Someone to Watch Over Me

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Jakob was lying in a hospital bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin. His right eye was covered with thick white bandages and he had made an attempt to put his glasses neatly over them. The large, clumsy frames were crooked, since one arm did not reach his ear, which had also been damaged – it too was covered with bandages, and taped to his head. The result was rather comical; even more so as Jakob turned his head quickly away from the television to see who had come, which meant the glasses dropped and ended up so crooked that they lay almost at right angles to his face. He hurried to straighten them with his chubby fingers. ‘Hello, Jakob,’ said Thóra. She held out the box she’d bought on the way. ‘We’ve brought you some chocolates. You remember Matthew, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jakob stared at the colourful box. ‘Can I have some now?’

  ‘Of course.’ Thóra immediately regretted saying this. He might well be nil by mouth. ‘Are you allowed to eat? Has anyone told you you shouldn’t?’

  ‘No. No one.’ Jakob shook his head to emphasize his words. ‘But I’m still hungry. I couldn’t finish my supper last night.’ He didn’t need to explain any further what had disturbed his supper. ‘I got food before but I should have had two meals because I’m owed one from yesterday.’

  ‘Of course.’ Thóra smiled. She opened the box and placed it on the table next to him as Matthew pulled two chairs up to the bed. ‘Watch out for the cracknel.’

  Jakob took Thóra at her word and chose carefully. With his mouth full of chocolate he muttered politely, ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Matthew took the empty wrappers from him and threw them in a rubbish bin by the sink, then sat back down. ‘How are you feeling, apart from hungry?’

  ‘Bad. I’m itchy but I can’t scratch because there are ban-dages in the way.’

  Thóra pointed to the television remote. ‘Would you mind turning down the volume or turning it off, just while we’re here? Then we can hear you better.’ The actors in the film had suddenly burst into song.

  Jakob looked at the screen and spent a few moments making up his mind. In the end he reached for the remote and turned off the TV. ‘I’ve seen this movie anyway.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s much better.’ Thóra smiled at him again. ‘Has your mother been able to visit you?’

  ‘Yes. She was here before.’ Jakob selected another chocolate. ‘She’s going to come back later. I can see our house from here, so she can see me too. We live on the third floor and if I’m not home, Mummy needs to carry the food all the way up the stairs on her own.’ He pointed towards the window with his right hand, which was also wrapped in bandages.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been a great help to her.’ Thóra looked out of the window but couldn’t see the house he meant. ‘Hopefully you’ll be able to go and help her again. But first you’ve got to get better, and then a few other things have to happen. But let’s not worry about those things now.’

  ‘No.’ Jakob closed the box. ‘We can talk about all sorts of other things. Like my eye.’ He placed his hand on the part of his glasses that lay over the bandages.

  ‘How did this happen? Do you think you’re up to telling us about the attack?’ said Matthew.

  ‘It was bad. I was eating and then all of a sudden … just really bad.’

  Matthew nodded sympathetically. ‘Was he sitting next to you?’

  ‘Yeah. He was having some fish and then he suddenly stood up and just … just really bad.’

  ‘So you didn’t punch him, even as a joke, or anything like that?’ asked Thóra.

  ‘Nah. I was eating my fish. We were supposed to get rice pudding if we finished it all.’ His expression turned sad. ‘I never got any.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll give you some.’ Thóra resolved to remember to ask the nurse in reception whether it would be possible to bring Jakob a bowl of rice pudding. ‘Has he ever tried to hurt you before? Maybe he was stopped by the staff?’

  ‘No, never. He’s always good. Except now. Maybe he didn’t like the fish.’

  ‘Maybe. Did he say anything when he attacked you, or just before?’

  Jakob stared at Matthew thoughtfully, his mouth wide open. ‘Yes, he did. It was really strange.’

  ‘Do you remember what it was?’ Thóra leaned closer.

  ‘He said that it would be better for me to be in Reykjavík. I remember because I was so happy and I was going to say that I thought that too but I couldn’t say anything because … all of a sudden everything hurt so much and I couldn’t see anything.’

  Thóra’s stomach lurched at the thought of someone with a fork in their eye, and she felt like she had to interrupt Jakob in order to block out the image. ‘Maybe we should talk about something else, something more fun. I’m sure you’ll have to discuss this with the police and various other people, which is why it’s probably not a good idea to be talking about it too much now.’ Suddenly her recent conversation with Jósteinn popped into her mind. Again she interrupted Jakob, who looked as if he were about to say something. ‘Did he say better? That it would be better if you were in Reykjavík?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jakob nodded so eagerly that his glasses slipped again. ‘That’s what he said.’

  Thóra tried not to seem surprised. ‘He didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘He did, he said one more thing. He said that I should be good and talk to you. But then he started to cut my ear and jab my eye so I screamed and I didn’t hear him after that. Maybe he said something else.’

  Thóra doubted it. What Jósteinn had said completely explained the attack. He believed Thóra’s investigation would make better progress if she had easier access to Jakob.

