Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist’s partnership in the murder investigation

Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist’s partnership in the murder investigation is defined by a quiet working intimacy as much as by shared police work. Sundkvist can wait beside Grens without demanding an explanation; when the case requires action, he supplies witness findings, goes with Grens to the forensic department, and travels with him to Poland. Their collaboration gives the investigation its shared ground, even as its dead ends later leave Grens alone with the file.

A Familiar Working Rhythm

When Sundkvist enters Grens’s office, Grens is lying on the floor. Sundkvist does not ask why or interrupt him with questions: he sits on the corduroy sofa and waits, as he has done before. Grens says the floor is better because the sofa is becoming too soft. He has slept there for a second night; his stiff leg is not aching, and he has grown accustomed to traffic accelerating up the steep slope outside. These details establish the setting of their exchange without turning it into a formal briefing. Sundkvist’s silence allows Grens to set the pace, and Grens moves from the private explanation to the investigation by saying he wants to report on Västmannagatan.

That transition captures the partnership’s understated method. Sundkvist asks whether anything is new, and Grens answers that there is not much. The case has yielded little, but the two can speak in shorthand: Sundkvist listens, prompts him to continue, and receives the report without ceremony. The passage presents their familiarity not as a declared bond but as a repeated practice of being together at work, including the moments when one partner has nothing decisive to offer.

Witness Work and the Forensic Lead

Sundkvist describes the canvass of the building where the Västmannagatan 79 murder occurred. He has interviewed people across its fifteen flats; three have observations that might matter. One resident, a Finnish man on the ground floor, has a particularly useful view because everyone entering or leaving passes his door. Through the peephole, he saw two unfamiliar men for only a few seconds: pale, shaved heads, dark clothing, apparently in their forties. He also reported hearing a Slavic language. The account is provisional, but Sundkvist brings the details to Grens as a possible lead rather than presenting them as a solution. Grens confirms that he is listening and lets him carry on.

The pair’s cooperation becomes more direct when Nils Krantz summons them to the forensics department. Grens and Sundkvist leave the office together, wait for the slow elevator, and follow Krantz into a narrow room. Krantz explains that he has extended the search to stairwells between numbers seventy and ninety. In a paper-recycling container in the trash room at Västmannagatan 73, investigators found a blood-marked piece of gray-and-white checked fabric, possibly a shirt or jacket. The clue enlarges the search beyond the murder building itself. Grens leans in to inspect it; Sundkvist is beside him as the investigation’s physical evidence takes shape.

Shared Investigation in Poland

The partnership also extends beyond witness interviews and local searches. Grens later recalls travelling to Poland with Sundkvist to follow up yellow stains found on the same item of clothing. Their work led them to the remains of an amphetamine factory in Siedlce. For several days they worked closely with members of a special police force assigned to organized crime. The scale of the criminal environment was daunting: the account describes hundreds of criminal groups, dozens with international connections, frequent armed confrontations involving police, and enormous annual revenues from synthetic-drug production.

Grens and Sundkvist sat in a car and watched a raid on the factory, which ended in a shoot-out and the death of a young Polish police officer. Six people found in basement rooms refused to speak to either the Polish or Swedish officers. Their silence, Grens understands, is maintained by the danger of informing. The episode places the partners together as observers and investigators, but also shows the limits of what their presence can accomplish: the raid yields no willing testimony, and the wider criminal network remains difficult to penetrate.

The Case and the Partnership’s Limits

The investigation had established several important facts: the victim was identified as an informant for the Danish police; investigators found traces connected to drug couriers and amphetamines; and there had been at least one other Swedish-speaking person in the flat when the murder occurred. They had also identified the Polish criminal organization Wojtek, believed to have its head office in Warsaw. Yet these discoveries did not amount to a solution. Grens’s later account describes the inquiry as stalled, with a check of blood traces on the recovered clothing leading to no register match and the Polish lead ending at an impasse.

In that later scene, Grens reads the thin case file alone, eating dry bread and drinking coffee in the deserted Homicide corridor. The contrast with the earlier scenes is telling: the investigation that once moved through reports, elevator rides, and a joint trip now persists in Grens’s solitary effort to push past a wall. This does not establish a break between the partners; rather, it marks the case’s failure to reward their combined work with a clear answer. Sundkvist’s contribution remains concrete in the witness canvass and in the shared Polish inquiry, while Grens carries the unresolved file forward. Their partnership is therefore rendered through both cooperation and its limits: they can gather evidence and pursue it together, but cannot make a resistant investigation yield its conclusion.