Well, that was seriously unpleasant. You had a feeling it was not going to end well from the very beginning, when a happy family (white mother, black father, two cute kids) were having a jolly breakfast in their gorgeous house overlooking a lake. It was all going swimmingly until Mum got ready to drive to work, when we saw her through the kitchen window being bundled into a car by two men in balaclavas. Yes, it’s an everyday morning in suburban Stockholm.
She spent the rest of the episode tied to a chair in what looked like a deserted underground car park. (At the risk of being over-literal, how did she go to the loo?) Blue Eyes went decidedly Reservoir Dogs at this point, as mad Mattias taunted her with a penknife. Really creepy. When it comes to playing psychopaths, Adam Lundgren is a natural.
The underground car park is the headquarters of nutty far-right (or far something) faction Veritas, who are plotting revolution despite having no more than half a dozen activists. The cult leader Gustav was on particularly fine form, lecturing the kidnap victim on the evils of capitalism (it turned out later that she was making a mint from running dodgy care homes), the evil of mixed-raced marriages and the global Jewish conspiracy. The Swedish police profilers already had Veritas down as a far-left group, and you can see why they are confused: Gustav is mainstream national socialist.
At the halfway point in the series, there is a sense that everything is spinning out of control. Sofia has fallen for Mattias and, worse, fallen for Gustav’s insane ideology. Her brother Simon follows her to what is, in effect, a Veritas initiation ceremony and almost gets his head blown off when he is discovered peeping through a window. Who is looking after little Love is never quite clear – an aunt perhaps. This is not a world in which all the ends are neatly tied up.
Elin and Max are circling round each other and end up having a bust-up at Max’s lakeside log cabin. Max protests his innocence, despite some peculiar diary entries discovered by Elin and a general air of untrustworthiness, and later it does indeed look as if we may have misjudged him. The slimy, ambitious Ludwig, who writes speeches for the PM, admits he leaked the mysterious Linda Wikman letter a year or so previously that got Wikman murdered and Elin sacked (this is one plot strand I am having trouble following – any clarification welcome). Max also says he told the PM’s head of strategy, Rebecka, that Elin was going to meet Sarah, so it’s possible that she arranged the murder (of Sarah, I mean, not Linda Wikman – the body count is rising fast).
Gustav is suspicious of Sofia’s reasons for joining Veritas, suggesting that grief at her mother’s murder (that’s Annika, not Sarah or Linda) and a desire for revenge are inadequate motives. So he decides to set her a little test. She will pull the trigger that dispatches the group’s kidnap victim. Not just that: she will do it live on air.
Now, I’m sorry, but this bit I did not believe. Veritas somehow managed to interrupt a broadcast and run the execution instead – there was no explanation of how they did this, just airy talk of “encryption”. Weeping woman in chair, five terrorists in balaclavas behind, plus Gustav’s pride and joy – his new red and black, swastikary flag. All very Isis.
The weeping woman, who we now discovered was called Pia, read out the charge sheet – residents of her homes neglected, too few employees, diapers rationed, money salted away in tax havens (very topical!) – and pleaded guilty. The PM, justice minister Gunnar, Elin, Rebecka and all the governing top brass, who had been meeting at a party event, had been summoned to a nearby TV screen to watch, and when Sofia pulled the trigger managed a terrific range of reactions: Elin, who is becoming accustomed to sudden death, still had the emotional strength to look horrified; Gunnar looked shocked; some of the others looked merely embarrassed to be witnesses to this inhuman act.
The transmission was cut – wouldn’t this have happened before Pia read out the charges? – and we were back at Veritas HQ, where they were rather bathetically clearing up after what had the feel of an unsuccessful village fete. There was silence (except for the very effective plinky-plonky electronic score that underpins much of the series); they took off their balaclavas, wrapped the body in a plastic sheet, and Gustav cleared away the little table at which Pia had been sitting.
Sofia, having crossed the Rubicon, looked distant, as if unable to comprehend what she had just done. She almost tripped as she tried to get off the plastic sheet that had been protecting the floor from the red-black blood oozing from Pia’s head and was now to be her shroud, then stood stock still, unable to avert her eyes from the body. Her fashionable bright-red trainers, sporty boots worn below tight jeans, caught your eye. She looked like a teenager, a lost child. Yet now she was a murderer, having carried out an execution in cold blood. Or, rather, in hot blood.
