Someone to Watch Over Me

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  ‘Do you still have any of the drawings?’

  ‘Funny you should ask. I did have a bunch of them, until today. The former director contacted me and asked whether she could have them. She always seemed a decent sort, I said yes. So I don’t have any; I took them to her on my way here and that’s why I was late.’

  ‘So Glódís has all of the drawings?’

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, at least the ones that I had.’

  Chapter 27

  Monday, 18 January 2010

  The advertisement hoardings on the outside of the Kringlan Shopping Centre were trying their best to make everything appear normal; here everyone was wallowing in cash and everything was as affordable as before. The few cars that were parked outside told a different story, and although Matthew had been watching for nearly ten minutes, no one had gone in or out of the shopping centre. He clearly remembered how the place had been buzzing with life nearly eighteen months ago, when he’d gone with Thóra and Sóley to buy Sóley some trainers a week before everything collapsed. He’d felt his heart nearly stop when he saw the price on the plain pair that she chose. The trip had been torture for him from beginning to end, and he could never be persuaded to go in there again; they’d trekked through the shopping centre, where people kept bumping into each other and no one apologized. Thóra’s mood hadn’t been much better when Sóley finally chose her shoes, which of course turned out to be the first ones they’d looked at, and she paid for them without a murmur of protest, probably considering it an acceptable ransom to be able to get out of the building. Sóley had subsequently worn the shoes only twice; in the end she’d said they were uncomfortable. Maybe they should repeat the fun and see whether Sóley would make a better choice. Who knew, maybe this time they would leave the place with comfortable trainers at a reasonable price.

  Matthew looked at his watch. He had arrived too early, because he’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to find the place where he was supposed to meet the girl. He was standing across the road from Kringlan, outside Reykjavík University, where Tryggvi’s sister Lena had asked him to meet her. She’d called him out of the blue, saying that she needed to speak to him briefly – in private. Since the offer was much more exciting than watching Thóra’s parents bicker over whether to have tea or coffee, he had immediately agreed. He’d then tried to reach Thóra, but she didn’t answer either her mobile or her office phone – and Bella didn’t answer the main number, obviously. Therefore, he could only hope that he was doing the right thing in accepting, and he now waited rather self-consciously at the main entrance, a middle-aged man staring at the young people going in and out. This is why he’d been focusing his attention on the shopping centre instead; it made him feel better than being caught staring at the students.

  Suddenly the flow of people out of the main door of the university increased. Several students milled around near him, happy to be out of class and trying to light their cigarettes before huddling together to generate some shelter. It wasn’t the secondhand smoke that irritated Matthew, but the fact that the gaggle of kids were now making it difficult to see the entrance. He wasn’t so good at recognizing people that he felt he could recognize Lena from the back, and he wasn’t certain she would wait around long if she didn’t immediately see him outside. So he moved away from the group, but then ended up among the crowd of people streaming out. Half the young women could have been Lena, judging by their height, weight and hair colour, but a light tap on his shoulder freed him from having to try and look into every face.

  ‘Hi. Have you been waiting long?’ Lena smiled, briefly revealing her beautiful white teeth. Smoke from the cigarette of a young man standing near her in the crowd drifted into her face and she frowned and waved it away. ‘Ugh, ever since I gave up I find smoking so disgusting.’ Her clothes were dictated more by fashion than the weather, which meant no hat. The wind whipped her long hair around her head but it appeared not to bother her, and she made no effort to control it. A heavy bag hung from her shoulder, making her stand slightly crooked.

  ‘Who’s this?’ A young woman the same age as Lena, though not quite as stylish-looking, stared curiously at Matthew.

  ‘Nobody you know. Call me later, maybe we can do some coursework together tonight.’ As soon as the last word was out of Lena’s mouth she made it clear that she was done with her friend and it was as if the girl was no longer standing there next to them. Yet still she remained, with a face like thunder, then turned on her heel and disappeared into the throng of students. ‘Sorry. She’s okay, but she can be a bit intense.’ A young man bumped forcefully into Lena’s shoulder, but she didn’t wince. Her bookbag swung and bumped into her thigh with a soft thud. ‘Shall we go over to Kringla so we can talk in peace? There’s a café here in the university but it’s packed at this time of day.’

