Someone to Watch Over Me (7 page)

Thóra put down the court ruling and pulled the ‘yes’ pile closer. Flipping through it, she chose another document at random. Time passed as she went through the whole stack, but she felt no closer to determining Jakob’s guilt or innocence. She replaced the final document on the pile and reached for the notes she’d scribbled down. Irritated that her efforts had borne no fruit, she sighed heavily as she skimmed back through her notes. Who would do something like this? If Jakob was innocent someone else was guilty, and that person might be impossible to track down. The act bore all the hallmarks of psychosis; what else could make someone murder five people who had done no one any harm? It was possible the arsonist had specifically targeted the night watchman, but surely there would have been a simpler way to kill just one man?

Thóra stared at the names of the four young residents who had died. Next to each she had jotted down what she’d learned about their disabilities. She had hoped to determine whether one of them could possibly have started the fire but been trapped inside by accident, or even have wanted to die. They had all been found in or near their beds, so it seemed unlikely but not inconceivable. This was not a viable explanation for either of the young women on the list, though. One of them, Lísa Finnbjörnsdóttir, had been comatose; she’d been unable to walk, speak or do anything else, and thus had had neither the strength to set a fire herself nor the ability to coerce someone else to do so. The other woman, Sigríður Herdís Logadóttir, had been both blind and deaf, and also severely mentally impaired, so she seemed equally unlikely to have been the culprit. The same went for one of the two male residents, Natan Úlfheiðarson. He’d been severely epileptic and heavily medicated at night, so he couldn’t possibly have been up and about. Unless, of course, he had skipped his medication for once, but that seemed unlikely; she would check the autopsy. The other man, Tryggvi Einvarðsson, had been physically capable of committing the crime, but not mentally. He had been severely autistic and never left his apartment on his own.

She looked up from her notes. It was ludicrous to work on the assumption that these people were in any way responsible for their own deaths, and if she was hoping to prove that someone other than Jakob had done it, she’d have to look elsewhere. Actually, if she didn’t find anything else in the files she might not even take the case. Everything seemed to have been done by the book, as you would expect in such a serious case, even one in which the trial had been brought forward and held as quickly as possible. Thóra pulled over the other pile of papers, which she’d been hoping she wouldn’t have to go through. The crime scene photographs gave her goose bumps. Although they were low resolution, poor quality black and white images, she could almost smell the smoke and ash, which must have been overpowering when the photos were taken. The police had captioned each photo, which given the extent of the fire damage was very useful in identifying what each image showed. She thanked God the photos had been taken after the bodies had been removed; she wasn’t sure she’d have had the stomach for those pictures. Even looking through these ones made her feel a bit nauseous, and her throat was dry. She wanted to gulp down so much water that her entire body would be waterlogged, so fire couldn’t harm her.

She gathered together the autopsy reports. First Natan, the medicated epileptic. Posthumous blood tests showed that Natan had indeed taken his medicine, which meant he had died in his sleep of smoke inhalation. It was clear from the position he was found in that he’d made no attempt to escape or even defend himself against the fire. Thóra felt relieved, but her hopes that the others had also slept through it were short-lived. The deaf-blind woman, Sigríður Herdís, had been found next to her bed; she had probably been trying to crawl underneath it. Her cause of death was not smoke inhalation, but burns. Thóra wished she hadn’t read this; the thought of a girl who couldn’t see or hear dying this way horrified her. To make matters worse Sigríður Herdís had been the youngest in the home at only eighteen.

Thóra turned to the next autopsy reluctantly, afraid of what she might find. The report was on Lísa Finnbjörnsdóttir, the paralysed coma patient. Her cause of death could only be smoke inhalation; Thóra could imagine nothing worse than the poor girl lying there unable to move while fire swept over her body, regardless of whether or not she was conscious.

Thóra didn’t get as far as the cause of death; when she was nearly halfway through the report she realised something didn’t fit. She flipped back to the first page to make sure that she was reading about the right person, then put down the papers and rubbed her eyes. This changed everything, and left her with no doubt that Jakob’s case ought to be re-examined. The ruling hadn’t contained a single word about the realization she had just come to, but it seemed inconceivable that everyone had overlooked it. She opened her eyes again and began scrutinizing the documents in the large pile, this time with more attention.

