Free One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad

freedom; it was essentially anarchic. That left the losers. There were a couple of them. They kept a low profile.
    Anders belonged to the third group. He had gained a kind of respect at the school, where he came to be seen as a troublemaking tagger, a bit of a bully. If yousaid anything wrong you were in for it.
    Anders now carried himself with confidence and was not afraid to speak up and say what he thought. He had acquired the right look at the hip-hop store Jean TV in Arkaden, Oslo’s first indoor shopping centre. He had Nike on his feet, outsize trousers and a Champion hoodie. Every morning he styled his hair in front of the mirror, parting his fringe in themiddle and making several applications of hair gel so it would stay in place. The tough image was supposed to look accidental, but the troublemaking tagger was very vain and fretted about his big nose.
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    The gang of four started on a small scale, spending hours sketching on paper before they graduated to neighbourhood walls and fences, or crept into the school grounds in the evening.Later on they took to sneaking into the local bus station after the buses had stopped running for the night. They carried rucksacks full of spray cans and wrote their names in hard, angular letters.
    Once they had conquered the locality, Morg wanted to go further afield. He bought a map of Oslo and one day Spok came into his room, which was always in immaculate order, to find him sitting likea general about to go into battle. He pointed and outlined, indicating districts of the city, streets and buildings. He knew who the leading taggers were in the areas he wanted to dominate; he knew where they lived and relished the thought of his own signature adorning a wall in their territory. He had reconnoitred to identify the best times for a quick escape. It was as if he were planning a raidor robbery, with detailed routes that included exit strategies if the police turned up. Spok sat there with his innocent baby face, so often his passport out of trouble, quietly taking it all in. When Anders had presented the whole plan, Spok said he thought it was a great idea.
    The boys were still ‘toys’, novices. Though it seemed free and anarchic from the outside, the graffiti community wasstrictly hierarchical. You had to find which rung of the ladder you were on. Being a toy was fine, most of them were, but it was seen as uncool to be a wannabe, somebody trying to be more than he was.
    For the ambitious, the goal was to be a king. That was the title bestowed on the top writers, the ones who were both good and daring. To become a king you had to pull off a memorable stunt, likebombing a whole wall, writing over a whole underground train or tagging somewhere that was under strict surveillance. Your name should be visible in the city centre, the most closely watched place, in the main thoroughfare of Karl Johans gate or along the underground line that runs from the central station via the Parliament to the Royal Palace. There was no point being King of Skøyen.
    ‘How canI get to the top?’ Anders asked a classmate, one of the straights, when they were hanging about on the steps by Majorstua metro station after school one day. ‘What are they doing that I’m not?’
    ‘Well, I suppose you just need to tag in all sorts of places where people can see,’ said his classmate. ‘Like on that wall there.’ He pointed over to the jeweller’s shop on the other side of the road.
    Anders said nothing, simply crossed straight over to the exclusive jeweller’s with its white marble walls, whipped out a felt pen and wrote ‘MORG’ right across the wall. Then he turned on his heel and walked calmly away with his head held high, across the busy shopping street and out of sight. His classmate was dead impressed. There were heavy fines for tagging. Anders isn’t scared of anything, thoughthis classmate, who had been poised to run.
    To climb the ladder you also needed to keep in with the right