One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (48 page)

The old sheriff rang Gunnar back. ‘It’s serious,’
he said. But he had nothing more to tell them.

The sheriff had been putting things straight in the Salangen community for forty years, handing out speeding fines and clamping down on illegal fishing, enforcing the snowmobile ban on the mountain, upholding law and order ever since local residents and asylum seekers had clashed at the end of the 1980s.

Now he knocked on the door. ‘I thought I
ought to come,’ he said, standing on the doorstep. ‘In case there’s anything I can do to help.’

He was going to try ringing some other direct lines, not those listed on the screen, and he would be on hand if they needed him for anything.

But all the lines were jammed.

Astrid, the girl who had lived next door to them in Upper Salangen, turned up too. She was three years older than Simon and
had played with him since he was four years old. Astrid was always the director when they performed their New Year revue and pretty much counted as an older sister. This Friday, she had just poured herself a glass of wine and sat down in front of the television when she saw the report of the shooting on Utøya. She got straight in the car and drove to Heiaveien.

Relatives arrived, neighbours,
friends. Everyone at the birthday party the Sæbøs were meant to be attending came through the door. They could not have any kind of celebration until Simon had rung to say everything was all right.

A newsflash ran across the TV screen. Some of the surviving youngsters said that far more had died than had been officially reported. As many as thirty or forty, estimated one AUF member.

Hearts in
the living room began to race and hammer.

Every second Simon did not ring was a second of pain. The minutes soon became unbearable.

Someone made coffee and put out the cups. The birthday guests had brought some of the cakes.

A heavy pall of anxiety hung over the light living room.

The sun’s rays were still shining through the big picture windows facing the fjord. The sun would not set that
night, just move westwards along the horizon.

Tone had disappeared. It was a long time since anyone in the living room had seen her.

They found her in the little utility room that was mainly used for drying clothes. She was sitting there on the floor, rocking back and forth.

‘Not my Simon. Not my Simon. Not my Simon!’

Tone was heedless of anything beyond herself. The pain was just too greedy;
fear had gripped her. She had lost the use of her arms and legs, and was nothing but a heap on the floor. She could only conjure up a single image. Simon, a happy Simon, when she gave him a hug and two kisses at the airport.

Gunnar was talking to the police. He looks just like normal, thought Astrid. His voice was clear, never hesitant. He held the phone to his ear and turned to the window.

Then she saw his back. His shirt was soaking wet, with huge sweat rings under the arms.

Gunnar was pacing to and fro, from the TV to the veranda for a smoke, and then back again. Tone couldn’t be left sitting there on the floor alone, some of them thought. They helped her up. She walked stiffly, moving mechanically with the support of two friends. She went out to Gunnar and asked for a cigarette.
The only way to breathe was to smoke.

The fjord was twinkling in the evening light. The mountains behind were reflected on the water’s surface.

A car suddenly came into sight on the main road. ‘It’ll go off the road!’ said someone who was standing on the veranda with them.

The car was speeding along. It turned off the main road and up the steep driveway and pulled up on the open area outside
the house. The door was thrust open. Kristine, football player and trainee teacher, Simon’s girlfriend all the way through his teens, almost part of the household these past few years, was standing there on the gravel, looking up at Gunnar and Tone on the veranda. The girl was in floods of tears. She came rushing up the steps with a cry of anguish.

‘Simon’s dead! Simon’s dead! Simon’s dead!’

For a moment, everything went completely still in Heiaveien.

Then Simon’s mother collapsed onto the veranda floor.

*   *   *

Kristine had been sitting at home, gradually getting more and more desperate at not making contact with Simon, and had rung all his friends. Ten times, twenty times, the same numbers over and over again. Brage Sollund finally answered. He had been hiding in the thicket
he had thrown himself into after leaving the Troms camp to check what was happening. There he lay until the perpetrator was caught. He had not seen Simon himself, but he had heard what other people were saying.

‘Tell me what you know about Simon,’ said Kristine.

The words stuck in Brage’s throat. He mumbled something while he wondered what he could say. He had to give her some sort of answer.

