Simon Kefas and Ab Lofthus

This flow traces Simon and Ab’s movement from close friendship to shared corruption, rivalry, and Simon’s fatal betrayal, then shows how their history shapes Sonny’s understanding of both men.

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The Troika

The Troika Three Friends Simon, Ab, and Pontius Parr form the troika: three young men who live together, train for police work, and measure themselves against one another. Simon remembers Ab as an exceptionally capable officer and a close friend, someone whose strength and confidence made him both admirable and difficult to compete with. Helene’s Choice Helene enters their shared life as a lodger, and all three men fall in love with her. Simon believes he has a chance, but Helene chooses Ab. When she becomes pregnant and the couple leave to build a home together, Simon is left with heartbreak and a friendship that has already begun to change. The troika’s closeness does not disappear in a single rupture. It gradually becomes harder for Simon to witness Ab’s happiness and his own distance from the family. The personal loss gives their later decisions about loyalty and betrayal an intimate source.

The First Betrayal

The First Betrayal A Debt Becomes an Offer As debt and the banking crisis threaten Ab and Helene’s home, Simon has already entered a destructive period of gambling. He turns to The Twin for money and accepts a corrupt bargain. Simon then approaches Ab, arguing that quick money is necessary to protect his family from poverty. Friendship Recast as Recruitment Ab initially refuses and threatens to report Simon. Simon presses on Ab’s devotion to his son, arguing that pride will leave the child to bear the consequences of their financial ruin. Ab eventually accepts the bargain and becomes a second mole, a decision that binds the friends through shared guilt rather than trust. Simon later understands that he did not merely offer Ab a way out of debt. He used the very love that made Ab vulnerable, drawing his friend into a corruption that would compromise everything they once believed about their work and themselves.

Two Moles

Two Moles A Secret Arrangement Simon and Ab provide information to The Twin through anonymous channels. The arrangement lets them maintain public identities as police officers while betraying investigations from within. Their secrecy depends on the belief that neither man will expose the other. The Friendship Narrows The Twin eventually wants one mole to rise through the police and provide greater access. The two friends can no longer share the role without becoming obstacles to each other. Simon recognizes the change in Ab’s trust and understands that their old friendship has become a dangerous competition. Their bond has not vanished, but loyalty now exists beside fear and self-preservation. The same men who once lived as inseparable friends have become participants in a secret where survival appears to require choosing which of them will be sacrificed.

The Murder at Maridalen

The Murder at Maridalen A Meeting Set in Secret Ab believes the Twin’s network is closing in and asks Simon to meet at the medieval ruins in Maridalen. Simon knows that Ab may be preparing to expose him. The meeting is framed as a conversation between old friends, but both understand that their shared criminal past has made the encounter potentially final. Betrayal and Concealment Simon acts first, killing Ab before Ab can kill him. He then helps construct the story that Ab was the corrupt mole and that his death was suicide, concealing Simon’s own part in the conspiracy. The betrayal destroys the friendship in the most literal way, while the false account leaves Sonny and Helene to live with a lie. Simon’s actions are driven by fear and self-preservation, but that motive does not soften the loss. He kills the friend whose trust he first exploited, then lets Ab’s name carry the public disgrace for both men’s corruption.

A Friendship Reconsidered

A Friendship Reconsidered The Truth Reaches Sonny Sonny discovers Ab’s diary and learns that his father was involved in the mole operation rather than an innocent officer falsely accused of corruption. The discovery overturns the simple story on which Sonny built his grief and revenge. Ab was both a loving father and a man who made a devastating moral choice. What Simon Finally Admits At the end, Simon tells Sonny that he and Ab were both moles and confesses that he killed his friend. The confession gives Sonny the truth Simon withheld for years, but it cannot restore Ab or repair the damage to Sonny’s childhood. Sonny chooses not to kill Simon after the confession, partly because Simon has urged him to become better than his father. That decision gives Ab’s memory a new shape: his love for his son remains real, but it is no longer separated from the compromises and betrayal that helped destroy him.

During Simon, Ab, and Pontius Parr’s early years together

During the banking crisis, before the main story

In the years before Ab Lofthus’s death

The night Ab plans to confront Simon

Near the ending, as Sonny confronts the truth about his father