In a matter of days, beck's team learns about several murders on women whose eyes were cut out posthumously at places at considerable distances. They were all 42, otherwise share only having grown up in the same class of the only private school in small town Östhammar. Martin Beck and Lena Klingström, who was recently dumped, learn there another classmate was buried a few months before, after a suspicious death, but the cut-out eyes had been ascribed to fish nibbling at the water-dumped corpse. While Gunvald Larsson and Beck contact the last female class survivors, Yvonne Svensson has the horn taken away by the mobile killer, who removes her eyes. The press publishes the story and the name of last survivor Karin Lofjärd, whom Beck offers Lena Klingström as protection, which they soon get reason to regret.
—KGF Vissers