Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service

The Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service is the institutional force that detects Harry Hole’s unauthorized investigation and brings it under pressure. The novel gives the service little formal description; instead, it defines it through what it learns, how its representative Mikael Bellman confronts Gunnar Hagen, and the Ministry’s resulting order to end the inquiry. Its presence changes the murder investigation from a concealed effort into a conflict over authority, access, and control.

Position in the investigation

The service appears in the story as an investigative body with access to information about cases being pursued elsewhere. Harry’s group is working discreetly under Gunnar Hagen, but the arrangement is compromised by a leak inside the police headquarters: Harry tells Kaja Solness that the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service has been informed of their activities and that, for that reason, they can communicate only with Hagen. The restriction is operational, not merely a preference for secrecy. Kaja is prevented from consulting a contact in the vice squad, while Harry redirects her toward another task: sending the analysis of the unusual stones found at a crime scene to a volcanologist.

The distinction between the group’s hidden inquiry and the service’s awareness of it shapes the investigation’s working conditions. Harry’s team is not free to share leads through ordinary professional channels; even a seemingly useful conversation with another police unit risks exposing the inquiry further. The service’s influence is therefore felt before its members directly intervene: the possibility that it is receiving information governs whom the investigators can approach and what they can disclose.

Intelligence and investigative reach

The service’s knowledge becomes concrete through the Marit Olsen murder investigation. Harry and colleagues have been investigating near Lyseren Lake, where forensic work has connected the rope used to kill Marit Olsen to an old rope-making factory. Beate Lønn recommended a search of huts in the factory’s surroundings after a technician traced the rope’s origin there. The information reaches Bellman, who says he has learned from a reliable source that Harry and two colleagues were involved in the inquiry.

Bellman’s account also shows how the information has travelled. After speaking with the responsible police officer in Ytre Enebakk, he learns that Harry was one of the three investigators who conducted the investigation. The service’s discovery thus does not come from a dramatic revelation of the killer’s identity or a completed forensic solution. It comes from the circulation of operational knowledge: a lead about the rope, a proposed search, and the local officer’s knowledge of who carried it out. That chain is enough to identify the covert team’s participation.

The wider case material gives this institutional discovery its stakes. Investigators are comparing murders marked by unusual methods and working to establish whether apparently separate crimes connect. Records of Borgny Stem-Myhre’s killing include the precise injuries found in her mouth, the absence of ordinary trace evidence, and two small stones unlike the gravel at the scene. Separately, travel records place Adele Vetlesen and Borgny on the same date in the Ustaoset region, while hut bookings associated with Iska Peller suggest a shared mountain itinerary. Harry assesses these findings cautiously: they place several women in the same area, but do not by themselves prove a complete connection. The service’s intervention arrives while the investigative picture is still being assembled, making the struggle over who may pursue the leads consequential rather than procedural background.

Bellman and the institutional confrontation

Mikael Bellman is the service’s most visible representative in these scenes. When he enters Hagen’s office, Hagen understands that the clandestine investigation has been discovered and sees Bellman as the bearer of trouble. Bellman explains the rope lead and the hut search, then emphasizes that Harry was among the investigators. His manner and insistence make the encounter more than a neutral request for information: the group’s concealed activity has become the subject of an official confrontation.

Bellman’s personal ambitions provide a limited but telling context for his institutional presence. Earlier, while being shown through the Norwegian Parliament building by Rasmus Olsen, he reflects on his return after failing to reach the top among the competing figures at Europol. He regards the understated surroundings and the modest culture of northern European democracy with contempt, yet sees his return as another opportunity to advance. The novel presents this ambition as Bellman’s own perspective, not as a stated policy of the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service. It nevertheless colors his role: the organization reaches the reader through a man who is attentive not only to cases but also to position and competition.

Discovery, shutdown, and narrative role

Once the service has learned that Hagen’s team is investigating the murders, Hagen tells Harry and Björn Holm that he has no choice but to stop their work. He also makes clear that the group cannot expect a graceful departure, because he had already warned them to maintain complete discretion. Harry acknowledges that he helped the information escape: he asked Beate Lønn to pass details about the rope factory to the service and to make it appear that forensic technicians were the source. His attempt to steer the leak has not preserved the inquiry’s secrecy; instead, it has helped bring the team’s involvement into the open.

The stop order comes through Hagen after the service’s discovery, while the stated consequence is that the Ministry’s instructions require the investigation to end. These are connected but distinct pressures: the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service identifies the covert inquiry, and Hagen tells his investigators that he cannot continue it. The episode exposes how fragile the team’s authority is. Its members may be pursuing leads with potential value, but secrecy cannot protect them once information moves across institutional boundaries and those with power to halt the work are alerted.

The service’s narrative importance lies in this pressure on the investigation rather than in a detailed account of its internal structure. It is first a recipient of leaked intelligence, then the organization through which Bellman confronts Hagen, and finally the institutional presence that makes the clandestine team’s position untenable. Against a case in which separate journeys, mountain huts, physical traces, and witness memories must be assembled into a pattern, the service supplies a second kind of obstacle: the investigators must not only determine what happened, but also manage who is permitted to investigate it.