  ‘Fine.’ They waited to cross the street while a fleet of students’ cars passed by. Matthew had never been good at making small talk, but was grateful that Lena seemed to be an expert at it. She talked constantly, not about her brother or the fire, but about everything and nothing. All he had to do was interject with a couple of banalities every now and then, depending on what the cadence of her voice suggested was required.

  He was relieved when they finally found some seats in Kringla Bar. He asked for a coffee and she ordered a Diet Coke, throwing her mobile phone unceremoniously onto the table and hanging her heavy bag on the back of the chair. As soon as the waiter was gone she started talking again, now chattering away about the price of textbooks and how her friend had had to postpone his studies because of it. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but shouldn’t we talk about the fire and Tryggvi?’ Matthew interjected. ‘Unfortunately I’ve only got about half an hour.’ This wasn’t exactly true, but it increased the likelihood that the girl would stick to the matter at hand. He was too old to be sitting in a bar, discussing young people’s problems.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She smiled sheepishly and swept back her hair. ‘Of course I didn’t want to meet you to discuss the price of books. You’ll have to excuse me – I’m just a little bit nervous about this case and I find it difficult to talk about it.’

  ‘No problem.’ Matthew was silent. He preferred not to have to lead the conversation, because it could take him an eternity to get out of her what she really needed to say. He’d pinned his hopes on her having some specific piece of information up her sleeve that she wanted to share. When Lena continued to look at him awkwardly, he felt he had to say something. ‘Is it the investigation that’s making you anxious, or something else? There’s nothing about it that you need to fear. We’re just exploring whether any elements of the case were misconstrued.’

  ‘No, I’m not afraid of the outcome.’ Lena then seemed to realize that she sounded rather unconvincing and hastily added: ‘Well, not exactly afraid, but … It’s just, you never know what’s going to come up and that’s kind of unnerving.’

  ‘Are you referring to your brother? Are you worried that he’s connected to this somehow?’

  ‘Yes, actually. I know it’s really unlikely, but I’m still worried. I don’t know what effect it would have on my mum and dad. Can you imagine how they’d feel if they had to face up to the idea that the son they’ve been mourning was actually involved in starting the fire? Responsible for his own death, and all those other people’s? Even I can hardly get my head around it, and I’m nowhere near as close to the situation as they are.’ She said nothing as the waiter brought them their drinks, but then continued once he’d gone behind the pretentiously designed bar at the back of the room. ‘But in any case, you mustn’t think that I’ve decided he’s connected to this or anything. I’m just a bit worried.’

  ‘No, I don’t think that.’ Matthew sipped his coffee then wiped the foam from his upper lip. ‘I can’t tell you anything about your brother’s possible role in this, simply because I don’t know if he actually did anything.’

  ‘Are you a lawyer?’ Lena hadn’t yet touched her drink; instead s
he drew stripes in the condensation on the glass.

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m just helping Thóra. She’s a lawyer, conducting the investigation.’

  ‘I see.’ Lena stopped fiddling with the glass and placed her hands on the table. ‘So if I tell you something, you’re not bound to confidentiality.’ Matthew decided not to explain that lawyer–client privilege was intended for clients, not potential witnesses or other parties to a case. That would just complicate things, and besides, he wasn’t entirely clear on all the details. ‘Not professionally, no. But I’ll treat whatever information passes between us as confidential – though I would have to tell Thóra, who’d treat the information with the same discretion. However, if something emerges in our conversation that could prove Jakob’s innocence, she would almost certainly use it in one way or another. The most important thing is that an innocent person doesn’t shoulder the blame for someone else.’

  ‘Okay. Of course that’s fair.’ She took a slow, calm sip. ‘But you’re not sure that Jakob is innocent, are you?’

  ‘No, but the investigation is still ongoing, so that doesn’t mean much.’

  ‘But has something come out suggesting that Tryggvi had something to do with the fire?’ She blushed slightly and looked away from Matthew. ‘It would just be good if I had a little bit of advance warning. That’s why I called you. I’m worried about Mum and Dad and maybe I could start preparing them if there’s a chance of bad news.’

  Matthew felt for her; her pain was obvious and he was convinced that she felt she had reason to be concerned, rightly or wrongly. ‘This must be hard for your parents. Do they have the same concerns as you; do they think Tryggvi might have been involved?’

  ‘No … yes … I don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to them. It always has been, actually, but now the situation is a hundred times worse. After Tryggvi died, they wouldn’t let me out of their sight and wanted to know everything I was doing, and they’re still really grumpy. It’s like they think something just as bad will happen to me and they want to prevent it but don’t think they could, and because of that they’re pushing me away, almost. As a result, I feel a bit neurotic too. I just want them to let me run my own life and have some time to myself – when I can.’

