‘No, don’t do that,’ she had answered in a flat voice. ‘I’ll get myself home.’
Everything in the room was smooth and shiny. It was all ironed and pressed and polished. She pulled aside the cover, threw out the scatter cushions and lay down under the quilt. A soft, clean, warm quilt. That was when she broke down. She simply could not bear it.
To lie under the lovely quilt, while Simon was left lying out there, alone in the rain.
‘There is only me,’ he had said.
That was while Håvard Gåsbakk was still sitting astride him. It was a little after half past six in the evening. His body was pressed against the damp ground. His nose was in the wet grass, in fresh leaves, earth and moss. With his head bent to one side, he carried on talking.
‘The third cell has still not been activated This is the start of hell! It’s going to get worse.’
His voice was hard, militant.
Worse than this? Gåsbakk shivered. He reported over the radio that a nationwide alert should be issued, warning of a further attack.
Breivik looked up at Gåsbakk. ‘I can tell you ninety-eight per cent, but I want to negotiate about the last two per cent.’
‘You’ve said enough. Head down!’ said Gåsbakk. He could hear the others in the team calling for medical packs and giving details of the dead and wounded.
‘This is a coup d’état,’ said the man lying beneath him, bound hand and foot.
Gåsbakk had to keep the man down and quiet, that was his task, not to negotiate with him.
He heard a thin voice, painful cries.
A little boy emerged through the trees. A dark-skinned teenager with blood on his chest held him by the hand. The child was sobbing. ‘I want my dad, I want my dad!’
The man on the ground was breathing heavily. The chemical effect of all the stimulants was wearing off, but he was still high on what his own body was producing. He was high on the murders he had committed, the hormones it had released in him.
At times he coud not get enough air into his lungs and started hyperventilating, lying there on the ground between the schoolhouse and the southern tip of the island.
After half an hour or so, one of the Delta officers took over the apprehended man. Gåsbakk ran to the main building to help with the rescue work.
‘What shall we do with the dead bodies?’ came the question.
What should they do with the dead bodies?
Gåsbakk looked around him.
‘Pull those on the shoreline up far enough to stop them floating out into the water, the others can stay where they are,’ he replied into the radio.
Three men had arrived from the Organised Crime Section, Special Operations. Their most important task was to find out whether further attacks could be expected. It was vital to stop any further loss of life.
The initial interviews would be carried out on the island. Transporting Breivik to Oslo before the island was secured, before the rescue operation was complete, would tie up too much manpower.
Headquarters were set up in the white wooden building above the landing stage, where the camp administration and Mother Utøya had been based. This was where the AUF leader had been sitting to follow the TV news when the first shots rang out, three hours earlier.
Victims were still lying wounded on the island when two policemen from the emergency response unit brought the prisoner up the grassy slope to the HQ.
A short set of stone steps led up to the building. Wide, safe steps of old granite. Just beside them in the grass lay three bodies. Monica and the two security guards, fathers of the small boys who were now calling out for their dads.
The three interviewers stood waiting for Breivik outside the building. It was a quarter past eight when they took over his supervision from Delta, about an hour and a half after he had been apprehended. The Delta men also handed over a mobile phone and a jacket badge with a skull and crossbones on it. Marxist Hunter, the badge said. The lead interrogator unfastened the handcuffs keeping the killer’s hands behind his back and cuffed them in front instead. ‘You might just as well execute me here on the ground floor,’ said Breivik when they ordered him upstairs.
‘You’re not going to be shot. We’re going to talk to you,’ said the lead interviewer.
Breivik looked at him.
‘I’m going to die anyway,’ he said, and explained that he had taken a great number of chemical substances. He was dehydrating and would die within two hours if he did not get something to drink.
They took him up to the first floor and put him in an armchair. In the room were a table, a large sofa, several armchairs and a few two-seater sofas. Breivik was given a bottle of fizzy drink.
The interviewers took a sofa each.
‘You are suspected of murder. You are not obliged to explain yourself to the police, and you can—’
Breivik interrupted. ‘That’s okay. I can explain myself. In broad terms.’
He sat facing the table with his cuffed hands in his lap.
‘I have sacrificed myself. I have no life after this. I may very well suffer and be tortured for the rest of my life. I shall never get out. My life ended when I ordained myself into the Knights Templar. But what is it you actually want to talk to me about? I’m surprised they haven’t sent the secret services to interrogate me.’
‘What were you trying to achieve here today? And is anything else going to happen?’
‘We want to take power in Europe within sixty years. I am a commander of the Knights Templar. Our organisation was set up in London in 2002 with delegates from twelve countries.’
He stressed that they were not Nazis, and that they supported Israel. They were not racists, but they wanted political Islam out of Europe. It could be called a conservative revolution. ‘But I’ve written a fifteen-hundred-page manifesto on this, I can’t explain it all now,’ he said.
‘Is there anything else on the island?’
‘No.’
‘Explosive charges? Weapons?’
‘No, that’s over and done with.’
‘Your car on the other side, is it booby-trapped?’
‘No, but my shotgun’s in there.’
‘Are there others here apart from you?’
‘No,’ he said, but suddenly thought better of it. ‘There’s something else, but I won’t tell you what, or where it is. I’m willing to negotiate with you. I want a proper arrangement, with something in return for the information.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘If you want to save three hundred lives, then listen to me carefully. But I would really have preferred to negotiate with the secret services.’
‘Tell us what you know. Lots of innocent lives have been lost today,’ said the interrogator.
‘I wouldn’t exactly call these innocent. They are extreme Marxists. Marxist spawn. It’s the Labour Party, the youth wing. They’re the ones with the power in Norway. They’re the ones who have presided over the Islamisation of Norway.’
‘Will any more lives be lost?’
‘Of course. This is only the beginning. The civil war has started. I don’t want Islam in Europe, and my fellow partisans share my views. We don’t want Oslo to end up like Marseille, where Muslims have been in the majority since 2010. We want to fight for Oslo. My operation has succeeded one hundred per cent, which is why I’m giving myself up now. But the operation itself is not important. These are just the fireworks.’
He looked down at his hands. There was a bit of blood on one finger.
‘Look, I’m hurt,’ he said. ‘This will have to be bandaged up. I’ve already lost a lot of blood.’
‘You’ll get no fucking plasters from me,’ muttered the policeman who was taking messages between the interview room and the room next door, where they were in contact with the staff in Oslo.