  Thóra didn’t tell Matthew about her suspicions until they’d left the hospital. ‘Are you serious?’ Matthew stopped, seeming upset. He was always direct and to the point about everything, and for him not to have told her about the bank’s offer was the closest he’d ever come to scheming. To manipulate events in the way Thóra believed Jósteinn had done was so alien to him that all he could do was gawp at her.

  ‘I can’t prove anything, or confirm it without asking him directly, but it completely fits with what we discussed.’

  Matthew shook his head irritably. ‘I don’t know which is crazier – to attack someone like that unprovoked, or to injure them for a specific purpose.’

  ‘No question – it’s crazier to do it for a purpose.’ Thóra breathed in the cool air. ‘He’s not a normal man, remember. He’s capable of anything.’ She looked up along the building and saw Jakob’s face in the window. He wasn’t watching them leave, he was just peering out over the hospital grounds, in the direction of his mother’s house. She turned back to Matthew. ‘If I’m right, there’s no question that Jósteinn wants to keep the case going.’ She pointed at the sad sight framed in the window. ‘If so, then I’ll keep investigating. That’s all there is to it.’

  Matthew said nothing.

  Chapter 22

  Sunday, 17 January 2010

  The jogger was flagging, but he focused on his goal. He chose a car parked up ahead in the distance and thought only of getting that far. Then and only then would he slow down. This way he hoped to be able to resist the temptation to stop, put his hands on his knees and breathe as deeply as his lungs could tolerate. Last autumn he had run this same circuit without breathing through his nose, but after being largely sedentary during the winter he had expected too much of himself on this first warm, ice-free day of the new year. He was alone, which would no longer be the case as spring approached, when he would hardly be able to go ten yards without meeting other joggers. Then they would feel exactly like he did now, whereas he would be one of the few in shape. For a moment he managed to forget his fatigue as he imagined himself in the spring sunshine, straight-backed, going at an even pace, passing one red-faced, sweaty runner after another.

  At the moment when he was feeling best about himself, his body decided that it had had enough. Suddenly he couldn’t take another step; t
he burning in his lungs became unbearable, his heart pounded, he tasted blood and his legs were on fire. He stood panting on the pavement and it crossed his mind to take a taxi home. It was a long trip back and there were few things more embarrassing than staggering along in your running gear. However, his taxi plan fell apart because he had neither a phone nor money on him; there was no one out and about in the area, even though he was only a short distance from the popular Nauthólsvík Beach. He sighed heavily. It was then that he spotted the bench. He could rest there and massage the worst of the pain from his legs. Then he would have some hope of making it home free of shame – albeit not very quickly.

  The surface of the bench was cold but he got used to it immediately, as if his body had reached its maximum level of pain. The bench was neither warm nor comfortable, but he couldn’t recall ever having been so glad to sit down. Slowly but surely the pain receded, but now he was aware that his body temperature was dropping rapidly; he was dressed lightly, since he hadn’t been planning to sit outside, not moving, in these tight, thin clothes. The wind that had felt so agreeable such a short time ago was now cold and biting, and his sweaty body quickly became chilled. He really ought to keep moving, but he couldn’t get himself to stand up immediately. He hammered his folded arms against his chest, as his grandfather had taught him when he was a small boy. It helped.

  When he’d stopped punching heat into himself, the lapping of the waves caught his attention and he held his breath to enjoy it to the utmost. He turned to look across the bay and stare at the ocean. A loud electronic jingle suddenly tore through the peace and quiet, giving him a massive shock; he had thought that he was there alone and felt uncomfortable at the thought that someone had snuck up on him unawares. He turned around to look but saw no one. The ringing continued, however, now higher and more intense. The jogger quickly worked out where it was coming from; he noticed a blue gleam beneath the bench and reached down to pick up a rather cheap-looking mobile phone. On the blinking screen he saw the word Mum and for a second he considered answering, but he was still so exhausted that he didn’t trust himself to explain to this person who he was and how he had come to be answering a stranger’s phone. Instead he stared at the screen until the ringing stopped, at which point a message appeared: 7 missed calls. Some drunk idiot must have lost his phone last night and was probably still asleep at home. The jogger turned back to the sea; the phone could wait, he would take it home with him and then call the mother to let her know where she could come and get it. He decided to check whether the guy’s wallet might also be around somewhere, so that he could return it along with the phone.

  It was then that he spotted the feet in the brown scrub where the land sloped steeply down to the sea. He actually had to think about it for a minute before he realized what they were; at first he thought they were funny-looking rocks, but then saw that they were black shoes, and that in the shoes were feet, which also looked oddly blackened. The realization shocked him out of his fatigue, and he forced his stiff legs to walk over towards the dip. He was afraid of what he might see when the rest of the body became visible; hopefully it was just the drunk owner of the phone who’d had too much fun the night before, but the completely motionless feet and the rather uncomfortable position of the body suggested otherwise. He noticed an odd burnt smell coming off the brown scrub as he approached, and thought to himself how strange it was that someone had decided to lie down in the one place where the scrub had been burned and the smell was so bad; although this was a trivial point when you also considered that he was partly lying in the grass and partly hanging down a rocky slope. Just before the entire body came into view, the jogger realized that no one, either living or half-dead, would choose this as a place to rest.