‘You won’t be seeing Simon again.’

Kristine gave a shriek. ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

‘I didn’t see it happen, but Geir Kåre did…’

That was all Kristine remembered before she leapt into the car and drove to the Sæbø house.

Now she was sobbing. ‘We’ll never see Simon again,’ she cried.

‘He could have got it wrong,’ said Gunnar. ‘Maybe,’ he added.

They had also heard reports that Simon
was in hospital, that he had been rescued, that he had been shot in the foot. And after all, Brage had not seen Simon himself. Brage had been hiding somewhere else entirely.

But Simon’s mother, the powerhouse of family love, had been drained of all her strength and dragged herself into the bedroom.

Håvard had gone off into his room to be on his own. He sat there in bed with his laptop and went
into his elder brother’s Facebook page, where he wrote a message.

Simon! Come back home!!!!

*   *   *

Down at the water’s edge, Viljar had gone quiet.

He was lying in the foetal position. Completely still. He had stopped telling stories.

He had stopped singing, stopped cursing. His mumbling had also ceased.

There was no more sound coming from Viljar. The hood of his sweatshirt was red with
blood. There was something hanging from his eye socket.

Margrethe Rosbach was huddled up on the ledge with her eyes fixed on a single spot. Down by the rocks.

She could feel nothing, no grief, no fear. Simon is dead, and soon we all will be, she thought. The people who were shooting, who kept on shooting, would come back and kill them all. The shots were so regular, so loud. Margrethe had lost
her will to live; she did not bother to sit out of sight, she had given up. She had gone numb, up there on the rock ledge. Her phone kept lighting up.
Dad
, said the display, but she did not take his call.

It was over. This was the end.

Her last conversation with her father had finished before Simon fell. Simon had taken the phone out of Margrethe’s hand and said, ‘We’ve got to be quiet. We’ve
got to hide.’ Then he had put the phone down on the rock ledge. But he did not end the call. So her father in Stavanger had heard the two shots, two loud cracks, right in his ear. He had heard the screams. That was them being killed, he thought. One shot hitting Simon, the other Margrethe.

He did not know that one of them had taken both bullets.

A civilian boat with three heavily armed policemen
in it came in towards the cliff.

They’re going to shoot us now, thought Margrethe.

‘Police! Police!’ shouted the men.

The teenagers lying wounded on the shoreline thought, either we’re saved now, or we’re done for. There was no panic, nobody trying to flee, because if this lot were in league with that first man the odds against them were too great, the firepower too immense.

The men jumped
ashore.

‘Is anyone hurt here?’ they called, and immediately set about bandaging those who could be saved.

Margrethe rushed down to Simon.

How cold he was!

The jersey she had borrowed the night before had ridden up over his back, as had his waterproof jacket, which was almost over his head. She pulled down the fleecy top and tucked his jacket more tightly round him, turning the hood down carefully
so his face could be seen.

It was completely white. All the colour was gone. There was no blood. Nothing to indicate he had been shot. In the jacket and jersey there was just a small hole where the rifle shot had entered, and then a wound on his leg. It was as if he were asleep, and freezing.

Margrethe stroked his back, patted his shoulder. Put her arms round him. Clutched him.

Reality tore
into her like a claw.

He was dead. And she was saved.

He was dead, and she would live.

The policemen had quickly identified the dead. A boy floating in the water, with four shots to his back and stomach. Dead. Simon, hanging lifeless over a rock. Dead. Viljar, lying at the water’s edge with parts of his brain outside his skull. Dead.

Higher up the cliff, the three girls Breivik shot first.
Dead. One had celebrated her fourteenth birthday five days earlier. The second, who was fifteen, had just been chosen as a confirmation course leader at her local church, where she also sang in the choir. The third, a sixteen-year-old, had come with Margrethe from Stavanger and the two had shared a tent. The three girls all bled to death before the rescue team got to them.

The policemen worked
quickly and efficiently, concentrating on the youngsters they could save. Ylva, Eirin and Cathrine, their bodies riddled with bullets and splinters of bone and rock, were carried into boats. All three with severe internal bleeding.

