Someone to Watch Over Me (6 page)

‘I’m sure we’ll sort something out,’ she murmured, forcing out a reassuring smile.

‘I know it’s crowded at your place, but maybe we could stay in the garage,’ said her father brightly. ‘I think I could make it quite cosy. I bet Gylfi would help me, and maybe also your … friend, the German.’ Thóra’s parents weren’t overly fond of Matthew, which she thought stemmed from two things in particular: firstly, they spoke no German and rather patchy English, and secondly, Thóra was pretty sure they were convinced he’d take their daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchild back to Germany with him. Maybe it was this that had pushed them into buying a summer home abroad. They were even less impressed when Matthew wasn’t offered work in the new bank that was built on the ruins of the old one; he was a foreigner, and was considered too expensive to retain. He still hadn’t found suitable work and his prospects were looking less than rosy. Actually, he was in pretty much the same boat as her father.

Her father smiled again, this time with more conviction. ‘As I say, it won’t be for long. I have complete faith that the króna will get stronger, and then maybe we can go to Spain and spend some time at the house. But as things stand right now, we can’t afford it.’ In other words, when he found a job he planned to celebrate by going on holiday.

Thóra smiled back at him, trying to put her heart into it despite her mixed feelings. ‘And even if it doesn’t happen and you’re with us the whole time, that’s fine. Of course you’re welcome to stay.’ She decided that for now she’d stop nagging them about making a payment on the mortgage. There would be plenty of time for that. ‘It gets quieter every other weekend, when the kids go to their father, so there will be more room for us.’ As she said this she realized how much she’d miss the few days a month she spent alone with Matthew. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to him.

Bella barged into the office, and Thóra wondered, not for the first time, whether it wouldn’t be wiser to lock the door when she had clients or visitors. She always came to the same conclusion – that Bella probably wouldn’t let it stop her.

‘Have you taken my stapler?’ Bella planted her hands on her hefty hips, glaring at Thóra.

‘No, Bella, I haven’t,’ replied Thóra calmly. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘It’s been stolen, and you’re the most likely culprit.’

‘Well, legally you can’t steal your own possessions. I own this firm, which means I can’t
steal
anything here.’ Thóra met Bella’s narrowed eyes levelly. ‘Please knock before entering next time, and shut the door behind you when you leave. Now.’ Thóra hoped the girl would leave before she spotted the stapler on Thóra’s desk. She had borrowed it that morning before her secretary arrived and forgotten to return it, though she had no intention of admitting this.

Bella turned on her heel without another word, but left the door open behind her by way of getting in the last punch. Thóra’s parents had watched the whole thing open-mouthed, and when the secretary had stomped out of earshot her mother whispered, ‘Can’t you get rid of that girl? She’s terribly rude.’

Thóra shook her head. ‘It’s complicated.’ The firm was stuck with Bella because she was the landlord’s daughter and her employment had been part of the terms of the lease.

‘That’s most unfortunate,’ tutted her mother, picking up her handbag and holding it tightly as if Bella might sneak up and pluck it off the back of her chair.

‘Well, Thóra, we can’t stay.’ Her father stood up. ‘You’ve probably got enough to do and we’ve got to get over to the estate agent to finalize the paperwork on the offer.’

Thóra gulped. ‘Of course.’ She followed them out and said goodbye, and when they were gone she hurried back to her office to call Matthew and tell him about the latest additions to their household. He would be so pleased. As she was dialling, her mobile beeped, indicating she’d received a text. Curious, Thóra hung up the landline and reached for her mobile. The message was from the Internet message service
ja.is
, so it could be from anyone. She opened it, thinking either the contents or the sign-off would identify the sender, but the one-word message didn’t make any sense to her; perhaps it had come to the wrong number?

Pregnant

She felt a sudden surge of panic. Was Gylfi’s girlfriend pregnant again? She hurriedly called her son, who thankfully had no clue what was going on and reassured her that Sigga was neither pregnant nor planning to be. Thóra was relieved, but something about the mysterious text still made her uneasy.

