“The first report states the brothers were in the grip of a psychotic break, suffering paranoid delusions about a Muslim invasion, after a year spent in near-isolation in a rented worker’s cottage, in which the police found two gaming consoles, countless cigarette butts, mounds of used chewing tobacco, and not a lot else. That’s both men. Suffering the same delusions. Your listeners won’t be surprised to learn that the judges asked for a second opinion.”

The neighbor was waving and smiling. I smiled up at her, then twisted the handle on the blind. The neighbor’s expression changed to one of surprise as the dark bands obliterated her shape.

“Now walk us through that second opinion, would you, Cal?”

I turned, sat on the edge of my desk. “The second report concludes that the Garden Island murders were the result of meticulous planning. It points out that the isolation was self-imposed, and that the men spent that year alone together educating themselves in bomb-making, studying and rehearsing firearms techniques, only coming into the city sporadically, to pick up girls and visit their mother. In other words, these men were not delusional. They were bad and not mad.”

“Now, Cal, as many of our listeners know, you lost a daughter in these savage attacks.”

“That is correct.” I could hear the catch in my own voice, wondered if Carly could hear it too.

“And your interpretation of the evidence?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“But I’m asking you as the father of Licia Curtis, who disappeared that fateful day on Garden Island. You spent yesterday observing the Andersen brothers in court.”

I thought about the men, about how they had watched my younger daughter, enjoying her distress. When I spoke I had to choke back my anger.

“Those men . . . they planned the murder of our children. They killed with ruthless efficiency. Now they are exploiting the trial to spread their poison to a wider audience. These men are not insane. Evil would be a better word.”

I changed my son’s diaper, dressed him for kindergarten, placed him in his rocker chair. Elsa was still packing his lunch. And when she sent me to the bedroom to fetch her phone I realized she had left it unlocked. I stood looking at the phone where it lay on the bed. I picked it up. The thought of what I was about to do worried at the edges of my conscience. My finger hovered over the lock button. But before I locked the phone and returned it to Elsa in the kitchen I enabled location sharing.

“All good?” I said as I passed it to her.

“Brown goat’s cheese sandwich.” She handed me the lunch box. “Cucumber chunk, tomato chunk, banana chunk, chocolate chunk, satsuma.”

“Modern Norway in a lunch box.” I bent down to the rocker chair, picked Franklin up with my spare arm. Elsa sent me a neutral half smile.