Svea Life Guards Camp at Kungsängen connects military marksmanship to the police response at Aspsås: Sterner’s service there underlies his temporary appointment as a police marksman, and the camp becomes the place where Grens and Sundkvist go to question him. Its barracks and regiment routines give the encounter an institutional setting distinct from the prison siege that prompted it.

Setting and military connection

The camp is a base of the Svea Life Guards, with a regiment guardhouse, barrack square, and barracks. During Grens and Sundkvist’s visit, Sterner leads them through a door and along stone-floored corridors to a room in First Company. He identifies the company as one whose conscripts are preparing to become officers and remain in service the longest. The route past the regiment gate and through the barracks makes the camp a working military institution rather than merely a name in Sterner’s record.

Sterner’s temporary assignment

Sterner’s connection to the camp is central to the emergency arrangement following the prison crisis. The national police commissioner says that Sterner, a recently discharged instructor and military marksman who had served with the Svea Life Guards, has been hired as an assistant commissioner for six hours, initially supporting Aspsås police district. He is flown to Aspsås and is due to return to Kungsängen when the contract ends, exactly five hours and fifty-six minutes later; he will then apply for a newly vacant instructor-and-marksman position that has not yet been advertised. The brief appointment turns military expertise into an urgent police resource while leaving Sterner’s longer-term professional connection to the camp in place.

Grens and Sundkvist’s visit

After Sterner calls, Sundkvist tells Grens that he is heading to Kungsängen to meet the sniper. Grens and Sundkvist arrive at the camp only minutes apart, where Sterner is waiting by the regiment guardhouse. He is wearing the same white-and-gray camouflage as the previous day, creased from sleeping in it, though he appears rested. The contrast unsettles the two visitors: the man who fired has slept, while Grens, who made the decision to fire, and his closest colleague have not. Sterner signs them in and takes them across the deserted barrack square and into the buildings, moving quickly through corridors where conscripts are still in their underclothes before the day’s uniform. The visit places the aftermath of the shooting inside the military world that trained Sterner, while focusing attention on the different burdens carried by the shooter and the police officers who authorized the shot.