Ich glaube nichts, ich suche.

Ich glaube nichts, ich suche. names Harry Hole’s refusal to confuse a plausible theory with a proven explanation. Repeated during discussions of the linked murders, the phrase makes disciplined uncertainty—not belief in a favored suspect or motive—the basis of his search.

The Principle in Practice

When Kaja Solness asks whether one of the team’s theories might be right, Harry Hole answers that he tries to keep his mind empty and receptive. He does accept a working proposition: the three murders were committed by the same person or people. But he treats that as a starting point, not a solved case. He hopes to find a connection that could lead to a motive and, with luck, to the culprit or culprits. His method therefore combines provisional inference with an explicit awareness of how much remains unknown.

Evidence Before Explanation

The principle also governs Harry Hole’s response to the suggestion that the victims were chosen at random. Katrine Bratt points to their being women as an obvious connection, then challenges him on whether he is certain Mark Olsen’s killer was also responsible for the other two murders, given how different the methods were. Harry does not claim certainty about the pattern or even know in advance what connection he is seeking. The phrase thus marks neither indifference nor a refusal to form hypotheses: it distinguishes observed facts from explanations that still need testing.

The case’s forensic record gives that distinction concrete force. Borgny Stem-Myhre had been drugged with Ketanomin, but she died by drowning in blood from wounds inside her mouth. The pathologist counted 24 symmetrically placed punctures, each exactly seven centimeters deep except those that pierced through her face; investigators could not identify the instrument. The cleaned concrete yielded no fingerprints, DNA, or footwear impressions. Yet two unusual gray-black stones found on the floor did not match the site’s gravel, and the report noted traces of iron and coltan on the inside of two of Borgny’s molars. The evidence offered leads and unanswered questions together, rather than a ready-made account of the crime.

A separate line of inquiry produced a limited but testable geographic connection. Kaja Solness placed a missing woman and another woman who probably had no connection to the case at the same location; the result also strongly supported that Charlotte Lolles had been accompanied, while Borgny Stem-Myhre and Marit Olsen had both been near Ustaoset. Harry acknowledged the value of this work without treating proximity as proof of motive or guilt. The search moves forward by making connections precise enough to investigate, while leaving their meaning open until further evidence can bear it.

Revision and Misleading Clues

Adele Vetlesen’s journey to Kigali shows how a record can be accurate in one sense and deceptive in another. The passenger list showed that someone had flown from Oslo on November 25 using a passport issued in Adele’s name, but no traveler under that name was registered at Kigali’s passport control. Harry Hole reconstructed the discrepancy: the woman had used a forged passport to board, then presented her own genuine passport on arrival, where officials checked the passport number but not whether it matched the flight ticket. The apparent travel record therefore did not establish that Adele herself had made the journey; it concealed the substitution until Harry checked beyond the list.

The investigation’s suspicion of Tony Leike likewise had to be reconsidered when a cluster of clues seemed to converge on him. Beate Lonn drew attention to Leike’s alibi alongside the call from his landline to Elias Skog’s phone and the murder weapon’s connection to the Congo, where Leike had a business project. Harry argued that Der Kavalier had deliberately directed the inquiry toward Leike: Juliana Verni had been paid to travel to the Congo, making the weapon’s trail appear to implicate him. He also found that three calls had gone out from Leike’s office direct line around the time of the call attributed to his home. The landline clue, which investigators had accepted while believing they were close to the answer, could no longer be treated as proof that Leike had made the call.

Together, these reversals sharpen the expression’s meaning: searching requires not only gathering clues but asking what else could have produced them. A suspicious route or telephone record can sustain an explanation without confirming it, and the nearer investigators feel to a solution, the more important it becomes to test their own evidence rather than protect a favored conclusion.

The Phrase as a Method

The expression Ich glaube nichts, ich suche. is not a declaration that every possibility is equally likely; its force lies in the turn from refusing premature belief to committing to an active search. Its recurrence in exchanges with Kaja Solness and Katrine Bratt makes that distinction a test of Harry Hole’s reasoning: questions press him to name what he thinks, while his answer keeps the investigation open to correction. The phrase therefore acts less as a settled maxim than as a restraint on the moment when a promising explanation might harden into certainty.