In the courtroom I chose seats toward the right-hand wall, placed myself on Vee’s left. If the men made eye contact with her I would lean in to block it. But today they sat slouched in their chairs, paying us no mind. Every now and then one turned to the other and made some kind of joke. They would smirk, then turn to face the glass wall, glaring out at the public.

I took out my phone, unlocked it, opened Find My Family. I looked about me.

Vee was staring at the screen of her own phone. She caught me looking and held it out to me. I placed my phone facedown on my thigh and took Vee’s.

REMEMBER: THIS IS WHAT THE #ANTIFASCIST #FIGHTBACK LOOKS LIKE

That same image of Licia, the gun braced in her hands.

“Pretty cool,” said Vee, taking her phone. “Don’t you think?” She flicked into Instagram and began to write.

I turned my own phone over. There was Elsa on the street outside our apartment block. A flashing orange dot.

Vee leaned toward me. I shielded the phone with my hand.

“Which one would you drop, Dad?” she whispered. “If you had a Glock?”

“Vee, you can’t talk like that here.”

Vee rolled her eyes, turned to face the men.

I looked at my phone screen. Elsa was on the move.

Vee leaned in again. I shielded the screen.

“Just because we’re ‘pacifists’ doesn’t mean you can’t answer the question. Say you have one gun and one bullet, which one would you drop?”

I looked about me. No one had heard her. But still. “That’s not why we’re here. We’re here to learn.”

Vee rolled her eyes, faced forward, made a play of listening.

I watched my screen for a while, tilting it so Vee could not see. I assumed at first that Elsa was heading for the mall, but she took a road that led into town, walking swiftly.

“Dad,” said Vee. “Put that away.”

“Sorry.” I turned my phone facedown. I sat forward, tried to listen. The absent father; the abusive, neglectful mother; the social work reports recommending removal of the boys: there was nothing here that we did not already know; all those markers that so many killers share, but which do not in themselves make a killer.

The men looked unaffected when the psychiatrists read out the injuries they had sustained at the hands of their mother: the broken arms and the scalded legs, the kettle-cable marks, and, once, the imprint of an iron on the skin of Paul Andersen’s lower back. Time and again the social workers had recorded their concern. Time and again the boys’ mother moved them to a new district, and the social work evaluations began again from scratch.

“The answer is you shoot the little one,” whispered Vee after a time.

“Vee, no.”