‘No, but everything points to it.’
‘What a bloody mess.’
The boy was crying. Having killed his substitute teacher he had sat down apathetically on a chair by the blackboard without knowing quite what to do next. He hadn’t thought this far on. Twice he had risen to his feet, once to look out of the window into the playground where everyone was running around in a frenzy, and once to overturn a table – an action without logic, yet one that caused his classmates at the back of the room to huddle even closer together, as though their terror could in some way be shared. Most held someone’s hand, all followed his every movement with wide and fearful eyes. He got up again, walked through the room and halted a couple of metres in front of them. Many covered their heads, a few began to whimper pitifully. He jabbed his gun towards a girl and issued a command:
‘Go away, Maja.’
The girl he had selected did not at first understand what he had said, and he repeated the order, this time in a desperate shout:
‘Get lost, Maja! You can go… go to hell!’
He went back to his chair by the board, in a laboured waddle, and watched as the girl, slowly and with eyes that begged and pleaded, crept along the wall towards the door. She had to pull hard on the handle before the body of their substitute teacher allowed her to squeeze through. As she did, she slipped in the blood on the floor and almost crawled across their class teacher who lay in the corridor. Outside, she began to wail. Immediately, three other girls tried to follow her, only for the boy to deliver a volley of rounds into the ceiling. The girls screamed and ran back to their places at the rear of the room. He had no idea himself why he hadn’t allowed them to leave, too. Perhaps it was because their attempted escape represented a change he had not sanctioned, a lack of control. Or perhaps it was because he simply didn’t care for them. He fired another brief volley into the body at the door, though he felt no pleasure in doing so. And then he began to cry again, and to wish it would all be over soon.
Konrad Simonsen and the Countess received the girl as she came running. She had lost one shoe and was smeared in blood from head to toe. Her white blouse, tight jeans, face and fair hair were crimson. It took a while for the two investigators to realise she was unharmed. The Countess wrapped a blanket around the girl’s shoulders. She was trembling and clearly in need of medical attention.
They were standing behind the Special Intervention Unit’s group vehicle, now referred to invariably as the Gulf, though in this case it was a Mercedes Vito. It was armoured, and anyway there was no longer a danger of their being shot at from the windows. Not for long, at least, the operational commander having just received confirmation that his marksman was in place in the apartment building behind them. Cautiously, the Countess began to question the girl.
‘What happened? How did you get out?’
The reply came in frightened little bursts, and the Countess realised that more than three or four questions would hardly be reasonable.
‘He let me go… but then he shot the others who came after me.’
‘So some of your classmates have been shot?’
The girl put her bloodied hands to her ears and lowered her head.
‘He shot them down in cold blood, that fucking psycho! They never had a chance. Just because they wanted to get away as well. In cold blood…’
The Countess held her gently, shaking her ever so slightly to maintain the girl’s focus. The operational commander and Konrad Simonsen, standing beside them, exchanged glances.
‘How many of your friends are alive?’
‘Some are alive, some are dead. I don’t know how many. He’s going to kill the rest of them soon. He’s going to mow them down like rabbits.’
‘Is that what he said?’
She didn’t seem to comprehend the question, and the Countess repeated:
‘Did Robert Steen Hertz say he was going to kill your classmates?’
‘He doesn’t say anything, he just pumps bullets into people whenever he feels like it. The fat bastard! Why isn’t anyone doing anything? Can’t you blow his head off or something?’
The Countess frowned. Arne Pedersen, who had just joined them, muttered:
‘She’s not much use.’
Simonsen intervened.
‘Get her into an ambulance, Countess.’
The operational commander narrowed his eyes and peered up towards the windows of the classroom, as though it might afford him a clearer picture of the situation inside. It was up to him what was going to happen, whether his men were to go in and neutralise the killer, whether he should try negotiating, or whether the marksman should be given orders to shoot on sight. He was far from convinced by what the girl had said. She was clearly in a state of shock, and the way she talked about it was less than credible, more like something out of a Hollywood movie she’d seen. He did not feel inclined to order the marksman into action on that account. On the other hand, storming the classroom might easily result in more dead. Again, he peered up at the windows, and then he made his decision.
‘A stun grenade and then in. I only hope we’re in time, that’s all.’
At the same moment, the main door of the school opened and a woman gingerly emerged. Even from a distance it was plain that she was covered in blood. She wobbled down the steps, seemingly badly injured, an apparent confirmation of what the girl had told them. A few steps into the playground the class teacher collapsed and fell to the ground in a heap. The operational commander nodded to two of his men, indicating the woman he thought to be a pupil. The men ran out to bring her in. As they did so, the commander gripped the lapel of his jacket and spoke into the microphone that was fastened to its rear.
‘This is Lima. If you get a decent crack, Palle, kill him.’
And then he shouted out loud:
‘Get an ambulance!’
The marksman had been lucky. After arriving at the scene with his unit he had quickly identified the ideal spot, on the third floor of the apartment building opposite, that would afford him an unimpeded view of the windows on the second floor of the school’s main building, behind which the incident was unfolding. He took his rifle from the Gulf, ran quickly to the front door he had picked out and proceeded up the stairs. There were two flats to choose between, but the door of one was already ajar. Inside, a police officer was explaining to the occupant that he was to keep back from the windows facing the street. This was when he struck lucky. The occupant turned out to be a retired army officer, who despite his almost eighty years was quick to sense the gravity of the situation and the needs of the marksman.
The police officer opened one of the living-room windows, lifted it carefully from its hinges and put it down on the floor. The marksman cleared the window sill. Together they lifted the retired officer’s heavy mahogany dining table and carried it over to the window. It was no more than a couple of centimetres shorter in height than the sill. The marksman lay down on the table and prepared his rifle. It was a Heckler & Koch PSG1 A1, one of the most precise rifles ever manufactured, and using it an experienced marksman could hit a target up to eight hundred metres away. That wouldn’t be necessary here, the flat no more than a hundred and fifty metres from the classroom. It was as perfect as could be. He informed his commander that he was in position.
Three times he identified the target in his sights, each time only fleetingly. The first time, he saw the boy upend a table, the second and third times he passed in front of the window, first one way, then the other. Unfortunately, he had moved too quickly for the marksman to be able to identify his weapon. And then the order came, the order he had hoped would never come at all. He requested confirmation and received it immediately.
In the classroom, the boy with the submachine gun had finally decided that the best thing for him to do was to let his classmates go and give himself up. He was exhausted, frightened and hungry, and he wanted out. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was out. Then it was that he heard the ambulance and went over to the window closest to the blackboard, cupping his hand to the pane to eliminate the reflected light as he peered out into the street to see what was going on.