The young people who had seen the executions were running in all directions.
The crewman on the boat shouted ‘Christ, let’s get out of here,’ and tried to put the Thorbjørn in reverse.
The killer did not hurry. He walked steadily, following the biggest group of fleeing youngsters.
It was 17.22. He had been on the island for five minutes. He had plenty of time. The island was not large. The water lay glinting like a weapon of mass destruction. They were trapped now. He only had to scare them a little and they would throw themselves into the water and drown.
That was the way he had visualised it.
As the adrenalin pumped round his body he was suffused by a feeling of calm. His will had triumphed over his body. The barrier was down.
Lara had heard a bang. And then another. Then several more in rapid succession. She had been standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom block at one end of the campsite. The bathroom floor was warm to her numb feet. She had really only packed clothes for sunny weather and was so cold. She had taken off her sopping wet top and changed into a dry one, and was checking if it looked all right when she heard the loud reports.
Lara was born to the sound of gunfire. It was a part of everyday life in Erbil in the 1990s. She had been five when the family fled, from the bullets, the explosions, the tears of those left behind. Now that dreadful sound was here. Here.
Terrified screams cut through the air. She ran out to see what was happening. Outside, people were rushing past.
Where was Bano?
They had gone back to the tent together after the meeting. Lara wanted to stay near her elder sister. They had rung their parents from the tent and Mustafa had tried to reassure them. ‘A bomb in Oslo? Well, that means the value of our house goes up. Now everybody will want to live in Nesodden instead,’ he joked.
Bano had hung up her wet green top and black leggings to dry in the tent and put on dry jeans and the red Helly Hansen sailing jacket she had just bought with the earnings from her summer job. The jacket with the fluorescent yellow hood had cost almost a thousand kroner more than the model without a hood, but it was the one she wanted. It is important to look good if you want to be taken seriously, she had told Lara as she delightedly pulled on the wellies that Gro had borrowed earlier in the day.
The sisters had left the tent together. They had wanted to try to find out what was going on. What was all this about the bomb in Oslo? How bad was it? Then Lara had popped into the bathroom to change while Bano went straight on up to the café.
Bano always wanted to be where things were happening. And now there was a big crowd outside the café building. Of course Bano would go there.
‘Do you need me for anything, Lara?’ Bano had asked her outside the bathroom.
‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be right with you,’ her little sister replied. She had wanted a few minutes to pull herself together. Suddenly she found herself crying. Had al-Qaida reached Norway?
Then she heard the shots.
Lots of those streaming past were heading for the café, others were running in the opposite direction. Was Bano still there? Or was she one of those running away?
Lara stood in the doorway. She did not know any of those rushing in the direction of the building, nor any of those coming away from it. Suddenly, without really thinking, she turned and ran the other way. Alone, up a steep slope covered in scrub and broad-leaved trees, she ran. Into the forest, in among the pine trees.
She kept on running, in her stockinged feet, over the soft moss between the trees, down the hill where it began to slope towards the shore, further round Lovers’ Path before it got steep. Suddenly there were four boys with her, all running. They crossed the path and stopped at the water’s edge, close to the pumping station – a grey brick hut providing water to the island.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Lara.
Up at the top of the campsite, most of the Troms delegation was on its feet.
‘We’ve all got to take deep breaths,’ said Mari. ‘No need to panic.’
‘Stay calm, stay calm,’ said Viljar. ‘It’ll be all right.’
‘Bad joke, letting off firecrackers now,’ said Geir Kåre Nilssen.
‘Those aren’t firecrackers,’ said Simon.
Anders Kristiansen was listening to the communication radio and checking the tents at the same time. ‘Everyone out of their tents,’ he ordered.
Julie Bremnes from Harstad stood there, staring at Anders. It was the first time she had seen him so serious. He was alternately listening to the radio and taking the walkie-talkie from his ear to listen in the direction of the landing stage.
Simon, Anders and Viljar looked at each other, the comrades-in-arms, the three friends, the three musketeers of Troms.
‘Stay here,’ said Anders. ‘I’ll go and find out what’s happening.’
‘I’m coming too,’ said Brage Sollund. The boy who had attended the Labour Party Congress with Simon two years earlier was now among the seniors on the island.
Anders Kristiansen stopped. New messages were coming over the radio.
‘There’s something wrong here,’ he said in concern. Brage went off to find out.
Viljar was holding tight to his little brother Torje, who was wailing and wanted to run away. People were on the move all around them. The fourteen-year-old was kept there by his brother, three years his senior.
Mari ordered them to take each other’s hands. The Troms ring stood firm, in spite of all the people running past them and up into the forest.
‘Stay here,’ Mari instructed those who wanted to run. ‘The policeman said we were to gather in the middle of the island!’ That had been the last clear message over the radio. Mari was preoccupied with trying to keep control over her group and shouted, ‘No one’s to move. Stand still! Stand still! The police are here, there’s no need to panic.’
‘I want to go home,’ Torje whispered to Viljar.
As Brage came up to the café he saw two comrades fall to the ground. First one and then the other. Shot by a policeman! Brage dived into the bushes.
Then the uniformed man entered Mari’s field of vision. She was looking in the direction of the café building and saw a girl with dark hair and a grey AUF sweatshirt walking towards the man. She saw the girl say something to him, but could not hear what. When the girl was a few steps away from him, the policeman raised his pistol and shot her.
At that, Mari yelled ‘Run!’
‘Run! Run!’ she yelled to all those who had been holding hands.
Julie was standing between Simon and Anders, having decided that was the safest place.
‘Run!’ Simon shouted.
‘Just run! Don’t look back!’ cried Anders.
Breivik opened fire on them with the rifle, from a range of thirty or forty metres.
The bullets scorched towards them at eight hundred metres a second. They splintered the trees, smashed into the trunks, hit bodies, a foot, an arm, a shoulder, a back. The young people stumbled, ran on, vanished among the trees.
Back at the campsite Gunnar Linaker, the king of keepers, was lying by a tree stump with his face pressed to the grass. The shot had entered his shoulder and gone through to the back of his head.
Eirin Kjær from Balsfjord tried to drag him with her. He was breathing heavily, very heavily, but she was not able to make any contact with him and she was not strong enough to pull him along.
I shouldn’t have left Gunnar, I should have brought him with me, Eirin thought as she ran.
Once the campsite was empty, Breivik strode over to Gunnar and shot him in the neck. The bullet entered the back of his skull on the right-hand side and exited through his right temple. He lost consciousness. But his heart went on beating.