It was no wonder the briefcase Jakob’s mother had left was falling to bits. One more Post-it note would probably have finished it off, it was so full. Thóra would probably need to transfer the contents to a new case when she returned them to Grímheiður; it would be easier than stuffing all the files back into this one. But for the moment it was empty, the papers that had previously stretched it to bursting point scattered across the desk. Thóra leaned back in the top-of-the-range office chair she’d bought when the company’s fortunes had finally appeared to be looking up, about a month before the economy imploded. There was simply reams of information here, and she obviously wouldn’t have the luxury of going through all the files before deciding whether or not to take on Jakob’s case. She would have to pick out the ones that seemed most likely to contain useful information. She started two piles on her desk, sorting the papers by apparent relevance. Admittedly, her criteria were governed mostly by her desire to keep the ‘yes’ pile under half the height of the ‘maybe’ one. By the time she’d sorted through most of the papers, her plan seemed to have worked.

Although Thóra had only skimmed the files, she was filled with dread. She didn’t need a long-winded report to tell her that the events of that night had been horrific. Five people had died tragically; four residents and a night watchman. The centre admitted disabled people aged eighteen to twenty-five, and residents were not moved to another facility when they hit the maximum age. It was a new build, meaning all the residents who perished were young, which made the whole thing even sadder. And to make matters even worse, the watchman unlucky enough to be working that night, one of twelve staff members, was just as young at twenty-three. Fire can be merciless, and in the residence it appeared to have burned out of control and rendered everything and everyone in its path unrecognizable. Thóra couldn’t believe somewhere like this hadn’t had a decent fire alarm fitted, which might have saved some, if not all, of the victims. She also found it odd that neither the residents nor the night watchman had been able to escape and raise the alarm. Maybe the fire had spread too fast, but that seemed unlikely.

Thóra gathered the remaining papers, put them on top of the larger ‘maybe’ pile and turned her attention to the smaller pile. As soon as she started reading the first file, she regretted not having put them in any particular order, either by date or likely relevance. She set aside the file – a report about technical aspects of the fire – and flipped down through the rest until she found the verdict in Jakob’s case. Soon most of her initial questions were answered, and she could see a clear sequence of events.

Shortly after
3
a.m., petrol that had been spilled that night along the corridors and into the living quarters was set alight. The fire doors had been propped open with chairs and other objects, but only the ones leading to occupied apartments; the rooms with no one inside had been left alone. It would be difficult to argue that this had been an accident; it was a clear example of malice aforethought. The report stated that the night watchman, Friðleifur, had been attacked and struck at the base of the skull. Although the autopsy and other evidence could not be conclusive, he was probably unconscious before the petrol was trailed through the building. His body was found melted onto a chair in the duty office, and there was nothing to suggest that he had moved or tried to escape. The cause of death was listed as suffocation from smoke inhalation. So Friðleifur had been unable to keep his charges safe, and the building’s electrics had failed them too; because the home was so new a few of its systems, including the fire alarm and sprinklers, were yet to be connected. This had been raised as a concern, but with the work so behind schedule the excitement of moving everyone in overcame common sense and the residents were installed before all the loose ends were tied up. The concerns raised were quickly forgotten and the sensors – which would have saved lives – sent their messages into space instead of alerting the sprinkler system.

In a further twist of fate, a second watchman who should have been covering the night shift had called in sick at short notice, and no one could be found to replace him. In his statement he said that Friðleifur had called him at home an hour before the time the fire was estimated to have started. At that point there had been nothing much to report; the other man was only calling to ask about a key he couldn’t find. The files also mentioned another phone call, but this one to the centre, not from it. This call, which was brief, had occurred just before Friðleifur called his sick colleague. The caller, a young man not named in the files, claimed to have been drunk at the time and to only vaguely remember making the call; it must have been a wrong number, as he did not know anyone at the residence. His explanation was not questioned, since the other staff testified that drunk people often seemed to accidentally call the centre on weekend nights. They had always assumed the home’s telephone number must be one digit off the number of a club or bar, although they hadn’t looked into it as it hadn’t seemed that important.

