined taking him for a ride and perhaps encouraging his confidence, but Oskar never appeared. This personal recollection complicates the official account: Holmberg recalls not only a missing person connected to a crime scene, but a student he had noticed before. The date closes the narrative in the aftermath of the pool events, with the deaths under investigation and Oskar’s whereabouts still unknown.