  As he ran off in search of help, having forgotten all about the phone that he was clutching in one hand, the jogger felt neither pain nor fatigue. The only feeling left was nausea.

  ‘I just thought you should know.’ Thóra took the old woman’s hand, which was rough and cold, and felt it jerk at her touch. Thóra had called Grímheiður after her visit to the hospital to tell her what she thought she’d understood about the reason for Jósteinn’s attack. The panic this seemed to have provoked in Jakob’s mother had prompted Thóra to drop by and see her on her way home. Now she and Matthew sat with her in the narrow kitchen that Jakob missed so much. The apartment was small but welcoming and reminded Thóra of her grandparents’ home when she was a child, which had had ornaments along all the walls whose sentimental value far outweighed their actual price. Here, framed photographs took pride of place, most of them of Jakob at various ages, but also some of his deceased father. ‘I completely understand if you want to think about this a bit; even if as a result you might prefer me to resign from the case.’

  ‘What’s your hourly rate?’ The woman bit her thin upper lip, which was almost the same colour as her face. When she released it again all the blood rushed back and it reddened as if she’d put lipstick on it but forgotten the lower one. Thóra named the lowest possible rate, the one she offered her closest friends. The woman’s face revealed that she’d been expecting something lower. ‘Can’t I have a discount?’

  Thóra was in a quandary; there was no way the woman could afford to pursue the case unless the firm simply did the work for free. ‘The rate doesn’t tell the whole story. The number of hours worked does tend to pile up in these kinds of assignments, but if everything goes to plan the majority of those hours would hopefully be reimbursed. In the part of the law that covers the reopening of cases, it’s stated that the cost of the petition – and of the new trial, if the petition is approved – will be paid by the State Treasury. On the other hand, we don’t know whether Jakob’s case will be reopened and even if it is, there’s no guarantee that the courts will consider the entire portion of the expenditure recoverable.’

  ‘But … ‘ Grímheiður stared open-mouthed, the colour now drained from her upper lip.

  ‘On the other hand, if I’m right, and Jósteinn still wants Jakob’s case to be reopened, then he’ll hopefully stick to his word about paying the cost. If that’s totally unacceptable to you after what’s happened, I will of course stop working for him, and then we can take the chance that the case will go well and the costs will be paid by the Treasury.’ Thóra felt sorry for Jakob’s mother; it didn’t take a psychologist to see that the woman had two choices, both of them bad. She could give the green light and indirectly receive money from a man who had maimed her son, or she could refuse any further assistance from this odious benefactor and effectively prevent Jakob from having any chance of returning home.

  ‘What would you do?’ Grímheiður directed her question to Matthew. She was of the old school; his words had more weight than Thóra’s, since he was more likely to come to a rational conclusion, being a man. Thóra didn’t let this bother her and smiled wryly to herself.

  ‘Me?’ Matthew had been following the conversation but clearly hadn’t expected to be directly involved. He carefully put down the doughnut that he’d been intending to enjoy, after Grímheiður placed a box full of them on the table in front of him, along with some coffee that she’d brewed the old-fashioned way. ‘Well, I guess I would let the investigation proceed. Look at Jósteinn’s payments as compensation for the injury. The damage has already been done and although it goes completely against your instincts to accept anything from this man, it’s the most sensible decision when you put aside your feelings and look at the bigger picture.’

  ‘In other words, it doesn’t matter where the assistance comes from.’ The woman appeared satisfied with Matthew’s answer and she filled his cup. ‘But what will people think?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Matthew meant this sincerely; he cared little about others’ opinions. ‘The case is about Jakob, not some strangers in town.’

  Grímheiður put the coffeepot down carefully on a tray that Thóra would have bet everything she owned Jakob had made. Her pale eyes suddenly filled with tears, whic
h she self-consciously wiped away with her hands. ‘Sorry. I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologize for anything. I have a son; a daughter, too, and I understand how you feel. What Jakob’s been through, both last night and over the years, is more than most mothers have to deal with. You deserve credit for your endurance.’

  ‘Thanks,’ muttered Grímheiður, so softly that she could barely be heard. ‘He’s got to be allowed to come home. I’m so worried about him. What if he’s sent back to Sogn? What will this Jósteinn do then? Stab him again to send him back here? The hospital’s had its own cutbacks and they can’t keep readmitting him.’

  ‘I’d advise you to speak to the Icelandic Prison Service and even try to get the hospital on your side. Sogn is categorized as a hospital, not a jail, so these institutions could act jointly to get Jakob placed elsewhere, in consultation with the court – which would also have to get involved, since he was pronounced not criminally liable. It must be possible to find some sort of interim solution to his predicament. Unfortunately, Ari will probably have to be involved as well, as Jakob’s supervisor, but I can speak to him if you’d prefer not to.’ Thóra was afraid that no matter what solution the authorities chose, it would be one that neither Jakob nor his mother would be happy with – although at least he would be safe.