Tony Leike’s disappearance turns a planned police operation into an immediate uncertainty: the man Mikael Bellman wants to place in danger as bait cannot be found. Leike’s absence from home and work, the lack of any recorded flight or ferry journey, and the possibility that he has gone to the mountains leave investigators with a destination but no confirmation. His disappearance matters not only because the sting collapses, but because it places the initiative beyond the police’s control at the moment they are trying to draw a killer out.

The Search for Leike

The news reaches Harry Hole through Kaja Solness after Bellman has issued an order to find Leike. The search has produced no contact: Leike is neither at home nor at the office, and he has left no messages. Investigators have also checked passenger lists for airlines and ferry companies, but no Leike appears on them. Those negative results narrow the available possibilities without establishing where he has gone.

The lead comes from Lene Gabrielle Galtung. An investigator reaches her, and she suggests that Leike might have gone into the mountains to think, something she says he does fairly often. Because his car is still in the garage, Kaja reasons that, if he has gone there, he must have taken the train. It is a chain of inference, not a confirmed sighting: no one has found him, and the evidence does not establish that he has reached the mountains.

Harry supplies the likely destination, Ustaoset. He recalls that Leike had described the landscape there as his own. That personal association gives the search a specific direction, but it does not resolve the central uncertainty. Leike is still missing, and the report that he has not checked into a hotel offers no further confirmation of his whereabouts.

The Mountain Connection

Ustaoset is significant in the investigation beyond its association with Leike. Earlier inquiries connected the missing Adele Vetlesen to the same mountain region as Borgny Stem-Myhre: both had bought train tickets there for November 7, one from Drammen and the other from Kongsberg. The connection made the area relevant to the wider inquiry before Leike disappeared, though it does not prove that he has returned there now.

A separate account inquiry found that Iska Peller’s account had been charged for two beds in each of four mountain huts, with the huts roughly a day’s walk apart. The last was Hävasshütte, which lay about half a day’s walk from Ustaoset; the booking record placed the pair at that hut on November 7. These details establish a route and a shared mountain setting in the investigators’ reconstruction of the case. They also explain why a possible journey to Ustaoset is more than an arbitrary guess, while leaving Leike’s present location unverified.

The landscape has already been rendered as isolating and difficult to read. During a journey by snowmobile, Kaja Solness sees snow and wind flatten the terrain into a surface like the sea, with Hallingskarvet rising ahead; the motor eventually stops, leaving the travelers far from ordinary habitation. That scene does not establish where Leike has gone, but it gives the mountain setting a concrete narrative character: distance and apparent openness can conceal how difficult it is to locate someone there.

The Abandoned Sting

Bellman’s plan had been to make Leike visible to the person the police were trying to catch. The investigators believe the murderer may be targeting everyone who was at Hävasshütte on the relevant night. Bellman therefore intended to persuade Leike to speak in a newspaper interview about the difficult period he was going through and to mention that he planned to spend time alone at a particular secluded place. The interview would present him as an accessible target while allowing the Kriminalamt to arrange a trap.

Leike’s disappearance removes the intended lure before the plan can be carried out. Kaja tells Harry that the operation is no longer possible; the conversation does not report that Leike agreed to the interview, that the location was selected, or that the sting was ever launched. His absence thus changes the police strategy rather than producing an encounter with the suspected killer. Bellman’s proposal had depended on Leike’s cooperation and a controlled appearance in public, but neither can be relied upon once he cannot be found.

Iska Peller as the Alternative

Bellman’s next proposal is to use Iska Peller instead. She is in Australia and, according to Kaja, is under police protection. Bellman knows that Harry has been in contact with Neil McCormack and wants Harry to persuade Iska to return and serve as bait. The change makes the practical consequence of Leike’s disappearance explicit: the police do not simply suspend the operation, but seek another person whose presence might draw the suspected murderer out.

Kaja says Bellman is applying the same kind of pressure he used previously, though the exchange does not specify the pressure in detail. Her request places Harry between Bellman’s plan and the woman being asked to take Leike’s place. The disappearance therefore carries a second consequence beyond the failed search: it shifts the proposed risk to Iska and makes Harry’s involvement part of the effort to revive the sting. The evidence leaves Leike’s whereabouts unresolved; the immediate outcome is a change of target, not his recovery or a completed operation.