Gambling addiction

Simon Kefas’s gambling addiction—described as ludomania—makes private compulsion a point of institutional weakness. His share dealing breaches the rules of his work at the Serious Fraud Office, and the debt he incurs reaches into his marriage; Else’s forgiveness becomes the turning point after which he quits. The novel later places this history beside a more devastating bargain: Simon describes shame and self-loathing as a form of mental self-harm, and recalls how his alliance with the Twin led him to recruit and ultimately kill his friend Ab Lofthus.

The Addiction and the Investigation

When Kari asks Simon whether his departure from the Serious Fraud Office had anything to do with gambling, he first refuses to discuss it. Later, while driving with her toward the city centre, he explains that he had uncovered a money-laundering operation involving serious money and powerful people. Senior colleagues believed the inquiry risked exposing both Simon and the police to retaliation if it failed to secure a conviction. They feared that the suspects could fight back through the same system the police used.

Simon rejects the suggestion that he was removed simply for launching a controversial investigation. He says that he had a gambling problem, which he identifies by the technical term ludomania, and that he bought and sold shares. Although he insists that he never traded on information he possessed, he admits that the dealing still broke the rules. His position at the Serious Fraud Office made the violation especially damaging: his colleagues could use it against him, and Simon says they did. The addiction therefore does not merely sit beside his professional disgrace; it gives institutional opponents a concrete breach with which to discredit or sideline him.

Debt, Marriage, and Recovery

The addiction’s consequences persist after Simon says he has stopped gambling. When Else tells him that the treatment she needs costs more than they can afford, he begins to offer reassurance: they have no children, own their home, live frugally, and spend little. Else cuts through that confidence. They have no available money, and their house is mortgaged to the hilt. Simon recognizes that she has avoided naming the real burden: his gambling debt, still being paid off as a consequence of his past.

That exchange exposes a continuing cost rather than a resolved episode. Simon offers to find friends who will lend them the money, but Else points out that he no longer keeps in touch with those friends. The debt has affected more than their finances: the old reliance on borrowing and the distance from friends leave his promise to solve the problem sounding less secure than he intends.

Simon later recalls the moment that ended his gambling. He had secretly mortgaged their house and lost the money. Else did not leave, issue an ultimatum, or make him suffer through punishment; she stroked his cheek and told him she forgave him. The forgiveness brings his shame into direct confrontation with the thrill he had pursued in gambling, the charged interval in which everything seemed capable of being won or lost at once. He says he quit that day and never gambled again—not even for the price of a beer.

Honesty and Self-Understanding

Simon attributes his recovery not only to Else’s response but also to the agreement they made to tell each other everything. The combination of honesty and forgiveness changes his sense of himself: he discovers that he can exercise self-control and speak truthfully to another person, and describes this as restoring him as a man and a human being. The language of recovery is moral as well as behavioral. Quitting matters, but so does the capacity to acknowledge what he did and remain in a relationship after disclosure.

That experience also shapes Simon’s later approach to policing. He had once regarded criminals as notorious and incorrigible; after being forced to confront his own capacity for wrongdoing and change, he becomes willing to give people second chances, despite what his experience might otherwise have led him to expect. The novel presents this change as an uneasy gain from a damaging past: Simon’s addiction does not excuse his conduct, but his recovery complicates the distinction between a person’s wrongdoing and the possibility of reform.

From Compulsion to Complicity

Else’s account to Kari connects Simon’s private history to his criminal dealings with the Twin. Simon could communicate with the Twin, who did not know the real identities of Simon and Ab; information passed through calls, letters, and eventually a computer. Simon found it difficult to speak about the arrangement. He believed that he had sought shame, degradation, and self-loathing because they numbed another pain, turning the bargain into a form of mental self-harm.

The debt crisis facing Ab Lofthus and Helene gives that bargain a further consequence. When the banking crisis sent interest rates soaring, they were deeply in debt and feared losing their home. Simon went to Ab after striking his deal with the Twin and offered him a place in the arrangement. Ab first refused and threatened to report Simon to their superior. Simon then pressured him through his concern for his son, warning that the boy would pay for his father’s pride by growing up poor. Simon later hated himself for drawing Ab into the arrangement, even as Ab’s presence made him feel less alone.

That companionship did not prevent betrayal. When Simon realized that Ab might kill him to take the single position available with the Twin, he contacted the Twin and argued that Ab had to be eliminated because he knew about both of them. Simon killed his best friend before Ab could kill him. Else’s account makes this the worst thing Simon did: his addiction and the shame attached to it form part of a broader history in which he recruits another man, exploits Ab’s vulnerability, and then kills him to protect his own position.

Repentance and Lasting Consequences

Simon eventually stops being the police mole, although he could have continued. After Helene dies, he believes he has lost everything he could lose and no longer has anything to fear. He spends the rest of his life doing penance and making amends, relentlessly hunting down corrupt officers like the man he had once been. That work costs him friends and leaves him lonely; he regards the loneliness not as an injustice but as what he deserves.

The account of Simon’s gambling thus extends beyond the simple fact of quitting. Else’s forgiveness marks the end of his betting, while his promise of complete honesty gives his recovery a lasting form. Yet self-reform does not undo the harm he caused through his criminal bargain, most painfully his recruitment and murder of Ab. The same history that makes Simon more willing to believe others can change leaves him living with his own betrayal, trying to answer it through a life of pursuit and penance.