Pirjo’s pursuit and murder of Wanda Phinn grows out of Pirjo’s determination to prevent Wanda from reaching Atu and voicing her suspicions. What begins as an attack staged to look like a fall fails almost immediately; Pirjo then pursues Wanda and kills her, before returning to the Nature Absorption Academy to conceal the crime and protect her position.

Causes and First Attempt

On the deserted road, Pirjo takes Wanda’s calm manner as the opening she needs. She talks about Öland’s history of hunger, blaming the inhabitants’ failure to work together in a fertile place, while pulling Wanda’s arm and driving her hip against Wanda’s lower back. The attack is meant to send Wanda down the slope among vegetation, stumps, and rocks, where a fatal fall might appear accidental; Pirjo also has a spade as a backup. But Wanda, losing her balance, instinctively grabs Pirjo around the waist. They tumble down together and come to rest entangled on the slope before it steepens. Wanda catches hold of branches and roots, then challenges Pirjo over whether she is trying to kill her. The attempt has not only failed; it has made Wanda alert to the danger. Pirjo recognizes that Wanda may now warn Atu, the person she most needs to keep uninformed.

The Pursuit and Killing

Later, Wanda waved to Pirjo, who did not wave back. Wanda briefly mistook Pirjo’s silence for helpless uncertainty, feeling a moment of compassion for her. When they were about twenty meters apart, however, Wanda saw Pirjo’s face and understood that she knew exactly what to do. Wanda’s pulse raced as she realized Pirjo meant to kill her, and she ran.

The ground quickly turned swampy, but Wanda kept moving as the scooter closed in. She jumped aside at the last moment, and Pirjo roared past; Wanda saw frustration in her expression, but also a cold determination that nothing would stop her. Pirjo spun the scooter around, its rear wheel throwing up mud and earth. Wanda slipped out of her shoes and ran barefoot, while Pirjo assumed the scooter would let her catch up easily.

As the scooter reached her again, Wanda turned and jumped aside for a second time. Pirjo swung a compact spade at her face. That was the last thing Wanda saw.

Concealment and Aftermath

After the blow, Pirjo returned to the Academy’s Stable of Senses and methodically washed her boots, then hosed mud from her trouser legs, the spade, and the scooter. Around her, the stable served a gentler institutional purpose: new disciples went there to stroke the ponies and breathe in the straw and horse-dung smells when they needed to unburden themselves. At that hour, however, the others were meditating in their rooms, leaving Pirjo alone to clean up. The contrast between the stable’s language of release and the practical work of hiding a killing makes the Academy’s spiritual setting part of the crime’s concealment, not an interruption of it.

Pirjo told herself to stop, think, and treat the murder as insignificant in the larger scheme. Only an hour earlier, she had killed someone for the third time in her life; her forearms were bright red and her heart was still pounding. She rationalized the killing as necessary to preserve her standing beside Atu: in her account, Wanda had forced her way into Pirjo’s world despite warnings, and the high priestess had acted to stop her. Pirjo acknowledged that each killing disturbed her inner peace, but folded even that cost into the Academy’s spiritual vocabulary. Her immediate practical fear was that Atu might discover what she had done.

Replaying the scene in her mind, Pirjo concluded that the body would not be found soon, if ever. She had left it naked in a remote part of Stora Alvaret. Beneath the deepest puddles, the ground had been soft enough for her to dig a grave deep enough not to be exposed by a downpour. She had erased tracks that might lead a botanist or tourist away from the beaten path and toward the grave, and believed no one had seen her there or watched her drive away. Each completed precaution offered a check against discovery, though she knew the Academy’s security cameras could record her absence and her movements after she returned.

The evidence she still had to dispose of was divided into two groups. Wanda’s skirt, blouse, underwear, two-tone belt, scarf, stilettos, coat, and stockings were waiting in a removal box in the storage loft, among clothes discarded by Academy members; Pirjo intended to burn them when she had a better opportunity. Wanda’s handbag and its contents demanded more immediate attention: makeup, condoms, a cell phone, keys—including the key to her luggage box at the station—several hundred euros, travel documents, and her passport. The luggage-box key and identity papers connected the concealed body to a life beyond the Academy, making the remaining belongings a continuing risk.

Pirjo also considered how readily Wanda might disappear without prompting a search. Wanda had written in her application that she had emigrated from Jamaica, left her job, and rented a room on London’s outskirts, a life she wanted to leave behind. She had cancelled her subscriptions, including the Internet, and sold her computer, radio, television, furniture, and most of her clothes. She hoped to complete the introductory course and become a permanent resident at the Academy. Those details explain both why Wanda had come within Pirjo’s reach and why Pirjo could imagine that her absence might go unnoticed: Wanda had already severed many of the ordinary ties that might have brought someone looking for her.

Narrative Significance

The episode turns concealment into a second stage of the crime. Pirjo’s first plan depends on making Wanda’s death resemble an accident, but Wanda’s grasp at her waist converts that staged fall into a warning and forces Pirjo into pursuit. Afterward, Pirjo’s orderly inventory of precautions cannot restore control: the cameras she helped install may preserve a record of her absence, while Wanda’s belongings remain unresolved evidence. The sequence also exposes the gap between the Academy’s language of inner balance and Pirjo’s conduct. She describes killing as necessary to preserve her place beside Atu, then tries to manage its consequences through cleaning, burial, and a checklist; the practical details reveal how completely spiritual justification has become entangled with self-protection.