Gunnar Holmberg

Gunnar Holmberg is a police commissioner from Vällingby whose work brings him into Blackeberg’s classrooms and, later, into the investigation surrounding Oskar Eriksson’s disappearance. He is presented as both a practitioner of ordinary police procedure and a man who believes young people can still be reached. That faith shapes his school visits, gives Oskar’s small classroom encounter lasting significance, and makes the final uncertainty over the pool evidence especially difficult for him to contain.

Identity and Public Role

On 21 October 1981, Holmberg visits a class to speak about drugs. He holds up a small plastic bag of white powder and asks the pupils what it might contain. The material cannot be identified from sight alone, but the lesson’s subject leads the class to infer that it is a drug. Their reluctance to answer reflects the social risk of appearing familiar with drugs, even as Holmberg encourages them to engage with the question. He also jokes with the teacher about what pupils learn in Home Economics; the class laughs, and some of the boys have been allowed to handle his unloaded gun before the lesson. His manner makes the police visit less forbidding, without removing the authority represented by the uniform and weapon.

The scene establishes a particular kind of public presence: Holmberg is not confined to the police station or crime scene. He makes frequent visits to schools and has long conversations with young people who have made bad choices. His investment is not merely procedural. He tries to support the belief that young people possess basic goodness, a conviction for which, the narrative notes, he has sometimes been teased.

Oskar and the Classroom Encounter

Oskar is in the drug lesson and knows the answer to Holmberg’s question. He feels an urgent wish to speak, partly because he wants the policeman to look at him and confirm that he is right; despite recognizing that this might be foolish, he raises his hand. Holmberg’s visit thus becomes a brief moment in which Oskar hopes to be noticed for knowledge rather than treated as an outsider. The episode is small, but it later gives Holmberg a specific memory by which to recognize the missing boy.

When Oskar reads newspaper coverage of a murder, he sees a photograph of the policeman who came to his school and spoke about drugs. The article says that forensic experts from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science have been called to secure evidence and that further comment must wait. Oskar studies the report and the school-yearbook photograph of the murdered boy, whom he has never seen before. He calculates that the boy had been on his way to handball practice at the Vällingby gym, and that the likely time of the murder matches a period he cannot stop turning over in his mind. Holmberg is not shown sharing Oskar’s suspicion at this point; instead, the juxtaposition establishes how the police image from the classroom becomes entangled with Oskar’s private fear.

Police Work and Regard for Young People

Holmberg’s investigative work is shown through attention to details and restraint. At a house where a fire is burning, he drags his feet through the snow to avoid leaving additional footprints that might complicate the forensic technicians’ work. He looks back at the tracks leading away from the house and sees that they were made by small shoes: the spacing suggests someone ran quickly. The contrast between careful scene preservation and the child-sized tracks makes the evidence personally disturbing to a man whose professional life includes trying to understand young people rather than simply condemn them.

The snow also frames a quieter moment in which Holmberg points out a regular alcoholic sitting motionless on a bench in Vällingby plaza. Snow is covering the cobblestones and accumulating around the man; Holmberg says they will need to check on him if he does not move soon. He then asks how his companion is doing and receives a subdued answer. The exchange places practical concern for a vulnerable stranger beside Holmberg’s police duties. His attention moves between a potentially urgent public situation and the person standing with him, without turning either into a spectacle.

The Pool Investigation and Its Limits

On Friday, 13 November, Holmberg sits alone in the empty principal’s office at Blackeberg School, trying to put his notes in order after spending the day examining the crime scene and talking with students. Technicians from downtown and a bloodstain analyst from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science are still securing evidence at the pool. Two youths were killed there the previous night, and a third boy has disappeared. In speaking with the class teacher, Holmberg recognizes that the missing boy, Oskar Eriksson, is the pupil who raised his hand during the drug lesson three weeks earlier.

That recognition makes the disappearance more than an entry in his notes. Holmberg remembers thinking that Oskar might be the first boy to come out to the police car. He had imagined taking him for a ride and, if he could, helping to strengthen the boy’s self-confidence. Oskar never came out. Now he is missing, and the hopeful possibility Holmberg once attached to the classroom encounter has become a regretful counterfactual: a chance to offer encouragement that did not take place.

The students’ accounts of the pool are broadly consistent, and the word angel appears repeatedly. They say that Oskar was rescued by an angel, the same figure they say killed Jonny Forsberg and Jimmy. Holmberg’s notes put these extraordinary claims alongside the boys’ testimony rather than immediately resolving them. Two psychologists attend the questioning because some of the boys appear to speak too lightly about what they witnessed, as if it were a film rather than something real. That manner unsettles the adults, but it does not by itself establish what happened.

Evidence, Explanation, and Narrative Significance

The bloodstain analyst’s findings complicate any easy dismissal of the witnesses. The blood’s course and its traces on the ceiling and beams create an impression of movement through the air. Holmberg tries to explain this evidence away, and the narrative leaves that effort visible rather than supplying him with a settled account. The gym teacher is in intensive care with a serious concussion and cannot yet be questioned, so the investigation has no immediate prospect of resolving the discrepancy through his testimony.

Holmberg’s role is therefore defined by a tension between humane expectation and institutional explanation. He seeks evidence carefully, remembers individual pupils, and approaches young people as more than suspects or sources of testimony. At the same time, the pool evidence and the boys’ repeated account exceed the ordinary framework through which he wants to understand them. His attempt to explain the traces away is not proof of indifference; it registers the pressure of holding an investigation together when witness accounts and physical evidence point toward something the police cannot comfortably name. The remembered drug lesson links that crisis back to Oskar’s wish to be seen, while Holmberg’s recollection of the boy makes the unresolved disappearance personal without giving him knowledge of where Oskar has gone.