‘Who are you here for?’ she asked.
‘Simon Sæbø,’ said Gunnar, his voice giving way.
‘Oh, the one who saved so many!’ the Minister exclaimed.
‘What’s that?’ Gunnar gave her a quizzical look.
‘Yes, he was the one who helped people down from the path and gave away his own place!’ said the minister.
What? Had he sacrificed his own life?
Gunnar was bewildered. What was she saying?
A boy who could have been alive, but wasn’t. Is that what she was saying?
Had he chosen others’ lives over his own?
More people came up and told him the same thing, or variations on it.
That Simon had saved lots of people at the cliff’s edge.
A new sadness stampeded over them.
An unspeakable sadness.
He could have been alive! It was his own fault!
In Ullevål hospital, Viljar Hanssen was fighting for his life, while Gunnar Linaker, the goalkeeper of the Troms football team, had given up. That is, his body had given up. The king of keepers was still breathing when the police lifted him from the ground at the campsite, where he had been shot in the act of shouting ‘Run!’ to the rest of the Troms camp. He was still breathing when they took him down to a boat. On the way over the strait, his breathing stopped, but the rescue team got it going again. In the helicopter, they connected him to a respirator.
He was on the machine when his parents arrived from the airport. The doctor explained that if they took him off it, he would not live. The first shot had hit him in the back and gone on up the back of his neck and head, where it had expanded. The second had gone straight into the back of his head. He was knocked out by the first shot, the doctor said, but it had not penetrated the cerebellum, so he had carried on breathing. But now, there was no longer any blood supply to the brain.
‘It’s so unfair! It’s so unfair!’ cried his sister Hanne in the sterile hospital room. She had first recognised her brother by the tattoo on his leg when they were carrying him off the island, covered by a blanket.
His family all sat round him, saying goodbye. They had been asked to make some difficult decisions. It was left up to them to decide on the moment of his death.
That afternoon, his life-support machine was turned off.
But just before that, his heart was removed and would be transplanted into someone else’s body.
The three said a prayer.
Their grief was vast and black. But they were grateful that they had been able to say their farewells to Gunnar while he was still warm.
And that his heart would still beat.
In another wing, Viljar lay in a coma.
His mother had spent the whole night ringing round to hospitals all over Norway. She had rung places as far north as Trondheim. But nobody could give her the assurance she sought, that her son was with them and alive.
At Sundvollen, the others from the cliff had told them what they knew. They had seen Viljar shot in the head, straight in the eye, seen blood pour out and splinters of skull go flying. We’ve lost Viljar, his parents thought, but they didn’t say it out loud. They had Torje to think of.
At about two in the morning, Christin got through to one of the emergency numbers, and described Viljar’s injuries.
‘Your son is still on the island,’ said the man at the other end.
‘On the island?’
‘Yes, they haven’t brought the dead back over yet. I’m very sorry for your loss.’
Christin kept this to herself. It wasn’t true until she had seen him herself. Some hours later, around seven, her phone rang. A voice asked a question.
‘Has your son any distinguishing marks?’
‘A scar. On his neck. A burn. From when he was little.’
‘In that case he has been identified at Ullevål.’
‘Identified?’
‘That’s all I can say.’
‘Please tell me what you mean!’
‘He’s here. He’s alive at the moment.’
They were asked to come right away. ‘We can’t say what the situation will be by the time you get here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t say any more. We want you here when we tell you more.’
They raced to the car. Torje was exhausted, and fell asleep on the back seat. His parents focused on the road. There’s a sign here. There’s a bend here. There’s a junction here. They wound the windows up and down. Up and down. Up. And down. In an attempt to make themselves breathe.
They pulled up at the entrance to Ullevål hospital and ran in. They were taken to see Viljar in intensive care.
It was unreal. That was their child lying there. Their firstborn. The big brother. He lay deep within a white wrapping, with wires and tubes running into it. The information the hospital gave them was unambiguous: he is alive now, but you must be ready for anything.
The hours went by. In the afternoon the family was updated on the seventeen-year-old’s condition.
‘In all likelihood, he will survive the day.’
But the doctors could not say if Viljar would ever wake up.
And if he did, what sort of Viljar would he be?
On Utøya, the forensics teams had started their work. Recording and securing evidence. Everything was noted down on a pink form entitled post mortem.
One of the forensic technicians was Danijela Andersen, Håvard Gåsbakk’s partner. She had not kept the news turned on because of their two little children at home, so knew nothing until Håvard called her that evening. She had never heard him sound so upset. ‘It’s insane! Sick. There are lots of them dead. They’re children!’
Now she was taking over. Three teams divided the dead between them, working in pairs. Danijela and her colleague were to start with the ten who had been taken by boat to the mainland the evening before and were now laid out in the civil defence force’s tent. Kripos had issued the teams with a hundred boxes of labels, number tags, plastic strips, tape, blood-sampling kits, black tarpaulins and body bags. The white body bags had zip fasteners and two carrying handles.
The weather had improved. It had brightened up and also turned warmer. They had to work quickly.
‘Have you seen a dead body before?’ the experienced Kripos colleague asked her before they started.
She nodded.
They removed the first white wool blanket.
A young boy. They photographed him and recorded his details on the pink form. Where the bullets had gone in and out, what injuries they had caused, abrasions, wounds. They laid him in body bag number 1.
Then a couple of boys in their underpants, who were given the numbers 2 and 3. Others were in sturdy wellingtons, waterproof jackets, woollen jerseys.
As she worked, Danijela always took care to remember that this was a human being who had been alive. She did up the girls’ blouses if they had come open, pulled down a top if it had ridden up. From the moment she pulled aside the wool blanket to the moment she put them in the body bag, they were in her care. When she had finished, she stroked each one gently on the cheek. Finally, if necessary, she closed their eyes.
Halfway along the row she came to a boy with a lot of clothes on. Jeans, trainers, a windproof jacket, a jersey and a red and blue striped T-shirt. Or rather, no, it was white and blue striped, but now so soaked in blood that all the white parts had turned red.
Danijela rubbed a little of the dried blood off his face. He must have been a good-looking boy, she thought.