09. Before the Frost
Retired cartographer Birgitta Medberg is exploring an old pilgrimage route when a seemingly surreal apparition catches her attention: burning swans flying over a forest lake. This is her last observation, as the person who caused the apparition kills the witness and buries her body in the forest. Fingerprints on a Bible that he added to her grave lead the police on the trail of religious fanatic Jannek Langas, who has escaped from a locked psychiatric ward. In a school that has removed the biblical story of creation from the curriculum, he pours petrol over himself shortly afterwards in order to ritually execute himself.
Similar suicides follow, in each of which the suicides leave a video message: they plead guilty to having been involved in stem cell research or having had a homosexual relationship. While Wallander ponders this case, he receives a visit from his daughter Linda, who is worried about her missing friend Anna Westin. She is also in contact with Langas' fundamentalist sect. Wallander finds out that Anna was raped in her youth and had an abortion as a result: will she also have an abortion because of this "mortal sin"?
Picture: ARD Degeto/Yellow Bird/Left Bank Pictures/Steffan Hill