At the Frognerbadet crime scene, Mikael Bellman arrests Harry Hole after ordering him to leave and treating his continued presence as grounds for detention. The confrontation makes an institutional power struggle personal: Bellman publicly casts Harry as a discredited outsider, while the arrest gives him a procedural pretext to remove a potential investigator from the scene. Harry is released after two hours, but Gunnar Hagen later connects Bellman’s action to the dispute over who controls the murder investigation.

Setting and confrontation

Harry encounters three men as he cautiously steps out from a bush. One points a semi-automatic Austrian Steyr pistol at him. The armed man is Truls Berntsen, known as Beavis; his heavy underbite and snorting laugh make him recognizable to Harry. A shorter man, Jussi Kolkka, stands nearby with his hands in his coat pockets. Harry knows that Kolkka carries a weapon and identification under a Finnish-sounding name. The third man, Bellman, wears an elegant gray trench coat and stands slightly apart. The other two appear to take their cue from him, giving the encounter the character of an arrest already directed by its senior figure before he announces it.

Bellman’s appearance contrasts with the hostility of his gaze. Harry registers his carefully styled dark-gray hair, fine features, long eyelashes, and sun-browned skin dotted with small pigment marks; what impresses him most, however, is the concentrated hatred in Bellman’s look. The encounter is therefore not framed as a neutral exchange between officials. Bellman’s contempt is visible before he states his demand, and his companions’ positions make that contempt carry the force of institutional authority.

From exclusion to arrest

Bellman orders Harry to leave and never again come near a crime scene being investigated by the Kriminalamt. Harry answers that he has heard the instruction but does not understand it, and tries to offer the police a tip concerning Marit Olsen. Bellman interrupts, dismisses Harry as an alcoholic, lawbreaker, and nuisance, and tells him to go back under the stone from which he emerged. The insult does more than reject Harry’s offer: it defines him, in Bellman’s account, as someone whose presence can only damage the police.

After telling Harry to disappear immediately, Bellman announces that he is under arrest. His stated basis is that Harry has been asked three times to leave the crime scene and has not complied. The sequence turns the earlier orders into a procedural rationale: Harry’s attempt to remain useful is recast as defiance. When Harry protests, Berntsen grabs his arm. Harry’s cigarette falls onto the wet ground; as he bends to retrieve it, Kolkka drives a knee into his back, sending him forward so that his forehead strikes the ground. Dirt and bile fill his mouth as Bellman speaks close to his ear.

Bellman then says that Harry is resisting arrest and reminds him that he had been ordered to put his hands behind his back. The claim follows the physical takedown, converting the officers’ force into a further accusation against Harry. Bellman places a hand on Harry’s backside. Harry understands the danger of responding physically: Bellman would have two witnesses to support a charge of assaulting an officer, which could carry a five-year sentence. Rather than give him that opportunity, Harry controls himself, places his arms behind his back, and turns his head away.

Restraint and release

As Harry submits, the wind parts the fog above the scene. He sees a slender white diving tower against the gray sky and something, perhaps a rope, swinging from its highest platform. The arrest thus leaves the crime scene’s disturbing image in view even as Bellman takes control of Harry’s body and removes him from it. Harry focuses his attention on Rakel rather than on Berntsen’s laughter or Bellman’s cologne. The cuffs close with a quiet click, and Bellman watches from the parking lot on Middelthuns gate as the men drive away.

Harry spends two hours on a bunk in the detention cell. When he next opens his eyes, Hagen is outside struggling with the key and apologizes for having been in a meeting. He tells Harry that he has spoken with the prosecutor and that Harry can be released; the cells are for temporary detention, not punishment or conviction. The release clarifies the limited formal outcome of Bellman’s action. Harry has been detained, but the account does not describe a conviction or a sentence arising from the encounter.

Institutional stakes

Hagen explains that he should have anticipated both the leak that the police intended to track Harry down and Bellman’s attempt to prevent it. He places the arrest within a dispute over police savings, rationalization, and jurisdiction: whether a small country such as Norway can sustain two specialist departments with overlapping powers, the Violent Crime Division and the Kriminalamt. The disagreement has flared again under the Kriminalamt’s new deputy leader, Bellman. This context makes the arrest more than an isolated clash over access to a scene. Bellman uses the authority of the department investigating there to exclude Harry at a moment when Hagen’s side is seeking him out.

The encounter’s immediate reversal is stark: Harry approaches the scene offering information, is physically overpowered, and leaves in handcuffs; two hours later he is released without the detention becoming a conviction. Its broader consequence is to expose how jurisdictional rivalry can shape the treatment of an investigator before the merits of his contribution are considered. Bellman’s insults, the armed presence of Berntsen and Kolkka, and the arrest procedure all reinforce the same message: control of the crime scene also means control over who is allowed to investigate.