Simon recruits Ab Lofthus as the Twin’s mole

Simon recruits Ab Lofthus as the Twin’s mole through a betrayal that binds two friends to the same corrupt bargain: after selling his own soul to the Twin, Simon pressures Ab to become an informant inside the police. He uses Ab’s concern for his son to overcome Ab’s refusal, and the recruitment becomes both an act of coercion and a source of companionship before the Twin’s ambitions leave room for only one mole.

The Bargain’s Circumstances

Ab and Helene were deep in debt when the banking crisis drove interest rates sharply upward. The prospect of homelessness made quick money seem like their only way out. Simon had already struck a deal with the Twin, and then went directly to Ab with an offer that would bring Ab into the Twin’s operation as a police mole.

Ab initially refused and threatened to report Simon to their boss. Simon answered by invoking Ab’s Achilles heel: his son. He argued that this was how the real world worked, and that the boy would pay for Ab’s pride by growing up poor. The appeal turned financial desperation into leverage, making the choice less a free enlistment than a pressure applied to Ab through his responsibility as a father.

The Cost to Ab and Simon

Simon later described Ab’s transformation as one of the worst things he had done. He watched Ab being eaten up by the bargain and losing his soul, even as he hated him for taking away the only thing that had ever had value to him. The account holds Simon’s conflicting responses together: he recognized the damage he had caused, yet also felt less lonely once Ab had been dragged down with him.

Else’s account places this recruitment within Simon’s wider sense of having sold his soul. She said he believed he desired the shame, degradation, and self-loathing because they numbed other pain, turning his moral abasement into a form of mental self-harm. His recruitment of Ab therefore extended Simon’s own corruption outward: rather than bear the bargain alone, he made another person share its consequences.

Rivalry and Significance

The arrangement could not remain a partnership. The Twin wanted his mole to rise through the police force, and at that point there was no longer room for two. The recruitment thus planted a conflict inside the very alliance Simon had created: the act that eased his loneliness also helped place Ab in a position where the Twin’s plans made the two men rivals.

The episode connects personal loyalty to institutional betrayal. Simon’s leverage over Ab is not abstract persuasion but the threat of a child’s impoverished future, sharpened by the family’s debt and fear of losing their home. In drawing Ab into the Twin’s network, Simon attempts to share his own moral ruin; the result is a bond founded on coercion and exposed to the same violent competition that governs the criminal enterprise.