Oslo is both the setting of the novel’s central investigations and a city whose streets and landmarks hold the characters’ private histories. Its parks, bridges, church, police force, and densely occupied districts are not interchangeable scenery: they connect the city’s criminal networks to its institutions, and the present pursuit to the choices Simon Kefas made long before it began.

City and Setting

The novel presents Oslo through sharply different urban environments. In one passage, Per Vollan crosses a park near Alexander Kiellands Plass on a sunny summer day after a cold, wet July. The park is shared by people enjoying the return of warmth and vulnerable addicts gathered around its benches and fountain. Nearby stands Ila Pensjonat, formerly a home for unmarried mothers and now a residential facility for addicts who do not want to get clean. The building is described as a last stop for people at the edge of society, making the city’s social inequalities part of its geography rather than a distant backdrop.

Other scenes place the action in the compact but sharply divided center. Kvadraturen’s streets are so densely occupied that Simon, following the location of a phone Sonny Lofthus used, knows only that it must be somewhere among shops, hotels, offices, and flats. The same district is also identified as the city’s busiest red-light area. Simon’s search there carries a personal echo: he recalls having once paid for a brief experience of human contact, a past he does not regard with pride. The city’s commercial density thus narrows a police search while exposing a loneliness Simon recognizes in himself.

Bridges, Memory, and Relationships

Oslo’s bridges repeatedly serve as points where private memory meets public space. Walking through Kuba with another man, Simon pauses at padlocks attached to a pedestrian bridge. The tokens of couples’ attachment prompt him to reflect on his decade-long love for Else, whom he has loved every day of the more than three and a half thousand days they have been together. He does not need a lock to affirm that bond, and he hopes Else will outlive him long enough to have new relationships. The bridge makes love legible as both enduring devotion and an acceptance that life may continue after loss.

From the bridge Simon can also see Åmodt Bro, which crosses the river dividing Oslo into east and west. He remembers diving from it when he was young, part of a trio of friends convinced of their own superiority. Simon understood himself as less intelligent, strong, socially skilled, or attractive than the other two, but more willing to take risks. The remembered leap places his recklessness in the city’s landscape and links it to the risk-taking that shapes his later life. Oslo’s crossings are therefore both literal routes and markers of the choices through which Simon understands himself.

Institutions and Hidden Networks

Oslo is the center of Simon’s long career in the police. He has worked for the city force for years when he receives a new murder investigation and a new partner on the same day. His professional position places him inside the institution tasked with confronting the crimes that shape the city, while his history makes that institutional role morally unstable: he and Sonny both knew Sonny’s father, Ab Lofthus, and were devastated when his corruption was exposed. For Sonny, Ab had been an idol; for Simon, a best friend. The city’s law-enforcement story is consequently entangled with personal loyalty and betrayal.

That entanglement extends beyond the police. In Kvadraturen, Simon follows a mobile phone Sonny used, which is registered to Helge Sørensen; Simon connects the false identity to a prison officer’s identification card Sonny had used earlier. Elsewhere, Simon is taken through Aker Brygge to the Nautilus Restaurant, a discreet waterfront establishment whose scale and location strike him as suitable for money laundering. These details place the criminal plot amid ordinary city infrastructure: registered phones, transport routes, waterfront businesses, and crowded streets can conceal as readily as they connect.

Church and Final Pursuit

St Paul’s Church stands between apartment blocks near the route Simon takes through the city. He has visited it before, during an earlier crisis, after losing everything and before finding salvation in Else. Its modest exterior and open door contrast with the spiritual weight Simon attaches to it. Inside, the plain room, pews, altar, and confessional recall his earlier drunken attempt to confess his sins. The church thus gathers Oslo’s religious and moral dimensions into a specific place: Simon’s return there is inseparable from his awareness of guilt and his need for absolution.

The church also lies within the geography of the final pursuit. After the shootings at Aker Brygge and the Catholic church, Simon’s actions become a public controversy, even as he is mourned as a policeman who fought the city’s criminals and died in the service of justice. Near St Paul’s, the trail of blood left by the Twin stops on the tarmac; Simon and Sonny find no further sign of him. The city’s streets register the limits of their search, while the church remains a landmark in the story of Simon’s last struggle.

Aftermath and Seasonal Change

In the months after the shootings at Aker Brygge and the church, the police face criticism over brutality and Simon’s mission. At his funeral, however, the public is willing to overlook his departures from police procedure and Norwegian law, and he is remembered as the people’s policeman. Oslo’s official and popular judgments do not align neatly: public admiration coexists with scrutiny of the methods used in the name of justice. The city’s response makes Simon’s death an institutional as well as a personal consequence of the final violence.

The closing movement returns to Oslo through the transition from summer to snow. After visiting Else, Kari leaves the city and later drives east with Åsmund; the first snow makes the landscape appear divided from what came before. She reflects on how events have turned out differently from what she planned, having declined both a Justice Department position and a highly paid insurance job while she and Sam try for a baby. After they cross a small bridge and take a gravel path, a call from Drammen Police brings a new case: the victim is shipowner Yngve Morsand, whose identity connects the discovery to the earlier story. Oslo’s ending is therefore not a sealed resolution but a point of departure, where altered lives and the return of violence lead beyond the city.