Karlstad remains offstage, but its name connects two late pieces of information: a newspaper report about Hakan Bengtsson’s whereabouts and a train journey from Stockholm City. The novel gives no description of the city; instead, it makes Karlstad matter as a reported location and a possible destination, drawing the search for the missing man into the story’s final movement away from Blackeberg.

A City Named in the Search

At a kiosk, Oskar sees a newspaper whose front page carries a photograph of the older man who had lived with Eli. The paper devotes several pages to the search in Judarn Forest and to the so-called Ritual Killer. In the report, Karlstad appears beside the statement that the man’s whereabouts have been unknown for eight months and an appeal for the public’s help. The clipped information makes the city part of the case’s geography, but does not establish exactly what connection Hakan has to it.

The report changes the force of the photograph for Oskar. A man associated with Eli is not merely part of a frightening past: the authorities are looking for him, and the appeal suggests that someone may know where he has been. Oskar’s anxiety sharpens as he considers that another person might recognize Hakan or know where he lived. Karlstad thus enters the narrative through uncertainty—one clue among the details that make the search feel capable of reaching beyond the immediate neighborhood.

The Railway Route

Near the novel’s close, conductor Stefan Larsson checks a boy’s ticket aboard a train on the Stockholm City–Karlstad line. He points to an old-fashioned trunk on the luggage rack and asks whether someone will meet the boy at the other end. The scene identifies the route and its destination without describing Karlstad or stating what awaits there.

Narrative Significance

Karlstad’s two brief appearances give it a quiet structural role. In the newspaper, it belongs to the outward spread of a police search; on the railway, it is the named endpoint of a journey. The first mention raises the possibility that Hakan’s history extends beyond the immediate setting, while the last leaves the boy’s destination—and the life beyond the train—unexplained. The city is significant not for local detail the novel supplies, but for the unresolved movement its name permits: a place on the map where the search may lead, and where the departing boy may arrive.