In the evening he relaxed with the vampire series True Blood or an episode of Dexter, the show about a serial killer. It annoyed him that all these series he watched were so keen to promote multiculturalism, but ‘such is life for the time being’, he wrote.
Back in the early spring he had been struck by the number of creepy-crawlies on the farm. He could not stand them. Now they had bred and were more or less invading the farm. There must be colonies of spiders in the walls. One evening when he decided to treat himself to some sweets while he watched another episode, there was a spider in with the chocolate. He screamed. Spiders had crawled inside the gloves he wore when he was purifying his chemicals. ‘I freaked out… After that I started killing every little insect in view.’
Some of his friends had started talking about coming to see him. Magnus had wanted to drop by when he came to see his girlfriend, who was on holiday near by. Anders had been careful not to give his friends an address in case they just turned up. They would realise that something was going on. But on the other hand, he could not just sever all contact. ‘Complete isolation and asocial behaviour can also defeat the whole purpose if you end up losing the love for the people you have sworn to protect. Because why would you bless your people with the ultimate gift of love if every single person hates you?’ he mused in the log.
‘I’m in Oslo this weekend,’ Anders said when Magnus rang. ‘But why don’t you come at the end of July?’
It was clearly not a farmer who had moved in at Vålstua. The grass was never cut, a windowpane had come loose, smashed and been left on the ground, while two wood battens had fallen off the barn wall. Three trees had blown down as well. But he simply had no energy to keep up with repairs. He had more than enough to do creating destruction.
The neighbours gradually started to notice things. Why had he driven half the fertiliser straight into the barn? It was for spreading on the fields and was usually stored outside. What was more, he had put up a gate with a lock. When one of the neighbours commented on this, he said it was council regulations. That was strange, because nobody else had heard anything about the regulations. But life went on, people forgot, the year went on turning and summer came.
He started losing weight. His steroids were nearly all gone. He would have to go to Oslo for more. He could combine this with testing the route he had devised for the day of the operation. The second day of July, he took the E18 past Oslo and then the E16 towards Hønefoss. Before long he had the Tyrifjord on his left-hand side. He spotted an unobtrusive sign for the track to the island of Utøya. He drove down the steep hill, parked on the jetty and went over to the boat that was moored there. He had read on the AUF website that it was called the MS Thorbjørn, named after Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Labour Party Prime Minister.
He looked out over the sound. Until now he had only read about the island, seen pictures of it. Thought about it.
Now there it lay, green and peaceful.
He studied the old landing craft, considering whether bullets would penetrate its hull. He entered the coordinates into his GPS and familiarised himself with the roads in the vicinity. He also put in the coordinates of the nearby landing stage at Utvika. He called his destination points WoW1 and WoW2. If the police happened to stop him, he would say he was considering hiring Utøya to arrange a computer gaming conference there.
Back in Oslo, he went to the Elixia gym in Sjølyst, close to his mother’s flat. In its bright premises with big windows and a view over a shopping precinct he went through his usual programme. He was surprised that he could lift as much weight as before he moved to Østerdalen; he had done hardly any training, after all. It must be the bomb manufacture that had kept him in shape. He felt exhilarated but then, halfway through the session, his head started to swim and he had to break off.
He bought enough anabolic steroids for twenty more days. He favoured Winstrol, a synthetic derivative of the hormone testosterone. He knew it was doing his guts no good and he felt particularly concerned about his liver. Later that evening he took his mother out for dinner at an Indian restaurant. He said he was worried about liver damage. His mother found that an odd thing to be anxious about. Hadn’t he turned very strange all round recently? Strange and stressed.
‘There are spiders seeping out of the walls up there,’ he told his mother over the Indian meal. ‘They’re in my bed, they’re everywhere.’
‘If you clean and vacuum properly,’ his mother said, ‘you’ll soon get rid of them.’
‘The place is full of beetles, spiders and other flying and crawling things,’ he went on. A spider-ridden hell.
‘Well in that case I don’t think it’s worth ten thousand kroner a month,’ his mother replied. She was surprised at how worked up it made him to talk about the insects. A bundle of nerves, that was what he had become. It was very strange; she had imagined life on the farm would calm him down. He had told her how beautiful it was up there, and that he had a lovely view of the Glomma.
Suddenly he looked sad.
‘I’ve grown so ugly,’ he said to his mother. ‘Look at my face!’
‘But you look normal.’
‘No, I’ve got ugly,’ he whimpered. He said he was thinking of having plastic surgery. At the very least, he wanted veneers on his teeth.
Anders paid and drove his mother home. They had a cigarette on the balcony.
‘Don’t stand so close to me,’ he said suddenly. ‘People might think I’m retarded.’
It sent a shiver through her. He had said something similar once before, when they were walking along the street together. He had asked her to walk a few steps behind him, so people would not think he was mentally defective. And when the owner of Vålstua came to the flat in Hoffsveien for the signing of the tenancy agreement he had asked her to go out so the man would not think he lived with his mother.
They finished their cigarettes. He did not stay over.
It was a light night. He left Oslo and drove back to the farm.
He had grown more aggressive since running out of steroids. It was a state he would be glad to recreate if the need arose, because it seemed to suppress fear very efficiently. He asked himself how he could manipulate his body into it. ‘I wonder if it is possible to acquire specialised “aggressiveness” pills on the market. It would probably be extremely useful in select military operations, especially when combined with steroids and ECA stack…! It would turn you into a superhuman one-man army for two hours!’ he wrote.
The next day he dug up the Pelican case, which he had buried in the woods in a spot plagued by mosquitoes where nobody would want to stay for long. With the car full of weaponry he drove back down the drive to Vålstua and waved to his neighbour, who had just started to harvest the crop of timothy and clover.
On the days that followed, he got his equipment ready. He replaced the hollow-tipped bullets with lead-tipped ones – ‘the most suitable for the purpose of inflicting maximum damage to vermin’, because the hollow tips did not always expand as they were supposed to. He also packed a case of the clothes he would be wearing. He had got hold of a long-sleeved compression top from a sportswear supplier and sewn a police badge onto it. The black top had some yellow stitching, but he went over it with black felt pen. He discovered he had already packed in his case a load of Winstrol, the steroids known as Russians. Good, that meant he had more than he had thought. He also had some ECA stack in there, a combination of ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin. ‘I realise that if I am apprehended with all this equipment I will have serious problems trying to explain the intended usage…’