‘I’ve bought a crate of beer back home in Tromsø and we’ll get stuck into that as soon as you’re out of here,’ said Martin. ‘And Tuva says we can try our luck with all her friends.’
Martin gave a little sob. He kept his eyes fixed on Viljar’s face as he talked. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He said whatever came into his head, sharing gossip and quoting everything from rap lyrics to poetry.
‘You can take the snowmobile out on Svalbard, Viljar! Or do you want to go to New York? Hero at night, hero all the day, all the way to morning, Viljar!’
But Viljar did not move.
Rays of light entered the room.
It was a lovely morning and it was going to be a fine day.
Viljar lay in his bed, pallid.
Then Martin started singing. Christin and Sveinn Are had gone quiet. Hope was ebbing away.
Martin sang, very quietly.
Martin’s voice cracked, but just as he was taking a breath to carry on a frail voice was heard from the bed.
Viljar opened his one eye. He looked at them and smiled.
PART TWO
Narcissus on Stage
The cell was in the basement of the Law Courts.
He sat on the bench waiting, with armed men standing guard outside.
They had picked him up from Ila prison early that morning, unlocked his cell door and brought him down to the prison garage. There they had asked him to get into a white van.
To the uninitiated, it looked like an ordinary van, not unlike the one he had hired the previous year and blown up outside the Tower Block in the government quarter.
In the van they fastened him to the seat with handcuffs and restraining belts. It was an armour-plated vehicle. He could not see out. With a number of police officers around him, he sat strapped for the half-hour that it took to reach Oslo. Upon arrival the driver steered the van straight down into the garage beneath the courthouse. From there they led him into the building and along several corridors, then locked him into the waiting cell in the basement, a security cell into which he was not allowed to take anything.
That was where he was sitting now, dressed in a dark suit with a freshly ironed shirt and copper-coloured tie.
His defence team had come down to greet him before they went back up to their room behind the main courtroom on the first floor. Now he was alone. He was waiting for someone to come and fetch him. He was waiting for the curtain to go up.
The media ban had been lifted in the middle of December, so he knew in detail what the courtroom looked like, who the professional judges were, the lay judges, the prosecutors, the public advocates. He had prepared himself well and read everything that he could find on the case. He had taken a particular interest in the debate about whether he was sane and accountable for his actions.
For a long time, he found it entertaining. In fact, at first he did not take it entirely seriously and did not really relate to what the forensic psychiatrists had concluded. He was going to use the trial as a stage on which to perform, come what may. His operation had reached its third phase.
The clock in room 250 showed half past eight. Its face was grey, its hands of pure aluminium. The room was brand-new. But everything in it was muted, minimal, toned down.
The judges sat on a dais that was raised above floor level, though not by much. At their bench, made of knotless maple, were six high-backed black leather chairs. The two appointed judges would sit in the middle. Three lay judges and a reserve would be seated beside them. The appointed and lay judges would all vote on the final verdict.
Behind the chairs were low shelves of light wood that would soon be filled with thick ring binders containing the case documents. The judges would be able to turn round in their seats to find what they needed.
On the grey wall behind the judges hung the Norwegian coat of arms, a golden lion holding an axe on a red background. It was the sole element of colour in the room.
In front of the judges, at floor level, was a smaller desk with four chairs behind it. Places for the forensic psychiatrists. Their seats faced the public, not the defendant. It would be their faces that many would try to read in the coming weeks.
Most other issues were already clear. He had admitted to the actions, albeit not to any guilt, but that was a formality. If he were ruled to be of sound mind, he would get the most severe sentence the law could mete out to him, twenty-one years, with the possibility of extension if he presented a threat to society.
Or would he be held not accountable for his actions and be forced to undergo treatment instead?
Was he mad, or was he a political terrorist?
At an angle to the judges’ bench, at floor level, was the prosecution bench and behind it places for the coordinating public advocates. The defendant was to sit facing the prosecution, between his defence team. Behind them was a bulletproof glass wall, and behind that were some seats for the public. Right behind the back row was the only window in the room, covered with bomb-proof foil. Pale grey blinds with a slight sparkle to them covered the frosted glass. They would remain closed for the duration of the case.
In the centre of the floor, between all the parties, stood a small desk with three sides and a chair. The table section could be raised or lowered. Those giving information or evidence could choose whether to sit or stand.
It was compact, everything felt close. The victims appearing as witnesses would be sitting only a few metres from the perpetrator, in the same seat where he himself would be cross-examined.
The room was divided in half lengthways. A low glass door, kept closed, separated the participants in the trial from the public, who were to sit in long rows running the length of the room. The Law Courts had tried to fit in as many seats as possible and the rows were so tightly packed that one could only edge along them. The sole access to most of the seats was via the central aisle. It would be impossible to leave the room unnoticed except during a break. The first row behind the partition was reserved for the courtroom artists and the commentators from the major media outlets. Less important media groups were in the second row. Then came next of kin, the bereaved, survivors and other people affected, their escorts and the public advocates. The support group for the victims’ families and survivors had been allocated permanent seats, as had the leadership of the AUF. Other seat allocations would rotate throughout the trial. The two back rows were again for accredited press. Here there were electrical sockets and headset plugs for those requiring interpreters. From the interpreting booth, which had an unrestricted view of all the parties, there would be simultaneous translation into English, Kurdish or Georgian, depending on the media’s needs and the nationalities of the victims and their relatives.
The room had never been used before. It did not have a single scratch.
In August the previous year, twenty days after the terrorist attacks, the man in the waiting cell had met the first pair of psychiatrists. There was one woman and one man: cool, buttoned-up Synne Sørheim and heavy, ruddy-cheeked Torgeir Husby.