I turned. Elsa was walking across the snow toward me.

A guard stepped toward her. Elsa said, “I left my press card in my bag.”

The guard nodded. “No pictures.”

“I have no camera,” she replied.

The guard waved her through.

“Should it be that easy to lie your way in?” I said.

Elsa laughed. “I know.” She stepped toward me, brought her head close to the window, looked in.

“The actress is the stand-in for Licia,” I said. “Those guys are standing in for the Andersen brothers.”

“Huh,” she said.

Inside the room, something seemed to be decided. A tiny, birdlike woman stepped forward. The chief judge. She nodded, spoke words that we could not hear. The actors took their positions, the young woman very close to us. A court official approached, tapped the actress very gently with his fingertips. On the back of her right shoulder, where the first bullet had struck Licia.

I looked at Elsa, saw the pain and the shock in her eyes. I reached out, took her hand.

The actress stood with her back to the door. The court official approached a second actor, tapped him twice on the forehead. The chief judge said something. The actor turned toward the judge, nodded, then joined the girl near the door. The court official approached a girl who was kneeling near the window. He tapped her once on the stomach. The girl looked up, looked at the chief judge, listened to an instruction, then lay lengthways on the floor. The court official knelt at the girl’s side, tapped her once in the back of the head.

For a moment I could see the scene. The hundred children gathered in that room, the panic as they spilled outward and away from the Andersen brothers from the doors at each side; through the plate-glass window, forcing it from the frame as they hurled themselves against it. And Licia, who had shouted the warning, who was the first out of the door, clenching her teeth against the shock of the bullet wound, running scared.

I forced my thoughts back to the people in front of me, to the actors and the court officials, and the gentle taps where the bullets had entered. The Andersens had killed four in that room. They had not yet found their rhythm, I thought grimly. Their kill rate improved as they went.

The men were led outside. They stood on the veranda, just above us, arms free, relaxed in their blue winter jackets and heavy black trousers, speaking easily with each other, and with the defense team who joined them. There was something so nondescript about them, something quiet and unexceptional. Pimples and shaving rash. If you had met them in the street, or in a bar, you would never have guessed what they were planning.

People behind the rope were beginning to notice, nudging each other, turning to watch.