‘I’ve never met a human being who doesn’t appreciate being listened to, being taken seriously,’ said Asbjorn Rachlew, the Norwegian homicide detective who one afternoon in the summer of 2011 found himself listening to Anders Breivik, who had just killed 77 people in a shoot-out on an island near Oslo. His job, Rachlew explained, was to get Breivik to talk, but not ‘by faking it, through manipulation etc.’. You have to show real concern, he said, to get the information you need, because you have to remember that suspects, too, like Breivik, are also traumatised. ‘Banging the table and screaming etc. doesn’t help communication…’
Rachlew’s frankness, his plain speaking, as he attempted to explain what he went through with Breivik made for gripping radio, a trip inside someone else’s life, into an experience that very few people will ever have, talking at length to a serial killer to find out the facts, build up a case. His interviews with Breivik took place over nine months. A long time to listen. Afterwards, when his work was finished, Rachlew said, ‘I felt I had to cry …I didn’t have to be professional any more. It was nice to cry. It felt good.’
This extraordinary interview (first broadcast on RTE, the Irish radio station) came out of the blue on last week’s Short Cuts (produced by Eleanor McDowall) and was all the more compelling for its unexpectedness. If you don’t know it already, this series, now a Radio 4 staple, ‘showcases’ the best audio from stations in the UK and overseas, ‘brief encounters, true stories, radio adventures and found sound’, the clips interwoven on air by the reassuring Josie Long, who has one of those voices so intimate it just draws you in and keeps you listening even if it’s way past time to leave the house.
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