Copenhagen Police Department

Copenhagen Police is presented through its crime operations unit and its use of criminal infiltrators to penetrate organized crime. Its methods give officers access to criminal networks, but they also depend on concealed identities, curated records, and information withheld even from other investigators. The recruitment and exposure of the infiltrator known as Carsten show both the operational value of that system and the danger that one source’s identity can place other sources in jeopardy.

Crime Operations and Infiltration

Jacob Andersen identifies himself as belonging to the crime operations unit in Copenhagen, which he describes as the Danish counterpart of homicide. He contacts Ewert Grens to find out whether Grens is leading the investigation into the killing at Västmannagatan 79. Andersen’s approach makes clear that Copenhagen Police is not simply passing along routine case information: he is assessing who controls the investigation and whether that person can be trusted with a covert source’s identity.

That source is Carsten, the operational name for Jens Christian Toft. Andersen describes him as one of the unit’s best infiltrators. A Danish citizen raised in Sweden, Toft had convictions for aggravated assault, perjury, and extortion, and had served two years in D Block at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen before Copenhagen Police recruited him. The account explicitly presents his criminal past and time in custody as part of the route into police work, not as evidence that he entered the agency as a conventional officer.

Copenhagen Police trained Toft, supplied him with a background, and paid him to initiate deals with major organized-crime figures. The range of targets described includes the Hell’s Angels, the Bandidos, Russian, Yugoslavian, and Mexican groups. His contact with the Polish organization Wojtek was not a single encounter: the Västmannagatan deal was his third initiated deal with that group. The breadth and repetition of these assignments suggest an operation designed to place a source across criminal networks, while the specific details establish Toft’s continued access to Wojtek.

Cover, Records, and the Wojtek Operation

The agency’s preparation of Toft involved more than giving him an alias. Andersen says Copenhagen Police trained him and gave him a background credible enough to support his work among organized-crime figures. The novel’s account of police practice later broadens this picture: criminal backgrounds and police records can be used to construct plausible identities, and information may be altered to make those identities work. That closing account describes police use of criminal sources in general; it should not be mistaken for a separate, detailed account of every step taken by Copenhagen Police in Toft’s case.

The surrounding prison operation shows how a fabricated criminal identity can acquire force through documents and social recognition. After Piet Hoffmann enters Aspsås Prison, he positions himself where the other prisoners will see him and makes a deliberate show of occupying another inmate’s familiar chair and cards. His Wojtek associates, Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, have already discussed his arrival and helped circulate copies of criminal-record, intelligence, prison, and sentencing material obtained through Stefan’s lawyer. The documents help establish Hoffmann’s standing among prisoners, while his conduct supplies the public performance that paperwork alone cannot provide. This is a parallel strand of the novel’s undercover plot, not an action directly attributed to Copenhagen Police.

Secrecy and the Risk to Other Sources

When Grens asks about the suspected source, Andersen initially refuses to identify him. He explains that disclosing an informant before certainty would be unnecessary and dangerous. In the later meeting, he makes the stakes explicit: if it becomes known that Carsten worked for Copenhagen Police, other infiltrators whom Carsten had recommended and supported for Wojtek might also be killed. The source’s value to the operation is therefore inseparable from the risk that exposure could spread through his criminal relationships.

Andersen’s secrecy shapes the meeting itself. He first withheld information over the telephone because he wanted to establish whom he was speaking to and whether Grens could be trusted. He then sets a strict boundary around what is shared in person, insisting that the conversation stay within the room. Grens objects that this cloak-and-dagger approach interferes with other investigations. Their disagreement captures a structural conflict: protecting sources may preserve an infiltration network, while restricting information can obstruct ordinary police work and complicate investigations into serious crimes.

Wider Institutional Context

The novel places the Copenhagen operation alongside a broader account of police reliance on criminal informants. Its closing factual coda attributes the long-running use, denial, and concealment of such sources to the Swedish Police Service. It says that crimes have been marginalized so that other crimes can be investigated, and that some inquiries and trials have proceeded without correct information. Those claims establish a wider institutional context for the novel’s treatment of undercover work; they are not presented as findings about Copenhagen Police specifically.

The contrast matters. Copenhagen Police is shown directly recruiting and deploying Toft, while the larger critique concerns the costs of concealed informant systems: criminal identities are made credible, source information is kept from investigators, and the pursuit of one crime can distort the handling of another. Through Toft’s exposure and the threat to the infiltrators connected to him, the organization’s covert effectiveness appears inseparable from its vulnerability to secrecy’s consequences.