A sheltered community should be a safe haven for the unfortunate, like a fortress to protect the most needy and vulnerable members of society. But that was clearly not the case. What had actually happened there?

Thank God there were only ten minutes of the programme left. Margeir couldn’t recall ever being so desperate for a broadcast to end, however bored he usually was by the end of the day. The host of the next show hadn’t arrived yet, but that didn’t matter: Margeir was going off air on the dot. He would just rerun an old show and hope no one complained. He doubted anyone would; already about half their output consisted of repeats, as it was the only way to keep such a small private radio station going. The number of listeners decreased throughout the evening anyway, and it was unlikely that the few who were still listening by this time would make a fuss. Margeir’s show was hardly keeping its head above water; it was based on listeners phoning in, so when he didn’t have any callers, there was no show to speak of. For far too long he had put off asking the station manager to get it moved to an earlier time slot, to the extent that now he’d got sick of it; it showed in his performance, which in turn made it less and less likely that his wish would be granted. Margeir couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment when his interest in his job had started waning, nor did he understand what had caused the decline, but suddenly he was plagued by apathy – and it showed.

A red light blinked, indicating that a listener was on the line. Margeir turned down the volume on the music he played to save having to come up with the inane babble he resorted to between callers. His producer was on holiday and there was no budget for a temporary replacement, so Margeir had been forced to relearn all the technical details he’d been taught years before: how to play advertisements, cue up songs and answer phone calls. Others had lined up the more complicated elements before he went on the air, and he’d been told on the phone that all he had to do was turn up, wait for the pre-recorded show ahead of his to finish and jump in at a designated time. On his way to work he had wondered what he’d do if the preceding programme had stopped before he got there. He decided that rather than try to get help he’d just go home, allowing the screeching of the broken equipment – or just silence – to be sent out across the ether.

The light blinked faster and Margeir cursed inwardly for not having had caller ID transferred over so that he could see who was on the line. When the producer was on duty he was told in advance whether the caller was a ‘friend of the station’, one of the ones who called every show to talk for the umpteenth time about their interests – or rather, their obsessions – with an enthusiasm that bordered on mania. Their complaints were never original, and none of them was interested in having their views refuted; they considered the station their private soapbox. It was precisely these people that had drained away all the pleasure from his job; every recycled word eroded the happiness and expectation that had characterized his first month at the station. Originally, the focus of his show wasn’t meant be politics; the idea was to broach lighter subjects, and by doing so reach a younger audience. It hadn’t worked. The people who called in had no interest in movies or new music, and even less in the lives of actors and pop stars. The same group that listened during the day listened during the evening, and all they wanted to do was hold forth on political topics. The light was still blinking; apparently the listener hadn’t given up. Margeir didn’t even need caller ID, he could see that this was one of the obsessives; any ordinary person would have hung up after holding for so long.

The song ended, abruptly; now he had a dilemma. Either talk about something random, or fight to get a word in edgeways amid the ramblings of God-knows-who. Margeir could think of nothing clever to say, so he took the call. ‘Good evening, you’re through to Margeir, what’s on your mind?’

‘I’ve been listening to the show and I wanted to say that I think my friend Gunnbjörn, who called in earlier, is getting stupider every day. What’s he got against the European Union? Is he scared, or something?’

Out of old habit Margeir defended the person being attacked. The stream of nonsense continued, and whenever he tried to interrupt, the caller raised his voice. Soon he was practically screaming, which had the desired effect because Margeir stopped interjecting. In the end, however, he’d had enough, and by raising his voice to a volume he didn’t know he was capable of, he managed to overwhelm the ranter. ‘Well, it’s time for a commercial break, so unfortunately we’ll have to say goodbye for now. Thanks for calling.’ He hung up, not caring if it caused offence, and quickly ran an ad. He knew he’d started resorting to this as a means of escape too often, and as the station manager had once pointed out when giving him a dressing-down, while the sponsors might initially be delighted that their advertisements were heard more often, it wouldn’t take long before they realized the number of listeners was decreasing for that very reason. Unfortunately, people didn’t actually tune in to hear commercials.

