Kripos

Kripos is Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, a specialist investigative body whose arrival can shift control of a murder inquiry away from Oslo Police’s Homicide Squad. In the novel, that authority is both procedural and uneasy: Kripos takes overall responsibility when asked to assist, yet its investigation later depends on cooperation with Simon Kefas and Kari Adel as the cases lead into a wider criminal network.

Mandate and Relationship with Oslo Police

Kripos enters the investigation through Åsmund Bjørnstad, a detective inspector who tells Simon, a chief inspector in the Homicide Squad, that Kripos is taking over the case at Simon’s own superior’s instruction. Bjørnstad explains that whenever Kripos is asked to assist in a murder inquiry, it makes overall responsibility for the investigation a condition, covering tactical as well as technical work. The arrangement is not presented as a new one: Simon knows that the Homicide Squad and Kripos have stepped on each other’s toes before.

For Simon, the handover carries a practical as well as institutional cost. He recognizes that he ought to accept the help, return to his office, and concentrate on another investigation. But he stays to look around the scene, while Bjørnstad questions why he should. Their exchange establishes a recurring tension between Kripos’s formal command and the local investigators’ continuing involvement. The transfer may be procedurally ordinary, but it does not erase the Homicide Squad’s stake in the case.

Taking Over the Murder Inquiry

The division of responsibility becomes more pronounced when Simon arrives at work and learns that three people have been found dead and Kripos is handling the case. One body, Kalle Farrisen, had been discovered the previous night in a room covered with heroin. Simon had not been informed until that morning. He understands that the Commissioner has asked Kripos for help, effectively giving it the case, without first consulting the Homicide Squad. The sequence makes the institutional friction concrete: control changes hands before Simon’s team has even been brought into the investigation.

Kripos also represents the public-facing account of the inquiry. At a press conference in Bryn, Bjørnstad reports that Agnete Iversen was found in her kitchen but was probably shot at the doorstep. He says that several pieces of evidence point toward robbery, while other possible motives cannot yet be ruled out. This is a provisional investigative interpretation, not a settled conclusion; the agency communicates what the evidence appears to support while leaving room for revision.

Dependence and Cooperation

The relationship between Kripos and the Homicide Squad changes as the investigation develops. When another body is found, Bjørnstad calls Simon directly and asks for help. Simon and Kari are with him as they examine remains temporarily identified, from credit cards, as those of Hugo Nestor; dental records are still needed for confirmation. The call reverses the earlier dynamic. Kripos has the formal lead, but Bjørnstad now recognizes that the local officers’ knowledge and assistance are necessary.

Kari’s contribution is particularly direct. When Simon asks how investigators found Fidel Lae, Bjørnstad explains that patrol cars at the farm were following a phone signal. Kari says she sent them after receiving an anonymous text. The sequence shows information moving across institutional lines: an anonymous tip reaches Kari, her response directs the patrols, and Kripos’s investigator reports the operational result to Simon. The inquiry functions through cooperation, even where authority has been contested.

That cooperation becomes an explicit proposal at a later stage. Pontius Parr says he will speak to the head of Kripos and suggests that Bjørnstad and Kari work together as a team, on the basis that they share an understanding of the situation. The suggestion does not remove Kripos’s role; it frames joint work as the best way to pursue the investigation. Bjørnstad’s earlier impatience with Simon’s presence gives way to a structure in which the agencies’ investigators are expected to combine their efforts.

Institutional Limits and Narrative Significance

Kripos’s casework takes place against a background of suspicion about corruption inside the police. Simon recalls old rumours of a police mole passing information to the person directing much of Oslo’s drug and sex-trafficking activity. No one had produced evidence at the time to establish either the mole or the criminal figure’s existence, whom the police called the Twin. Elsewhere, Ab Lofthus’s diary discloses that the corruption involved two police officers rather than one: the pair exploited the fact that one could have an alibi while the other acted, and described their betrayal of the force as comprehensive. The disclosure makes clear why a case cannot be understood solely as a contest between a clean outside agency and a compromised local force; criminal influence crosses institutional lines.

The same network extends beyond police work. Simon tells Iver Iversen that Iversen Property did business with the Twin, helping launder proceeds from drugs and trafficking in exchange for fictitious losses that reduced taxes by hundreds of millions of kroner. In another part of the plot, Nestor’s organization arranges a killing and a scapegoat through corrupt prison personnel. These connections give the murder inquiry stakes beyond jurisdiction: investigative findings threaten relationships among police, prison staff, criminal operators, and business interests.

Kripos is therefore neither merely a distant authority nor an uncomplicated solution to corruption. It brings a formal investigative mandate and a public voice, but its work depends on information, people, and decisions moving across organizational boundaries. The transfer of control, Simon’s resistance to being sidelined, Bjørnstad’s later request for assistance, and the proposal to join the investigators in a team together show a case in which effective policing requires cooperation even as trust and responsibility remain contested.