May 10

May 10 is identified as the date of a recorded meeting that becomes a point of reference in the novel’s exposure of hidden official dealings. Its significance rests on a precise timestamp and the later efforts to connect institutional instructions, withheld information, and the treatment of Piet Hoffmann; the available account does not establish that every related prison incident occurred on that date.

The Timestamp and Recording

The date is stated while a meeting recording is being reviewed: the speaker identifies the room and table, gives the time as 15:49 on May 10, and then advances the playback by 28 minutes and 24 seconds. The moment is therefore presented not simply as a calendar entry but as an evidentiary marker within a recording. The jump forward makes the playback selective: the account establishes when and where the recording began, but does not disclose what was said during the skipped interval.

The review takes place with Göransson present; he has removed his jacket, revealing dark stains near the armholes of his light blue shirt. That detail belongs to the later playback scene, not to the meeting on May 10 itself. The distinction matters: the date anchors a past record, while the circumstances of its examination give that record weight in the present.

The Institutional Context

Elsewhere in the prison storyline, Lennart Oscarsson recalls receiving a firm instruction from the general director: Ewert Grens, a detective superintendent from the city police, must not be allowed to question Piet Hoffmann in G2, either that day or the next. Oscarsson does not ask why. Only later, while washing up after supper, does he recognize the source of his anger: he has been given a lie. This episode establishes the kind of undisclosed pressure surrounding access to Hoffmann, although the evidence does not date Oscarsson’s instruction to May 10.

The significance of May 10 thus lies partly in how the recorded meeting sits beside later scenes of obstruction and belated recognition. The novel supplies a timestamp that can be replayed and scrutinized, while the prison scenes show decisions reaching their targets through instructions whose reasons are withheld. The date helps organize the investigation of that concealment without, by itself, proving which specific order was made during the recorded meeting.

Retrospective Significance

During the siege at Aspsås, Ewert Grens calls the situation a connected lie and directs Mariana Hermansson to obtain an answer from the prison chief warden. His conclusion belongs to the later crisis, not to the May 10 meeting; it marks the point at which separate irregularities are treated as parts of a larger pattern. Read against that later suspicion, the meeting’s exact date and playback position become tools for reconstructing what officials knew and when, even though the excerpted recording leaves a substantial interval unheard.