The care home had been located in a new estate right next to Reynisvatn Lake, where the fully paved and tarmaced streets wound around plots that still stood empty. No one could afford to build houses any more. The building was some way away from its nearest neighbour so the fire burned unnoticed for quite a while. Eventually some of the neighbours were woken by the stench of smoke, called emergency services and had four fire engines despatched. It was immediately obvious to the fire-fighters that there was no point entering the blazing building, so all their efforts were directed at controlling the spread of the fire.

Once they had the fire more or less under control, they began searching in what was left of the building and found the bodies of four residents, as well as that of Friðleifur. Contact was made with the facility’s director, Glódís Tumadóttir, who was roused from a peaceful sleep into a living nightmare. She managed to stammer out that there ought to have been six people in the building, five residents and the watchman, and a hunt for the missing resident was initiated immediately. It was impossible at that stage to identify any of the bodies, which hindered the search. Still, the police managed to find Jakob within an hour; he was wandering the streets of the Grafarholt neighbourhood, reeking of petrol and scared out of his wits. He fled when the two policemen who had spotted him got out of their car, but the physical restrictions of his extra chromosome stopped him outrunning them. His attempt to flee the scene was what swung the court’s ruling against him, along with his fingerprints on a twenty-litre petrol can found at the scene and his inability to explain what had happened. There was nothing in the ruling or court records to suggest that his disability hadn’t been taken into consideration. His unwillingness to move to the centre was described at length as a possible explanation for his actions. It was concluded that he had set fire to the home, thereby killing those inside. However, the ruling went on to say that it accepted the expert witnesses’ assessment of Jakob as not being criminally liable due to his functional disability. Therefore he was acquitted of criminal charges. The doctors who had assessed him also advised the court that he should be considered a risk to others, so measures should be taken to prevent him from doing further damage by housing him in an appropriate institution. Hence his current confinement in the Secure Psychiatric Unit at Sogn.

There should have been six residents at the community residence. Only four had died in the fire; Jakob was the fifth. Thóra was unable to find anything in the long document regarding the fate of the missing resident. There must be an explanation elsewhere in the stack, and she made a note to look out for it. She also scribbled down that she needed the names of everyone who’d testified and given statements; in the court documents almost everyone was identified only by a letter. ‘X testified that …; B felt …’ and so on. If she came across anything that might indicate a mistrial, she would have to speak to some of them. Although some time had elapsed since the fire, there was a slim chance one of them might remember something – some small detail that hadn’t seemed important at the time but that could now help prove Jakob’s innocence.

Thóra found it hard to make sense of Jakob’s testimony, both in court and in the countless interrogations he’d endured. She had never read a testimony that was so garbled and confused. It read more like the words of a child, which in a way was not far from the truth. Jakob’s intellectual maturity was completely at odds with his physical age. She found a reference to his IQ, which turned out to be just under
50
, though all that meant to Thóra was that he would have been classed as an ‘imbecile’ in
1967
. It was an ugly word, but useful in helping her recall what she had read about IQs;
100
was the average, which meant technically Jakob had half an intellect, whatever that meant. She made another note, this time to remind herself to find out what that score of
48
signified. Did he have a mental age of five? Or two, or twelve? Was it even possible to make such a comparison? If she could put Jakob into a familiar context, it might help her understand his behaviour.

Jakob had given several conflicting accounts of his movements that night. His explanation for not having been found at the scene seemed to change with each interrogation: he had been on his way to see his mother; he was hungry and wanted to buy ice cream; he didn’t remember anything; he’d been scared, but he hadn’t been fleeing the scene. He had no explanation for why his fingerprints had been found on the petrol can, but since doubts were quickly raised as to whether he understood the question, the can was produced and shown to Jakob. His response was immediate and violent; he screwed his eyes shut and refused to open them until the can was taken away. This had only served to add weight to the case against him, as it seemed the can reminded him of what he’d done. But Thóra wasn’t sure this held water. If he’d had nothing to do with the fire, the can could still have frightened him because it was connected with the fire. Perhaps he had even seen someone else starting it. That could also explain why he had reeked of petrol; he may have fled the scene after it was poured on the floor. It was a long shot, especially given that Jakob himself had at no point claimed this to be the case. He’d have no reason to keep quiet about it … unless he was afraid of the guilty party? Thóra smiled to herself. She was speculating too much; it was far more likely that Jakob was unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy when he was stressed.