‘Facing our daughter's KILLER'

When Swedish journalist Kim Wall boarded a submarine while on assignment, her parents could never have imagined the horror that would unfold. Now, Ingrid and Joachim Wall are sharing their daughter’s life and tragedy in a new book

- Ingrid and Joachim Wall

FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 2017

The quiet of our bedroom is pierced by a ringing phone. The red numbers projected on the ceiling show 5:31 am. I answer the phone while Jocke, lying next to me in bed, remains asleep. The voice on the other end of the line belongs to Ole, [our daughter] Kim’s partner. He sounds shaken, his voice is forced. “Kim has disappeared from a submarine near Copenhagen.” If there hadn’t been such obvious worry in his voice, I would have thought he was kidding. Disappeared? From a submarine? Near Copenhagen?

This is how the nightmare began — the nightmare we would never awaken from. Our daughter left to do an interview for a story — a completely ordinary workday for a freelance journalist. But Kim never came home from work. Instead of writing headlines, she became one.

I wake Jocke. We ask Ole if we can call him back. Soon we’re completely awake and, ever so slowly, a completely improbable picture takes shape. Our daughter left yesterday evening to do a story about Peter Madsen, a man well known in Denmark who builds submarines and wants to launch himself into space. Kim was supposed to do the interview on board the UC3 Nautilus, which the man had designed and cobbled together himself. The underwater craft was a well-known silhouette in Copenhagen.