One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (54 page)

‘I hope that what I type isn’t going to be deleted at the end of every day,’ he said, and added that he also wanted access to Photoshop.

‘That has been noted,’ said the interviewer. ‘The practical matters to do with the PC will be settled in due course.’

‘No, I want this cleared up before I go on with the interrogation.’

‘This cannot be a negotiating session,’
said the interviewer. ‘Your requests have been passed on.’

‘In principle, all exchange of information is negotiation,’ replied Breivik. ‘And by the way, it would have been more appropriate for me to talk to someone with the authority to meet my demands. They are relatively modest, after all, but they are absolute!’

Twenty-four hours had passed since the bomb exploded. The government quarter
was cordoned off. The armed forces had placed heavily armed soldiers at the Parliament, the Royal Palace and other sensitive buildings. Oslo was in a state of high alert. Now there were helicopters in the air. The police’s top priority was to clarify whether there was any risk of further attacks.

‘Are there any explosives around that have not yet been detonated?’

‘In view of the fact that you
are unwilling to open negotiations, you should save that question for later,’ replied Breivik. ‘It’s not that I’m unwilling to explain, but I have to get something in return. If these modest demands are not met, I will do all I can to create complications, I will sabotage the trial, refuse legal representation and go sick.’

He showed them his plastered finger, which he feared would turn septic
if it was not attended to soon.

The interviewer tried again.

‘Is anyone else aware of your plans?’

‘Yes, but I can’t … This comes under the basic rules of the negotiation.’

The leader of the public prosecution came into the room to say that all the demands on the second list had been met. The police would arrange to collect his uniform, which he said was hanging in the wardrobe in his room.

Breivik turned to Lippestad and asked if he thought the police would keep their word.

‘They have said it, so one can rely on that,’ said the lawyer.

‘Well in that case we can go on,’ said Breivik, turning to the interviewer. ‘You can draw up a list of your questions and give it to me. Then you have to limit yourselves to the questions on the list.’

‘That’s not how we work here; you can’t have
my questions in advance,’ said the interviewer. ‘Now, I hope you are going to play fair.’

He gave in, and started to explain. About the planning. About the Knights Templar. The bomb. Utøya. ‘It would have saved time if you had read my manifesto. It’s all in there.’

He asked for cigarettes. Marlboro Gold. ‘I’ll be more cooperative if you get me those.’

They gave him the cigarettes.

He asked
if it was long until lunch. He said he would like pizza and cola.

These were brought. He ate with a good appetite.

After the meal break, the interviewer got straight to the point.

‘I want to know what happened and why.’

‘Are there Labour Party people observing this interview?’ Breivik pointed to the mirror glass.

‘The only people here are those directly involved in this interview,’ he was
told.

Breivik smiled. He smiled again when he was asked why he was smiling.

‘It’s a self-defence mechanism. People react differently, don’t they?’

*   *   *

While the interview was in progress on the sixth floor of police headquarters, the police were searching the flat in Hoffsveien and Vålstua farm. The interrogator wanted to know if police lives were at risk in doing this.

Breivik shook
his head. The only dangerous thing at Vålstua was a container of 99.5 per cent pure nicotine, he cautioned. Two drops could kill a person. They would have to wear thick gloves if they were opening it, and preferably a gas mask. It should be in a plastic bag on a shelf unit of chemicals, down at the bottom among a load of junk. The plan had been to inject nicotine into the bullets, he said, so every
shot would be lethal. But then he realised that would be against the Geneva Convention and abandoned the idea.

He drew a sketch map of the farm and marked where things were. That would make it easier for the police to find their way around.

‘It sucks to take human life,’ Breivik said suddenly. ‘But it sucks even more not to act. Now that the Labour Party has betrayed its country and its people
so categorically over many years, there’s a price to pay for that kind of treachery, and they paid that price yesterday. We know that before every election the Progress Party gets torpedoed. The media dehumanises the conservatives. They’ve been doing that ever since the Second World War: continuous abuse of the cultural conservatives.’

