01. Sidetracked
Wallander is shocked: a completely terrified young woman hiding in a rape field pours petrol over herself in front of him and sets herself alight. What could have motivated the 15-year-old girl to kill herself in such a gruesome way? The detective is still pondering this nagging question when he is asked to solve the next case. Gustav Wetterstedt, former Minister of Justice, is beaten to death and scalped in front of his beach villa. Shortly afterwards, wealthy art dealer Arne Carlman is murdered in the same way, giving rise to the suspicion that this is a serial offender. Against his will, Wallander is forced to cooperate with a profiler. The ambitious, young Mats Ekholm explains to the detective that he has to look for a perpetrator who behaves completely inconspicuously in everyday life.
Wallander is just as unenthusiastic about this helpful advice as he is about the prospect of paying a birthday visit to his grumpy father Povel, with whom he does not have a good relationship. The first hot lead comes from a tip-off from boozy ex-reporter Lars Magnusson: as an investigative journalist, he tried to prove that Wetterstedt and Carlman were involved in an affair with underage prostitutes. But the honorable gentlemen were covered up by the now retired deputy police chief Hugo Sandin.
Picture: ARD Degeto/Yellow Bird/Left Bank Pictures/Steffan Hill