shell casing

The shell casing is a recurring forensic object through which Simon Kefas reconstructs how several shootings were carried out and how a killer tried to conceal the connection between them. A casing’s presence or absence matters, but so do its ammunition type and the marks made by the gun’s firing pin: details that turn a discarded object into evidence of weapon use, planning, and attempted deception.

Forensic significance

Simon explains to Kari Adel that, under the requirement for handgun manufacturers to engrave a serial number on a weapon’s firing pin, a shot can leave a distinctive mark on the cap of its shell. With an empty casing and the Firearms Register, investigators may be able to identify the weapon’s owner. He reasons that a killer using a relatively recent handgun could fear leaving such evidence behind, although gloves would reduce the chance that fingerprints on the casing itself could identify him. This distinction matters: the casing can implicate a weapon through its firing-pin mark even when its surface does not preserve a usable fingerprint.

The shell Simon and Kari look for at a crime scene is not immediately visible. Simon studies the scene, directs Kari’s attention to the area by the maples, and searches for the casing. His method treats the ground as a record of a shot: the casing may be small and easy to overlook, but where it is found—or where it has been removed—can alter the investigation. His attention to the object establishes a recurring principle of his work: a scene’s apparent story must be tested against its physical details.

The factory shootings

At a later factory crime scene, Simon asks Åsmund Bjørnstad about the shells. Bjørnstad produces a plastic bag containing two empty casings, initially presenting their recovery as a reason to dismiss Simon’s suspected connection to the Iversen murder. He argues that the large bullet holes in the factory victims indicate a much larger calibre than the one found in Agnete Iversen. The recovered casings therefore complicate, rather than settle, the comparison between the shootings.

Simon examines the details on a casing and separates the ammunition found at different parts of the factory. One casing indicates that a shot fired from the lift came from a different gun from the weapon subsequently used on the victims. He proposes that the later shots may have been fired from the victims’ own guns, which the killer then took away to hide that fact. The casing thus helps reveal a sequence of actions: an initial shot from one weapon, later shots from other weapons, and the removal of those weapons from the scene.

A further detail revises the interpretation. Simon points out that the back of one shell has no mark, indicating use of an older gun rather than the kind of newer weapon whose firing pin would leave the identifying mark he had described. The absence of a mark is itself evidence, but evidence with a different implication: it directs attention to the age and type of the weapon rather than providing the identifying trace expected from a newer firearm.

Linking the cases

Simon identifies the factory casing’s ammunition as the same type used to shoot Agnete Iversen. He believes the killer also killed Agnete and that collecting the casing from her home was part of an effort to stop investigators linking the two crimes. The casing removed from the Iversen scene was not necessarily taken because its firing-pin mark identified the gun; Simon revises his earlier explanation and concludes that the killer was already preparing for a second killing and trying to reduce the risk that the cases would be connected.

The ammunition type is common, so the match does not by itself identify a particular weapon or prove who fired it. Its value lies in combination with the other circumstances: a casing of the same type at another scene, the earlier removal of a casing from Agnete’s home, and the apparent effort to hide the relationship between the murders. The object’s evidentiary force is therefore cumulative. It does not deliver the whole explanation alone, but it allows Simon to formulate a more coherent account of the killer’s concealment strategy.

Recovery, concealment, and narrative role

The importance of casings recurs in a separate confrontation with Kalle Farrisen. After killing Pelvis, Sonny Lofthus makes Kalle retrieve a bullet lodged in a wall and search for another bullet and two empty casings. Kalle finds several of the casings and the second bullet, which had passed through Cassius and struck a metal door, but fails to locate the last casing before Sonny’s countdown ends. The sequence presents a casing not as an abstract forensic category but as an object a person can be ordered to recover under threat. Its absence remains consequential even after the search: not every piece of evidence can be made to appear on demand.

Across these scenes, the shell casing changes meaning according to its condition and context. A recovered casing can distinguish ammunition and suggest which weapon fired a shot; an absent casing can prompt questions about deliberate removal; a casing without a firing-pin mark can point toward an older gun. Simon’s investigations depend on refusing to treat any one of these observations as a complete answer. The casing is both a material trace of violence and a test of the stories people tell about what happened: comparison and close examination expose the gap between a crime scene’s first appearance and the sequence of events Simon believes it conceals.