*   *   *

‘No!’ Tonje Brenna cried as the police determined who was dead.

‘He was talking just now! He isn’t dead!’ The AUF secretary-general pointed at Viljar.
‘He was singing, not long ago.’

One of the rescuers squatted down by Viljar on the shoreline.

‘He can’t be dead!’ cried Tonje.

Viljar was lying limply in the water. The policeman detected something.

A weak pulse.

And then a sound, an almost imperceptible sound.

‘Here!’ he shouted. ‘There’s life!’

The man had specialist training in first aid and battlefield medical treatment; he had served
in Afghanistan and had many years’ experience. He produced a triangular scarf, which he worked under Viljar’s head. He carefully put parts of Viljar’s brain back into his head. He pieced together the bits of skull, paying meticulous attention so that no sharp corners went into the soft mass. He gently packed up Viljar’s head and knotted the scarf around it. With his brain in its proper place, Viljar
was carried to a waiting boat by some of the survivors.

Viljar came round with his head in someone’s lap in the middle of the Tyrifjord. He looked at those with him and asked faintly:

‘Where’s Torje?’

*   *   *

They called out to her. The other teenagers were already in the boat. It was the last one taking survivors from the cliff.

A policeman came over to Margrethe.

‘You’ve got to come
now.’

‘We can’t just leave him here.’

‘He’ll be looked after,’ said the policeman.

An armed officer had been positioned there to guard the place.

‘We have to take Simon with us!’

‘The dead will be picked up later.’

Simon was so cold.

‘I’m not going without Simon!’

‘The island hasn’t been secured yet. None of the living are allowed to stay here.’

In the end, the policeman dragged her away.
Simon was left hanging, as he had fallen, on the rock by the water. He had three dead girls above him, a dead boy at the water’s edge below him, and a policeman to look after him.

*   *   *

‘The injured first! The injured first!’

Lara, icy cold, sat on the shore between the steep slope and the pumping station. She was shivering after so long in the water. In her cavity in the limestone she’d
grown indifferent to everything, her head had drooped onto her chest and she was convinced she was going to be shot. She was too cold to care. But now … now they were saved.

Oh, how she needed Bano now. She wanted to be rocked, to be held, to be comforted. She needed to talk to her elder sister. Bano, who laughed at everything, who always found something good in even the worst things, who transformed
the ordinary into a fairytale. And fairytales always have a happy ending.

Suddenly she could not stop screaming.

She howled, she yelled, louder than everyone around her. All the strength she had left was channelled into sound.

She gasped for breath, and collapsed in exhaustion.

Then she got a place in a boat.

‘Don’t look towards the island,’ said the boat driver. ‘Look straight ahead, don’t
turn round!’

Some looked anyway, and screamed.

All along the shore lay young people, some halfway out of the water, others on the rocks. In some places, the rock was stained red. Bloody clothes lay abandoned. There were so many clothes, so many shoes. Left by those who swam for it.

‘I will never play
Call of Duty
again,’ said a boy in Lara’s boat.

They landed at Utvika Camping. On the beach,
people met them with blankets and quilts.

They know what has happened out there! Lara was abruptly returned to the real world. It had actually happened!

She asked everybody she saw if they had seen Bano. ‘Yes, she’s alive,’ one boy said. ‘I think somebody said they’d spoken to her.’ Another person thought they had seen her in a tent.

There were anguished cries, tears and panic. Some were in
shock, moving mechanically, their gaze empty. Some had to be lifted ashore, and lay apathetically where they were put down. Others were terrified of everyone; their eyes said, ‘Are you going to try to kill me, too?’

Up on the road, a line of cars stood ready, volunteers who drove the youngsters to the assembly point and then came back for more. But Lara did not want to leave until Bano was safely
ashore. She knew her sister could not have arrived yet, because Bano would have waited for her if she had got here first.

Finally, three of Lara’s friends made her come in a car with them. ‘Everyone’s supposed to assemble at Sundvolden Hotel,’ they said. ‘Bano’s probably there.’