Katrine Bratt

Katrine Bratt is a Norwegian police investigator recovering from a psychiatric relapse who becomes one of Harry Hole’s most resourceful research partners in the investigation of three murders. Her work does more than add clues: by widening a search that initially yields nothing, she connects the victims’ movements to a missing woman, exposes discrepancies in a supposed African itinerary, and identifies financial and travel records that direct the inquiry toward Tony Leike and Lene Galtung. The contrast between her fragile condition and her precision as an investigator is central to her role: she is not simply restored to health before she becomes useful, but already contributes decisive work while still under treatment.

Identity and Recovery

Katrine had been an investigator in a murder case about a year earlier. The strain had become so great that she suffered a relapse and returned to the psychiatric clinic where she had previously received treatment. For the sake of her anonymity, those around her called her only the patient, particularly in light of the press’s insistent appetite for details about the already-solved Schneemann case. The attention did not leave her in peace, and her condition deteriorated enough to require renewed hospitalization.

Her recovery is conveyed through sharply contrasting images rather than a simple report of improvement. During Harry’s last visit, he barely recognized the woman before him. The dark-haired, striking investigator he remembered seemed replaced by someone lifeless, brittle, and fragile, and he felt that too much pressure could break her hand. The image records the distance between her former presence and her condition at that moment, while also showing Harry’s unease at how physically vulnerable she appears.

The later scenes offer signs of improvement without presenting recovery as complete or effortless. When Kjersti Rodsmoen enters the common room at Sandviken-Klinik, Katrine sits by the window watching rain fall on the wooden houses outside. A cake in front of her holds a single candle, but she has not touched it. The detail establishes the scene’s quietness and her detachment; it does not explain the occasion or her feelings. Her eventual discharge and planned return to police work mark a practical change in her circumstances, but Harry still hopes she will take things slowly, a hope tempered by his conviction that she approaches nothing calmly.

Recruited to the Murder Inquiry

Harry approaches Katrine with a specific investigative problem. He gives her a file containing reports on three murders and the names of Borgny Stem-Myhre, Charlotte Lolles, and Marit Olsen. He asks her to do what she did in the Schneemann case: find the connection the investigators have overlooked. The request depends on both her earlier investigative experience and her particular aptitude for searching information; Harry is not asking her merely to review the files, but to detect a pattern that has escaped the team.

Katrine first searches the three victims’ names and finds no useful result. Rather than treating that failure as a dead end, she changes the scope of the search, adding every person reported missing in Norway over the preceding twelve months. That expansion produces a lead: Adele Vetlesen, a twenty-eight-year-old from Drammen, had been reported missing by her partner in November. Katrine finds that Adele bought a Norwegian State Railways ticket online on November 7, from Drammen to Ustaoset. On the same date, Borgny bought a ticket from Kongsberg to the same destination. The match does not, by itself, explain what happened to either woman, but it replaces a list of separate victims with a shared journey worth investigating.

A second travel lead grows from records of mountain-hut bookings. Katrine reports that Iska Peller’s account was charged on November 20 for two beds at each of four huts belonging to the hiking association, the huts lying roughly a day’s walk apart. The number of beds, the repeated bookings, and the spacing between locations give the inquiry a concrete route to examine. Alongside the ticket match, these records make the mountain itinerary an evidential pattern rather than a vague geographical coincidence.

Digital Research and the Kigali Discrepancy

Katrine’s investigations extend beyond the Norwegian murder files. Harry tells Gunnar Hagen that the police in Leipzig have been in touch and passes on Katrine’s greetings, using her work as a natural opening to another research question. He describes her as exceptionally capable at internet research, a judgment borne out by the trail she assembles around Juliana Verni.

An immigration card issued to Juliana Verni was found at the airport in Kigali. Katrine checks that name against airline passenger lists and hotel records using modern electronic booking systems. Juliana does not appear on any airline passenger list to Rwanda for the relevant day, nor in any of those hotel records. Three days later, however, she appears on a Rwandair passenger list in Kigali. The mismatch between the card, the missing records, and the later passenger-list entry makes the itinerary suspect and gives the investigators a specific discrepancy to pursue, rather than a general suspicion about the journey.

Later, Harry refers to a passport for Juliana Verni from Leipzig and says that the same hair color appears in it. He has asked Günther to check whether the passport contains a Kigali stamp, but the police never found the document; Harry is certain Tony Leike took it. Katrine’s work on Juliana’s recent activities gives Harry a basis for explaining the lead. The passport’s absence remains an obstacle, but the missing document itself becomes part of the investigative problem: a key record is not available for direct inspection, so the team must test the surrounding travel information instead.

Tracing Leike and the Money

Katrine also follows the less dramatic records that can establish where a person has been. She reports that Leike had visited Ustaoset and the surrounding area repeatedly over several years. He had ordered train tickets online and used his credit card at a petrol station in Geilo; he had also bought food, usually in Ustaoset. One receipt stands out from the routine purchases: a charge for building materials in Geilo. Taken together, the ordinary transactions establish a recurring presence, while the construction receipt points to a more specific activity that needs explanation.

A separate inquiry concerns Lene Galtung’s account at Credit Suisse in Zürich. Harry asks whether she has an account there and mentions that she may have received part of her inheritance early. Katrine later discovers that Galtung emptied the account a few days earlier, withdrawing two million euros. Harry emphasizes the amount’s limits as well as its usefulness: it is not enough to finance Leike’s excavation project outright, but it could carry the project through a difficult phase. Katrine’s finding therefore sharpens the financial question without pretending to settle it; the money is a possible source of support, not proof that it funded the entire undertaking.

Return to Work and Continuing Role

Katrine’s condition and her investigative usefulness develop side by side. At one point she calls Harry fifteen minutes after Leike has left, and later Harry reaches her before seven in the morning. She is due to leave the clinic that day and return to the police headquarters in Bergen after the weekend. Harry hopes she will ease herself back into work, but he does not expect restraint to come naturally to her. The episode keeps concern for her health present even as the investigation increasingly relies on her diligence.

Her contribution continues into the inquiry’s later stages. Katrine informs Harry that Sigurd Altman is staying at a hotel in Shanghai, less than an hour’s flight away. The information gives Harry a fresh geographical lead at a moment when the investigation’s consequences are still unfolding. Across the case, her method is consistent: search past the obvious names, compare records across systems, attend to small discrepancies, and report what the evidence establishes without confusing an investigative lead with a final answer. Her role is thus both practical and structural. The investigation’s pattern becomes visible through work that moves from failed searches to wider databases, from travel records to bookings and receipts, and from an absent passport to the traces that remain around it.