“What? This is a game. You shoot Paul Andersen. John Andersen shrivels up and dies. Two men, one bullet.”

“Vee.”

“It’s okay. I’m done.”

I turned my phone over in my hand. There was Elsa at Stein Erik Lundgrens plass, an address I didn’t recognize.

“Put it away, Dad.”

“All right.”

I dropped the phone into my pocket, tried to concentrate on the trial.

After a while I began to see small differences between the men. It was the smaller brother, Paul, who made most of the jokes. The taller brother, John, did most of the laughing.

Vee was right. John Andersen was completely dependent on Paul.

Elsa spent an hour and a half at Stein Erik Lundgren’s plass number 2. When she left, it was at a slow walk. As if something had calmed her.

In the café during morning break, while Vee fetched drinks and cinnamon buns, I dropped the address into Google. A low-rise industrial building, painted white.

Skarpsno Pistolklubb.

A pistol club in Skarpsno. Was this Elsa’s idea of therapy?

I felt Vee hovering at the edge of my vision. I looked up.

“It’s their sanity,” she said. I put my phone on the table, facedown.

“What is?”

She passed me a black coffee in a paper cup. “That’s what those men find funny.” She put down her soda. “Every time someone says the Andersen brothers are insane, that’s when they laugh. They find it hilarious that anyone could think that. Like they gamed the system.”

And she was right. For the rest of the morning I watched the Andersens closely and the pattern was the same. Details from the reports were read out. Same facts, different conclusions. At every finding of insanity, the men sniggered. At every mention of planning, they looked bored.

At twelve Elsa collected Franklin from kindergarten. There was her flashing orange dot. At quarter to one she put Franklin down for his nap. She was on the terrace at the back of the apartment for seven minutes. Nothing grows on our terrace, so she could only be drinking coffee or smoking a cigarette.

The tracking on Elsa’s phone is very precise.

I recorded my piece. I climbed the steps to Security. There was one person in front of me. Edvard, taller and thinner than ever, in an ill-fitting gray suit, dropping his belongings into a gray plastic tray.

Perhaps he felt my eyes on him. He turned, made himself smile. “Hello, Cal.”

“Hello, Edvard.”

We embraced. “How’s Jo?” I said.

He turned to face the scanner.

“Oh, Jo’s okay,” said Edvard. “I’m sure he sends his love.”

“Send mine back.”

“I’ll be certain to do that.”

The woman nodded at him. He stepped briskly through the scanner. Some strange edge to his behavior; something untruthful.

The scanner woman smiled. I passed her my telephone.

Edvard turned to me. “I thought perhaps I’d sit with you in the courtroom?”