The Knights Templar consisted of extremely gifted individuals,
highly intelligent and highly potent, he explained. Those who had ordained themselves single-cell commanders were extremely powerful. The only problem with a single-cell structure was its limitation to the working capacity of one individual. ‘I mean, if one person has to process five tonnes of fertiliser, you have no idea how much hard work that is.’

Then he asked for a break to go to the toilet.

The interview veered all day between Breivik’s actual actions, his political universe and his wishes and whims. He could be complaining about the logistical problems that meant he did not have time to blow up the government quarter in the morning as planned, and thus also missed executing Gro Harlem Brundtland, only to say, ‘I feel really good. I’ve never been mentally stronger than now. I had
prepared myself for torture and so on, and I’m positively surprised that I haven’t had to suffer it. I have no negative thoughts now, only positive ones.’ In his cell, he had already planned how he could work out using simple objects such as a chair or a book, he said.

He was still a little high on chemical substances. The effect of the steroids on his body would not wear off for a couple of
weeks. ‘I’m biologically weak,’ he explained. ‘But I’ve compensated for that by working out.’

The interviewer produced a picture of Breivik in his full-length white protection suit with a hood, the one he had bought from the British professor of mathematics.

‘Oh, have you seen the other photos too?’ smiled Breivik.

‘This is the photograph we want you to tell us about.’

‘But the others are
much more cooler! Well okay, it’s Knights Templar Chemical Warfare and the photo shows the injection of biological weapons into the cartridge.’

‘I’m not even wearing gloves! I should have been!’ Breivik suddenly exclaimed. ‘Have you seen my film yet?’

The interviewer had not.

‘You ought to see it!’

He touched on his mother. ‘Her life is over,’ he said. ‘Because if the media call me a monster
her neighbours will too, and that means she can’t go on living. But this task is much more important than me, much more important than her.’

It was late evening by now. He turned to Lippestad. ‘You needn’t sit and listen if you don’t want to. If you, like, want to go home.’

‘I shall stay until the end of the interrogation,’ said the lawyer.

The question why was still to be answered.

‘If you
have that sort of pain in your heart, you know you have to inflict pain to stop the pain. But it felt absolutely awful. The first shot was the worst, directed at the biggest threat on the island … the one who was starting to get suspicious. If I’d had a choice, I would have skipped Utøya, it’s too dirty, because even though it’s extremely productive, as history is bound to show … it’s still a hideous
thing. It must be absolutely awful being a parent who’s lost a child. But on the other hand, it was their responsibility to make sure their child didn’t turn into an extreme Marxist working for multiculturalism. It’s…’

He looked at the interrogator. ‘It’s a nightmare that I don’t think you can understand until you’ve carried it out. And I hope you won’t have to experience it because it was sheer
hell. Taking another person’s life. They were so scared and screaming in terror. It’s possible they were begging for their lives. I don’t remember. They may have said, “Please. Don’t shoot.” They just sat there and didn’t do anything. They were paralysed, and then I executed them. One after another.’

Then he yawned. ‘But listen, you people, I’m exhausted now. I hope this interview won’t go on
for much longer.’

But Never Naivety

Why on earth had they lain down just here?

The thought ran through Danijela’s head.

It was early on Sunday morning; around eight o’clock. The island was quiet. No one was shouting orders, no one was screaming. The people there knew what they had to do and were focused on their work.

Danijela was on Lover’s Path. There were ten blankets lying on the ground.

Under them
were ten people. As a forensic technician Danijela was used to thinking like a detective. For what reason had the body ended up just here? Why was it lying like that? Had it been moved? How had death occurred?

They usually spent several hours examining a dead body; here they could allow themselves no more than half an hour. The dead were lying out in the open. The weather had turned warmer.

She was gathering evidence in a murder investigation, but the murderer had been caught and had admitted the murders. The case was pretty much solved.

