Oslo Police Headquarters

Oslo Police Headquarters is the central institutional setting for the novel’s police work, where investigations are directed, interviews are conducted, and official authority is exercised. Its significance is sharpened by the contrast between the public face of law enforcement and evidence that criminal interests have penetrated the police itself.

Setting and Police Work

The headquarters, also called Politihuset, is where Arild Franck expects to meet the Commissioner. Before that appointment, Franck chooses to attend to the prison chaplain Per Vollan, whose stability he has begun to doubt, because he considers the case too important to risk a failure. The scene links the headquarters’ command-level business to the prison system and to Franck’s concern with controlling the case.

Investigative work also moves through the headquarters. After the killing of Vollan, Simon Kefas tells Kari Adel in their car on the way back to Police HQ that the case is being prioritized and assigns her to reconstruct Vollan’s movements during the forty-eight hours before his death, listing everyone he encountered. The location thus stands behind the practical coordination of the inquiry, even when the investigators’ conversation takes place elsewhere.

Investigations and Institutional Judgment

The headquarters is associated with the investigation of Sonny Lofthus. In a control room, an interview with Sonny is formally stopped at 13:04; the recording is switched off, and prison officers enter to remove his handcuffs and return him to Staten. The brief procedure presents police work as both recorded process and custody transfer, with the headquarters’ investigative machinery connected directly to the prison.

Simon also invokes the principle that an officer’s assessment at the scene can take precedence over instructions from officers far away. When an anonymous message prompts him to go alone, he reminds Pontius Parr of that training, ends the call, and prepares weapons and protective equipment in his car. The episode places professional judgment in tension with remote command: the headquarters represents the hierarchy from which orders may come, while Simon insists on the authority of the officer confronting events in person.

The Mole and the Police-Crime Connection

The headquarters’ institutional role is compromised by the long-running suspicion that someone inside the police force leaked information to the person controlling much of Oslo’s drug and sex trafficking. Simon tells Kari that the rumors had persisted without proof, and that the suspected criminal figure was known to the police as the Twin. The mystery is therefore not simply about failures to solve cases; it concerns whether the institution’s own information channels have been turned against it.

A diary later makes that suspicion more concrete. Its writer records that police officers repeatedly assumed there was one informant, while the truth was that two corrupt officers were working together. Their arrangement gave each an alibi when the other was active and helped keep both beyond suspicion. They describe having betrayed their principles by turning a blind eye to drug dealing, human trafficking, and murder. Their anonymous contacts with the Twin used separate Hotmail accounts on stolen computers taken from the evidence room, with messages and letters moved through concealed drops. The headquarters is implicated not only as the place where police discussed the mole but as the institution whose personnel, equipment, and access made the betrayal possible.

Public Authority and Exposure

The headquarters also represents the police’s public authority. After arrests connected to the trafficking investigation, Pontius Parr tells reporters that the case is an important step in the police’s fight against trafficking and credits Simon and his colleagues. His statement presents the investigation as institutional progress, while the broader evidence of compromised officers complicates any simple distinction between the police and the criminal networks they pursue.

Simon confronts Iver Iversen with the allegation that Iversen Property helped the Twin launder money from drug and trafficking activity in exchange for fictitious losses worth hundreds of millions of kroner. Iversen denies knowing the Twin, but Simon says he has evidence that they worked together. This confrontation extends the novel’s account of corruption beyond police personnel to financial relationships, showing why investigations associated with the headquarters must trace connections among officers, businesses, and organized crime rather than treating each offense in isolation.