Vällingby Pool

Vällingby Pool is a familiar public setting that becomes the site of Hakan’s attempt to find and isolate a victim. The pool’s routine spaces—the entrance, cashier, and changing room—shape the sequence: Hakan arrives with a plan, finds the building relatively quiet, and uses one of its rooms to conceal what he is doing. When the police learn that the killer is there, the pool also becomes the focus of an urgent response.

Setting and familiarity

Hakan approaches the pool deliberately rather than stumbling into it. He has decided to go there to find a victim, judging that it will probably be fairly deserted at that time. The plan strikes him as insane but possible, and he recognizes the danger without abandoning it. His decision gives the location a specific function: it is not simply where the encounter happens, but a place he selects because he expects the conditions to suit his purpose.

The building is familiar to him from the many hours he has spent there, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. At the entrance, the mild chlorine smell recalls that familiarity and feels comforting and home-like to him. He walks up to the cashier, passing from the outside world into a place associated with repeated visits. This contrast matters: the pool’s ordinary, recognizable routine does not prevent it from becoming a setting for deliberate harm. For Hakan, familiarity makes the building feel accessible; for the reader, it sharpens the gap between a public recreational space and the crime he intends to carry out there.

The evidence places the action within the building but does not establish a detailed layout beyond its main entrance, cashier, and changing room. Those few spaces are enough to trace Hakan’s movement from arrival to concealment. The pool is therefore defined less by a panoramic description than by the practical sequence of rooms through which he passes and the relative quiet he expects to find.

Hakan’s actions inside the building

Hakan encounters few people on his way through the building. As he anticipated, the pool is not busy at that hour. In the changing room, two men of about his own age are putting on their clothes. The presence of these other visitors briefly makes clear that the building is not wholly empty, but the passage does not suggest that they interrupt his plan. Instead, the limited number of people helps explain why Hakan believes he can act without attracting attention.

Later, Hakan drags a boy into the changing room and locks the door. The boy has made little noise, and the hiss from Hakan’s gas bottle is identified as the remaining sound that might draw notice. Hakan knows he must work quickly. The room, intended for ordinary use by pool visitors, has become a secluded space in which he can shut out the rest of the building. The account establishes the essential actions and the immediate risk of discovery without detailing the violence itself.

This movement from a relatively open public interior to a locked room gives the location its central dramatic contrast. The pool is busy enough to have a cashier and other visitors, yet quiet enough, in Hakan’s assessment, to offer an opportunity. The changing room offers temporary concealment, but not complete safety: the gas bottle’s hiss could still alert someone. The setting thus supports his plan while also preserving the possibility that it will be detected.

Police response and narrative significance

The pool’s connection to the case becomes explicit when a speaker says that the killer is at the Vällingby swimming pool. The speaker explains that the station does not have enough people available and begins to say that they must go there. This brief report shifts the pool from Hakan’s chosen setting to the destination of a police response. The shortage of personnel makes the response feel urgent, while the identification of the location confirms that the danger is no longer only a private risk within the changing room.

The pool’s significance comes from that convergence of ordinary use, Hakan’s familiarity, and official recognition of the threat. He treats the building as a place whose quiet and routines he can exploit; the later report names it as the site where the killer is present. The evidence does not describe the eventual police arrival or establish what happens to Hakan at the pool, so its account ends with the response being set in motion rather than with a resolution. Within those limits, Vällingby Pool marks a decisive change in the setting’s meaning: a familiar public place becomes a concealed crime scene and then a point of urgent attention.