“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore is a Duke Ellington record from Harry Hole’s father’s collection. Played at home after Harry has sat beside his ailing father, it marks the transition from a vigil at the bedside to an evening of private decisions—and, ultimately, to Harry’s solitary departure into a new investigation.

The Record and Its Family Context

Harry spends an hour watching his father breathe before getting up and leaving. Only after he reaches home does he switch on his phone and put on one of his father’s old Duke Ellington records, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. The music enters a scene shaped by physical proximity followed by separation: Harry has just been beside his father, but is now alone with the phone, a lighter, and a brown lump he unpacks.

The record is not merely a reference to Duke Ellington; its provenance matters. It belongs to Harry’s father, making the music part of the room’s inherited family world. The title’s suggestion of withdrawal and absence resonates with the circumstances, though the scene does not explain the song’s lyrics or state that Harry chooses it for that meaning.

Music Beneath a Choice

As the record plays, Harry declines to listen to a voice message from Gunnar Hagen. He thinks he already knows what it contains: Mikael Bellman has again pressured Hagen, and the investigators are to stay away from the murder case. Harry also anticipates the demand that he return to ordinary police duty if he wants to remain in the force—a prospect he dismisses. The music continues through this moment of refusal, while the actual message remains unheard.

Instead, Harry opens an unfamiliar text. Its sender claims that Elias Skog spoke before he was glued into a bathtub, information that Harry recognizes as not yet public, and knowledge of his secret phone number. Harry calls the sender. After the call, the narration returns to him sitting and listening to Duke Ellington; he has turned the music down and is holding the phone. The lowered volume gives the conversation prominence without removing the record from the scene.

A Prelude to Going Alone

Harry searches his call history for Kaja Solness’s number, then hesitates and puts the phone down. He understands that involving others could draw them into danger, and frames his alternatives starkly: the sensible course would be to call Bellman; the foolish one would be to proceed alone. He nevertheless concludes that he has no choice, puts the lighter away, wraps the brown lump in foil, returns it to the bar cabinet, sets his alarm for six, and goes to bed.

The record therefore accompanies a hinge in Harry’s night rather than an isolated musical interlude. It begins after he leaves his father’s bedside and remains in the background as he receives a dangerous lead, weighs whether to enlist help, and commits himself to acting alone. His thought that he is a prisoner of his own patterns gives that decision a further edge: the evening’s journey begins not as a clean break from his past, but as another turn in a behavior he recognizes and cannot seem to escape.