There were only five minutes left of the show when the final advert on the tape finished. Instead of giving in to his desire to put on another song, he decided to talk about a newspaper article on cycle paths. He actually had no opinion whatsoever on this area of transport policy, and it amazed him how good he was at discussing a topic without meaning a word of what he said. This had started to affect his private life; the women he met weren’t impressed when he automatically switched to bland DJ patter every time there was an awkward silence. Lately even his parents had started rolling their eyes when he joined in conversations at family gatherings.

The light had started blinking again. This time the call was a godsend; the show was about to end, so it didn’t matter what dickhead was on the line – he wouldn’t have long. ‘Good evening, you’re through to Margeir, what’s on your mind?’ He winced as a screech of feedback pierced his eardrums. ‘Could you please turn down the volume on your radio, caller?’ This wasn’t one of the regulars, that was certain. They had learned long ago to turn off their radios when they got through. The noise stopped and Margeir repeated his greeting, which had become so hackneyed that he could say it backwards without any problem. ‘Good evening, you’re through to Margeir, what’s on your mind?’

‘Good evening,
Margeir
.’ He didn’t recognize the voice, and the emphasis on his name sounded sarcastic.

‘To whom am I speaking?’ Margeir had been so busy grumbling to himself about the regular callers, he had forgotten how difficult first-timers could be.

‘To me.’

Margeir looked at the clock in the hope that just once, time had sped up at the right moment, but he was disappointed. Four minutes left. ‘Well, my friend.’ The man must be drunk; sometimes heavy drinkers called the evening show just to have someone to talk to. Yet another reason to want an earlier slot. ‘Our time is running out, so you’d better hurry up if you want to share something with the listeners.’

‘I called to talk to you. Just you.’ The voice was not slurring at all; on the contrary, every word was clear and seemed loaded with hidden meaning.

‘Well, that’s too bad, my friend. You’re on air. Don’t you want to share something with the listeners?’ The damn clock must be broken. Time simply refused to pass.

‘Do you want the listeners to hear what I have to say?’ The caller paused. ‘I’m not sure you do.’

Margeir wasn’t used to letting listeners throw him off balance. He couldn’t deny he often found them tiresome, but he always kept his composure. This call, however, was nothing like the ones he was used to; the voice was calm and level but somehow unpleasant, as if the man was about to burst into mocking laughter. ‘Hey, I think our time’s up. Karl will be on in a minute, so if you’re lucky you can call back and have a chat with him.’ Margeir should have just said ‘goodbye’ and hung up, but he paused long enough for the eerily composed man to speak again.

‘Be careful.’ The voice sounded odd, and Margeir suddenly wondered if it was a woman, or even a child, pretending to be a man. ‘Soon there will be a reckoning and it won’t be pretty. Did you think this was over?’

‘This? What do you mean, “this”?’ Again Margeir knew he was being unprofessional; he should be cutting the caller off, not encouraging him.

‘You should know.’ There was a quiet chuckle, which stopped as suddenly as it had started. ‘What do you do when you get too drunk, these days? Things aren’t going that well, are they, one way and another?’ The man’s breathing got heavy and ragged, then he said: ‘I’m so hot. I’m burning up.’

Margeir had had enough. ‘OK, thanks, pal.’ He disconnected the line. ‘That’s it from me. I’m leaving you now, listeners, but I hope we can meet here tomorrow evening at the same time. Good night.’ He tore off his headphones and played the programme’s theme music, then stood up, his knees weak. He ran back through the brief conversation in his mind but couldn’t put his finger on exactly what had caught him off balance unless it was the voice itself, which had been impossible to read. It was unusually calm, completely at odds with the voices of the other listeners who called in. That must be it. He was tired and bored and fed up with everything at the moment. He moved down to the other end of the table, where the producer usually sat, and lifted the little handset that displayed the callers’ numbers. He checked the most recent one, but the little screen showed only the letters:
P.No
for Private Number. Margeir gnawed the inside of his cheek and stared at the screen. The flesh was bumpy there, scarred by the nervous habit even though he hadn’t done it for many years. Now his teeth caught on the scars.