Sonny Lofthus—Arild Franck

The relationship between Sonny Lofthus and Arild Franck is one of pursuit and coercion, rooted in a corrupt arrangement that made Sonny a convenient fall guy. When Sonny returns to confront Franck, the assistant prison governor is forced to answer for his dealings with Hugo Nestor and for the unresolved questions surrounding the Twin’s influence inside the police. Sonny gets a truthful account of the money Nestor paid Franck, but not the identity of the mole or his father’s killer. The encounter ends with Franck injured and Sonny escaping the prison, making their conflict a collision between institutional complicity and a personal demand for answers.

A history of concealed corruption

Years earlier, rumors circulated that a police mole leaked information to the person controlling much of Oslo’s drug and sex-trafficking activity. Simon Kefas recalls that the claims had never been proved, and says that the figure was called the Twin. The uncertainty surrounding the mole is not incidental: it allows the corruption to remain difficult to identify as well as difficult to prosecute.

The Twin’s operation depended on more than one kind of accomplice. In his diary, Ab Lofthus describes himself and another police officer as two corrupt partners who had turned a blind eye to drug dealing, human trafficking, and murder. They communicated through separate Hotmail accounts on computers taken from the evidence room and used physical drops to pass information. Their arrangement challenged the police’s assumption that a single traitor must be responsible: the partners’ division of activity meant that one could have an alibi while the other was active.

Franck’s part in the wider scheme was tied to the prison system. Hugo Nestor and Franck arranged Sonny’s day release, his location, and the help of a corrupt, paid prison officer. The scheme placed Sonny where he could be blamed for crimes committed by others. Franck was therefore not merely a source of information Sonny later sought; his earlier cooperation helped make Sonny’s imprisonment and scapegoating possible.

Sonny returns to confront Franck

By the time Sonny confronts him, Franck is an assistant prison governor. Sonny appears armed and orders Franck to sit. Once Franck recognizes him, he remarks that Sonny has changed, but the brief exchange gives way to a tightly controlled interrogation. Sonny takes Franck’s wallet and car key, noting the expensive Porsche Cayenne associated with a civil servant, and demands answers in exchange for Franck’s life.

Sonny’s first question concerns the account number and name to which Nestor sent money when paying Franck. He asks for the account details before turning to the two questions that matter most personally: who killed his father, and who was the mole who helped the Twin? The sequence links a traceable financial transaction to a much older betrayal. Sonny can press Franck for evidence of his collaboration with Nestor, but the deeper questions concern the source of the corruption and the death that shaped Sonny’s pursuit.

When Franck tries to avoid a direct answer, Sonny forces him to communicate in writing. Franck writes that he would give Sonny the mole’s name if he knew it. Sonny reads the statement, and the exchange establishes a limit to what coercion can accomplish: Franck may be able to account for his own dealings, but he cannot supply the identity Sonny wants.

The escape and its consequence

The confrontation also exposes the fragility of the prison’s security procedures. Franck expects the prison officers to stop Sonny at the fingerprint sensors, but Sonny takes Franck’s uniform cap and car key and leaves him unable to pass the biometric check in his place. When staff reach Franck, he warns them that Sonny will get away because the missing finger prevents the prison’s ordinary fingerprint-based security from working as expected.

The escape makes Franck’s body part of the conflict’s practical consequence without resolving its central mystery. Franck survives, but his injury compromises the security system he had expected to contain Sonny. Sonny, meanwhile, escapes with the information that Franck cannot identify the mole. The encounter therefore produces an immediate tactical victory but only a partial investigative one: it exposes Franck’s connection to Nestor’s payments while leaving the central identity concealed.

Complicity, knowledge, and the limits of vengeance

Franck’s confrontation with Sonny belongs to a network that connects prison officials, police corruption, and organized crime. Elsewhere, Simon accuses Iver Iversen of doing business with the Twin and laundering money from drug and trafficking activities through Iversen Property, in return for fictitious tax losses. The accusation broadens the picture of the Twin’s reach: the criminal operation depended on financial and institutional cooperation, not simply on one hidden police informant.

Against this background, Sonny’s questions distinguish two kinds of knowledge. Franck can be pressed about Nestor’s payments and the prison arrangements that helped frame Sonny, but his written response denies that he knows the mole’s identity. The result denies Sonny a clean revelation at the moment he demands one. Franck is accountable for his own cooperation, yet remains unable to unlock the whole structure.

The relationship’s defining reversal is that the prison governor, a representative of the system that confined Sonny, becomes the person whose restricted movement enables Sonny’s escape. Sonny’s violence provides an immediate answer to institutional control, but not the truth he seeks about his father or the Twin. Their confrontation therefore joins personal vengeance to the book’s broader account of corruption: the network can be exposed through individual accomplices, while its central secret remains harder to reach.