Lars Mikkelsen

Lars Mikkelsen is a policeman encountered both through Jeanette Kihlberg’s investigation of Victoria Bergman’s case and through Victoria’s earlier account of speaking with him. The evidence gives him little personal history, but establishes the substance of his professional outlook: he condemns the failure to secure justice for victims and challenges attitudes that treat sexual violence as a matter of male property or blame the victim. For Victoria, who distrusts the police, his apparent sincerity makes this encounter notably different from what she expects of an officer.

Identity and Introduction

Mikkelsen is identified as a policeman whom Victoria needs to speak to. The account supplies no family history, private life, or broader career chronology; what defines him here is his role in receiving Victoria’s account and his later relevance to Jeanette’s questions about the case. His characterization is consequently built from brief interactions rather than from an independent narrative about his life.

One of those interactions begins at a coffee machine, where Jeanette finds him holding two cups and smiling. The ordinary, informal setting contrasts with the serious case they discuss. Jeanette asks whether he handled Victoria’s case, then asks what Victoria was like to talk to. These questions establish Mikkelsen as a source for Jeanette’s investigation, while making Victoria’s manner and experience part of the inquiry rather than leaving the case as a collection of records. The scene does not establish a personal relationship between Jeanette and Mikkelsen; it shows Jeanette approaching him for information relevant to her work.

Victoria’s Conversation with Him

In an earlier strand of the story, Victoria meets Mikkelsen at four o’clock on the same day described in the narrative. Their first conversation takes place in his office. She tells him what she has already told Sofia Zetterlund, placing Mikkelsen within the chain of people to whom she has disclosed her experience. The parallel is significant: the account links a police conversation with a therapeutic one without claiming that the two settings are interchangeable.

Mikkelsen’s response makes the subject of the conversation explicit. He says that this kind of crime is especially disgusting and that too few victims receive justice while too few offenders are imprisoned. Victoria feels that his comment is directed at her. The moment therefore carries two meanings at once: his words state a public position about the treatment of victims, while her reaction makes the issue personal. The narrative does not explain exactly what she says in the office, and his remark cannot be treated as proof of the outcome of any case. What it does show is that he recognizes the injustice surrounding such crimes and speaks about it directly.

Professional Outlook

Mikkelsen explains rape law through the history of women being treated as property and of men’s rights being placed at the center of legal protection. He describes that older framework as persisting in contemporary attitudes: disbelief and victim-blaming can recast a woman’s refusal, clothing, or motive as grounds to excuse an offender. His point is not confined to the conduct of one individual. It identifies a social logic that shifts scrutiny away from the perpetrator and onto the person harmed.

That explanation gives substance to his earlier insistence that victims are too often denied justice. In his account, the problem is both legal and cultural: laws developed within a system that subordinated women, and remnants of that system survive in judgments about how victims should have behaved. The evidence presents him as passionate about his work, but does not show what specific investigative steps he takes, what decisions he makes in Victoria’s case, or whether his analysis changes its outcome. His importance here lies in articulating a standard of accountability, not in a documented resolution.

Relationships and Narrative Role

Victoria’s attitude toward Mikkelsen is marked by contrast. She hates cops, yet considers him genuine and feels that he does not behave like a cop. That impression is carefully limited to her response: it does not erase her distrust of the police as an institution or establish that she has come to trust him without reservation. Instead, the encounter makes room for an individual officer to appear different from the category to which Victoria would ordinarily assign him. Her sense that his criticism is aimed at her further complicates the exchange; his words may express solidarity with victims while also touching a matter she experiences as close to herself.

Jeanette’s later questions give Mikkelsen a second narrative function. She seeks to learn whether he handled Victoria’s case and what Victoria was like in conversation, using his connection to the case to orient her own inquiry. The two strands thus present him from distinct angles: to Victoria, he is the policeman she must talk to and an unexpectedly sincere listener; to Jeanette, he is a potential source of knowledge about Victoria. The text offers no fuller account of his private motives or subsequent actions. Within these limits, Mikkelsen stands at the boundary between institutional procedure and personal testimony, and his direct condemnation of victim-blaming offers a counterpoint to the distrust that surrounds that boundary.