Fidel Lae

Fidel Lae is a dog breeder whose apparently legitimate kennel hides a trade in prohibited Argentine mastiffs. A sale connects him to Hugo Nestor and the criminal world around him; later, a stranger confines Lae at his own farm, where he becomes a witness to Nestor’s fate. His ordeal leaves him able to report what happened but unable to provide a useful description of the man who held him, making him both a source of evidence and a measure of its limits.

The kennel and its two businesses

Lae runs a kennel on a farm where he relies on sight to notice approaching cars: new vehicles make little noise, and only favorable wind might carry the sound of tires on gravel or a revving engine. For other visitors and animals, he trusts the dogs as an alarm system. His official business is the breeding and sale of nine Dobermanns. Seven are female and produce litters each year; the puppies are microchipped, insured against latent defects, and registered with the Norwegian Kennel Club.

The other business is hidden farther into the woods. There Lae keeps three unregistered Argentine mastiffs, a breed banned in Norway and several other countries. The Dobermanns are frightened of them. Lae gives the mastiffs names containing the word ghost and sells their puppies for 120,000 kroner. Their rarity and reputation as effective attack dogs, together with buyers’ indifference to the law, help sustain the high price. Lae has moved their enclosure deeper into the forest, away from the farm’s ordinary activity.

Connections to Nestor’s operation

When a prospective buyer asks for a dog, Lae initially offers to discuss his Dobermanns only after receiving references. The man clarifies that he wants an Argentine mastiff and names Gustav Rover as his reference. Lae recognizes Rover as the motorcycle mechanic with a gold tooth, who had previously visited with Nestor to buy one of the illegal dogs. The new buyer says the dogs are intended to watch Belarusian cleaners and stop them from running away. Lae opens the gate, reasoning that the visitor cannot be a police officer: as he understands it from his lawyer, police cannot entrap someone by provoking an illegal sale and thereby compromise their case.

This transaction places Lae’s concealed business in direct proximity to Nestor’s criminal enterprise. His kennel does not merely sell an illicit breed to private enthusiasts; it supplies a means of controlling people. The distinction between the farm’s registered trade and its forest enclosure therefore mirrors a wider division between lawful appearance and criminal use.

Captivity and the attack on Nestor

A later visitor overpowers Lae before he can position his rifle. The man throws him to the ground, points a gun at him, and locks him inside an empty cage. He takes Lae’s phone, keys, and wallet, but leaves water and four boxes of raw dog food. From the adjacent enclosure, Ghostbuster watches. The mastiffs’ barking and howling answer Lae’s cries, while the remoteness of their enclosure prevents anyone from hearing or seeing him.

More than a day later, Lae recognizes the voices of the stranger and Nestor. By then he has been confined for over twenty-four hours, has eaten little, and is cold and exhausted. He sees the stranger return across the moor, dragging a suitcase with a living person inside. Nestor is brought to the gate with his hands tied behind him and his feet held close together to keep his balance. Lae’s enclosure becomes the setting from which he witnesses Nestor being brought to the mastiffs.

Discovery and limits of his testimony

Lae is eventually found after police locate his phone on top of the gate, apparently left where it could be traced. A search of the house does not find him. A police dog then leads officers toward the forest and the hidden enclosure. Lae has been locked up for thirty-six hours. He tells police that the killer threatened him with a gun, took his belongings, and confined him in the neighboring cage; he has seen what happened to Nestor.

The experience leaves Lae unable to stop talking, but it does not give him a clear identification. He cannot provide a proper description of the killer. Simon hears that witnesses often fail to remember the faces of people who threatened their lives. Lae’s testimony thus establishes the circumstances of his captivity and his connection to Nestor, while the central identifying detail remains unavailable.

Narrative significance

Lae’s role is brief but consequential: the illegal dogs he breeds become part of the criminal machinery surrounding Nestor, and his farm becomes the place where that machinery turns against Nestor himself. His captivity also exposes the practical vulnerability of a witness isolated beyond the reach of ordinary help. The contrast between the kennel’s documented, registered business and the hidden mastiffs deep in the woods gives Lae’s character a precise narrative function: he stands at the boundary between respectable commerce and covert violence, and his account helps investigators approach the truth without resolving every uncertainty.