Oleg

Oleg, Rakel’s son, matters to the story less through direct action than through the life Harry Hole can no longer share with him. A boy remembered in a red skating shirt and in photographs carried close to Harry’s body, Oleg becomes the focus of a separation that persists long after Rakel and he leave Norway. The distance is real, the future uncertain, and Harry’s hope of remaining important to Oleg survives chiefly in small signs: a remembered childhood form of address, a reunion Harry postpones, and a letter he has not yet decided to open.

Identity and Background

Oleg is Rakel’s son and a child still young enough, Harry hopes, to put painful events behind him. The precise circumstances of his family life before the novel’s present are not fully recounted here. What is established is that Rakel and Oleg were caught up in the events surrounding the Snowman case, and that after the case ended they left Norway immediately. Their destination is kept from Harry and from the reader; the uncertainty is part of his loss, not merely a gap in practical information.

Harry’s memories preserve Oleg through particular images rather than a continuous account of his daily life. One photograph shows him at speed-skating practice at Valle Hovin the previous winter. He is still a slight boy, but Harry imagines that continued training will soon fill out the red jersey Harry gave him. The image contains both a concrete memory and an interrupted future: Harry can picture the boy growing, yet cannot see whether the jersey fits him now or know what his life has become.

Separation and Harry’s Memories

The separation follows a devastating case. Gunnar Hagen tells Kaja Solness that Rakel and Oleg had fallen into the killer’s hands and that they left the country as soon as the investigation concluded. Harry responds by putting his resignation on Hagen’s desk and walking away. The account connects the family’s departure with Harry’s own abrupt break from the work and life he had occupied; it does not suggest that Oleg chose the separation or explain what he was told about it.

Afterward, Harry’s thoughts return to questions that distance prevents him from answering. He wonders whether Rakel has managed to make a new home where they are, whether she and Oleg feel safer than they did in Oslo, and whether other people have entered their lives. Most painfully, he wonders whether Oleg still calls him Papa when tired or distracted. That remembered name expresses an intimacy Harry cannot verify. It is not evidence of what Oleg presently feels; it is the fragile measure Harry uses for a relationship now lived largely in imagination.

The photographs become a small, physical form of attachment. At three in the morning, unable to sleep, Harry studies pictures of Rakel and Oleg in his apartment. Later, before going out with Øystein Eikeland, he hesitates by the cupboard beneath the sink, then takes both photographs and puts them in his inside pocket. His action is quiet but deliberate: rather than leave the images behind with the temptation concealed in the cupboard, he carries them with him. Oleg is thus present in Harry’s movements even when the boy himself is absent.

Uncertain Encounters and Shared History

At Kigali airport, Harry remembers seeing two figures in the distance at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport during a rushed connection. The woman and the boy seem familiar, but they were backlit and too far away for him to identify. By the time he boards, he has convinced himself that the woman cannot have been Rakel and that the boy beside her was definitely not Oleg, reasoning that Oleg could not have grown so much. The scene does not confirm a reunion or even establish that Harry saw them. Its importance lies in the momentary possibility: separation has made a glimpse at an airport enough to awaken recognition, doubt, and self-correction.

Oleg’s connection to Harry is also part of the way Harry understands what makes a person better. While driving with Kaja Solness, Harry says that Rakel and Oleg made him a better person. He then tells Kaja that he and Rakel had, in a sense, already ended their relationship before the Snowman case began. The exchange resists a simple account of the family as an intact couple: Harry acknowledges the relationship’s prior fracture while still naming Rakel and Oleg as people who changed him. He has heard nothing from them and says they must try to leave the past behind and help Oleg forget. Kaja cautions that children cannot always do so.

In a hospital conversation with Katrine Bratt, Harry gives a concise account of what has happened in his life: Rakel and Oleg have moved to an unknown place abroad, he has been to Hong Kong, his father is ill, and he has taken on a case. His request that Katrine keep this information private makes the family’s displacement part of a guarded personal history. Oleg is not present, but Harry’s account places the boy among the events that define his recent life.

Olav Hole’s Funeral and a Deferred Meeting

Oleg’s relationship with Olav Hole gives the family separation another dimension. At Olav’s funeral, Rakel tells Harry that she and Oleg came because of Olav: the reserved old man and the boy had somehow found one another, an attachment she regards as unusual and meaningful. Harry later asks whether Oleg is there. Rakel says he is upstairs and asks whether Harry wants to see him. Harry declines, saying his taxi is waiting. The meeting is possible and close at hand, but he does not take it then.

Rakel explains that they left the church before approaching Harry because they did not want to intrude while he had other things to think about. She also says that Oleg speaks about Harry a great deal and that Harry means more to the boy than he may realize; she adds that Harry matters to her, perhaps, too. These are Rakel’s reports, not Oleg speaking for himself, but they complicate Harry’s fear that distance has erased his place in the boy’s life. Oleg’s bond with Olav, meanwhile, is evidence of a connection that existed beyond Harry and Rakel and that brings the family back together, however briefly, at the funeral.

The Letter and the Unresolved Bond

After the funeral, Harry and Rakel speak by telephone. Rakel says she cannot meet him and calls herself perhaps a bad person; Harry answers that they can try to do better next time. He asks her to give Oleg his greetings and tell him that it is never too late to try. The appeal is modest and deliberately open-ended. Harry does not claim that reconciliation has already happened; he asks for a message that might keep the possibility alive.

Much later, in Hong Kong, two letters wait for Harry at reception. One bears the Oslo police logo, and he guesses it may be from Gunnar Hagen. The other needs no guesswork: he recognizes Oleg’s steep, still-childlike handwriting at once. He suspects Kaja Solness may have helped them find him, but does not know for certain. Harry puts both letters in his jacket pocket without deciding whether or when to read them. The novel leaves the contents undisclosed. The letter’s arrival establishes that Oleg has written to Harry, while Harry’s hesitation preserves the uncertainty of what contact will mean. Oleg’s final significance lies in that unresolved exchange: he remains a loved child at a distance, but no longer only a figure in photographs and memory.