In the course of Saturday they had examined around half of the dead and put them in the white body bags. Then the bodies were transported on the MS
Thorbjørn
back to the mainland, where black hearses were waiting to take them to the Institute of
Forensics. It did not have enough cold storage, so they had hired refrigerated containers.

From where Danijela was now, on Lovers’ Path, there was a clear view inland across the island, to the woods and the campsite. The path wound its way along the fence. Behind the wire netting the rocks dropped away sharply. On the wooded side of the path there was a clearing with a few pine trees dotted around
it.

She crouched down beside the dead. That was her working position, kneeling over the bodies. She looked up, and then she understood. Squatting down here, you had the illusion of being hidden. A low rocky outcrop rose about half a metre above the path. If you lay down behind it, you might think you were hidden.

That was how it must have been, she thought. They believed they could not been
seen.

She took off the first blanket.

Youngsters almost on top of each other, all together in a row along the narrow path. It pained her to see it.

First she took pictures of the whole group, then close-ups of each individual, from one side, then the other, from in front and from above.

She marked the location of the bodies with little flags in the ground. One flag at the top by the head,
one at the bottom by the feet. Later on, GPS coordinates would be made of the site. Everything had to be done accurately. The next of kin would be able to know: it was here, precisely here, that we found your child.

She started from the right. First there was a boy a bit away from the rest, with several bullet wounds.

Then two almost tangled together. A tall, powerfully built boy had his arm
round quite a small girl. Long dark hair protruded from her fluorescent yellow hood. The hair was wet. Her face was half covered. The forensic technician pulled the hood aside. All colour had drained from the face, the skin was shiny, smooth as ivory.

Danijela examined her wounds. One bullet had entered the back of her head and gone out through her forehead. Another shot had forced its way down
through her throat and into her body, where it lay hidden.

Danijela carefully noted everything down. The girl wore jeans, stuffed into a pair of dark green wellies.

Danijela gently lifted away the arm of the tall boy holding the girl with the ivory skin. Whereas the others on the path were in jackets and warm tops, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His hair was close-cropped, his face turned
to the side. Like the girl, he had two wounds to the head. In his pocket he had a walkie-talkie. It was switched off.

*   *   *

‘Mum, I’ve got to ring off now…’ Anders Kristiansen had told his mother that Friday afternoon. As a duty supervisor he had kept the two-way radio on. Messages were crackling in non-stop. ‘… because a policeman’s just arrived to brief us. In fact I can see him coming
over the hill. I’ll have to go. Bye Mum!’

That was the last Anders’s parents had heard from him. They had left Bardufoss early on Saturday morning, still knowing nothing about their son. Initially their elder son, Stian, was told that his brother was in Ringerike hospital, but it turned out not to be him after all. Stian was obliged to tell his parents they had been misinformed. He heard a scream
down the phone line. Gerd could not stop howling. Calm, steady Gerd.

‘My child!’

Gerd and Viggo could not face staying at the hotel with the other desperate, grief-stricken families at Sundvolden, so they stayed with Stian in Oslo. Some friends rang to comfort them, and said Anders was bound to be hiding somewhere. Perhaps he had swum to one of the little islands near by and was lying low there,
not daring to come out.

‘No, my boy wouldn’t be lying low,’ replied Gerd. ‘It wouldn’t be like him.’

A relation rang too. ‘This is a sign from God!’ said the devout Pietist. ‘Anders had to die to make you open your eyes!’ This member of the family said Gerd would have to find her way back to faith, the true faith. Losing her son was the sacrifice she had to make.

Gerd slammed the phone down.

It was Sunday, and time for church. The Kristiansen family had been invited to a remembrance service at the cathedral. They could not bring themselves to attend. Gerd did not want God mixed up in this.

*   *   *

The cathedral was full to the rafters. Outside there was a sea of flowers: roses, lilies, forget-me-nots. The city was in shock, the country in mourning.

Jens Stoltenberg was faced
with the most difficult speech of his life. There in the cathedral, he struggled to hold back his tears.