Superglue

Superglue is the adhesive associated with Elias Skog’s murder, where he was left glued in his bathtub. In the investigation, that specific detail becomes more than a description of the crime: because it was not known publicly, its appearance in a message to Harry Hole signals that the sender has access to information beyond ordinary public reporting.

The adhesive and the murder

The available account identifies Superglue through the condition in which Skog was found. A text message tells Harry that Skog had talked before he was glued in his bathtub, linking the adhesive to the murder’s method and to a period when the victim may have been able to disclose information. The message does not explain how much adhesive was used, how it was applied, or precisely what it attached. Its force lies instead in the blunt connection between Skog’s speech and what happened to him afterward.

The distinction matters: the adhesive is a concrete detail of the crime, but the text does not present it as a complete reconstruction of the killing. It supplies no technical account of Superglue or of the physical process. What it establishes is that Skog was glued in the bathtub and that the sender knows this circumstance. The object therefore enters the narrative at once as part of the murder’s material reality and as a test of who possesses privileged knowledge about it.

The message as a test of knowledge

The message arrives after Harry has sat with his dying father and returned home. He switches his telephone back on, sees a message from an unknown number, and reads that its sender has learned from Aftenposten that he is leading the investigation. The sender offers help and signs only with the initial C. The reference to Superglue immediately sets the message apart from routine tips: although the case has received extensive media coverage, the public has not been told that Skog was glued in his bathtub. Harry’s telephone number is also confidential.

Harry’s response is physical before it becomes a considered judgment. He drops his lighter onto the glass table with a loud bang, and his heart begins to beat faster. The contrast is sharp: the message is short, but its single specific detail carries more weight than the many suggestions and claims that normally reach the police. Harry recognizes that its sender does not belong to the familiar category of people who offer unsupported reports simply to attract police attention. The adhesive functions as a credential, though not yet proof of the sender’s identity or reliability: knowledge of the concealed detail makes the offer of help difficult to dismiss.

Identifying the source

Harry calls the number. The person answers with familiarity, recalling their last contact at Skog’s apartment and naming Superglue as the point of connection. Harry’s heartbeat reaches his throat and his own throat tightens as he asks who is speaking and what the caller had been doing there. The pause on the line briefly leaves open whether the caller has hung up; instead, the voice returns and explains the signature. The caller is Colbjornsen, a criminal commissioner from Stavanger City, to whom Harry had previously given his telephone number.

The adhesive thus helps connect two encounters that Harry does not immediately bring together. The message’s C is not an anonymous outsider’s boast but the abbreviated signature of a police investigator who had been at Skog’s apartment. When Colbjornsen reminds him of that meeting, the reference to Superglue prompts Harry to recognize the earlier contact. The object marks a shared crime scene and turns the murder’s concealed detail into a means of identification.

A detail inside a disputed accusation

Superglue also belongs to the wider uncertainty surrounding responsibility for Skog’s death. In a later interrogation, Mikael Bellman tells Tony Leike that investigators know Leike called Skog from Oslo and was in Stavanger City two days later. Bellman asserts that Leike killed Skog and asks whether he had a motive. The account describes this as a deliberate interrogation tactic: Bellman joins the established fact of the telephone call to claims about Leike’s presence and guilt that have not all been established.

That accusation should not be mistaken for confirmation that the adhesive itself proves who killed Skog. The interrogation passage shows Bellman presenting a conclusion and using the apparent certainty of one fact to strengthen the force of other claims. Against that pressure, the message’s reference to Superglue remains significant for a different reason: it establishes that Colbjornsen knows a detail withheld from the public, not that he identifies the killer. The adhesive’s narrative importance lies in this separation between what can be known about the crime and what can be proved about the person responsible. It is at once part of the murder’s disturbing physical method, a marker of restricted information, and the detail that enables Harry to recognize a potential source within the investigation.