  This was typical of young people who still lived with their parents and Matthew was fairly certain that he would have said precisely the same thing in his day, without needing to have experienced a family tragedy. ‘They just want the best for you.’ This was the answer that he absolutely would not have wanted to hear himself. ‘It’s our understanding that Tryggvi made significant progress at the centre, after undergoing special therapy that helped him to start expressing himself, or at least to modify his behaviour. Is that right?’

  Lena shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t say he started expressing himself openly, but he’d grown more aware of his surroundings, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d finally have started talking to us, who knows? It’s not like he was making conversation or anything like that, though. Far from it.’

  ‘But he was starting to express himself in new ways, which was a huge improvement, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, compared to how he’d been before. He drew more, and his pictures were more focused.’

  ‘Is that how he conveyed messages? Through his drawings?’

  ‘No, not directly. I’m not sure he really thought of the drawings as messages to us. His mind didn’t work like ours and it wasn’t easy to understand what he was on about.’ Lena took another sip of her drink and was careful to place the glass precisely on the wet ring that it had left behind on the table. ‘There was nothing in them that suggested Tryggvi wanted to burn down the residence, if that’s what you were thinking. Tryggvi would never have planned anything; even if he was involved, it would just have been something that happened. He wouldn’t have thought about it beforehand. I’m quite certain of that.’

  ‘Do any of his pictures still exist? Besides the one in your living room?’ Matthew found the way Lena was talking about her brother’s pictures rather peculiar. It was as if she were trying to get him and Thóra to stop nosing around after them. If that was the case, her plan had completely misfired.

  ‘Uh …’ Lena hesitated. ‘No. Not any more, anyway.’ She paused before continuing. ‘We had some from the time when Tryggvi still lived at home but we threw them out when we were going through his room; they only rubbed salt in the wound. I can assure you they weren’t connected to the fire at all. At least as far as I could see.’

  ‘Were you ever present when Tryggvi was in therapy? I’m trying to find out whether he might have expressed himself in a different, clearer way to the person treating him. Perhaps even without pictures.’

  Lena scowled. ‘It was a horrible thing to have to watch, and Tryggvi hated it. It might have worked, but for fuck’s sake, what was the point, really? It’s not like Tryggvi could enjoy the results, and it’s awful to think he suffered like that for nothing before he died.’

  ‘So you witnessed it?’

  ‘Once, twice. That was enough.’ Her beautiful face became severe. ‘The man repeated the same thing over and over: Look at me, look at me … He held Tryggvi’s chin and forced him to look into his eyes. He said he was getting Tryggvi to form a relationship or a connection with him, something like that. I don’t remember which, and anyway it doesn’t matter. My brother would writhe and twist his head trying to escape, but he couldn’t.’ The anger in her voice was gone when she continued. ‘Tryggvi couldn’t look people in the eye. He found it uncomfortable. I don’t understand how Mum could bear to be there.’

  ‘Was she always present during the sessions?’ Matthew knew that Fanndís had often hung around at the care home, but he was surprised to hear that she’d been involved in the therapy.

  ‘No, not always, but often. She didn’t pre-arrange it or anything, but if the man was there when we arrived, she used to go in and watch. I don’t know what she did when she went alone or with my dad, but presumably the same.’

  ‘And what did you do while the therapy was going on? Did the residence even have a waiting room?’ Matthew couldn’t remember seeing such a thing during his and Thóra’s visit to the burned-out building.

  ‘I just hung around in the lobby. That was all right, because I got to know some of the staff members and could chat with them. Several of them were my age.’

  ‘Did you know the night watchman who died in the fire?’ Matthew couldn’t remember what the man was called and cursed himself for not having memorized the names of the main people involved before coming to this meeting. It would have been better if Thóra had accompanied him, but he hadn’t had much choice.

  ‘Friðleifur? Yes, I knew him.’

  ‘It’s our understanding that he was suspected of having been drunk at work. Were you aware of anything like that?’

  ‘No.’ Lena frowned. ‘He was certainly never drunk when I was there, but he actually worked mainly at night, so I don’t know what he got up to then. I met him mostly on weekend mornings before he went home from his shift. I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t drunk on those occasions.’ She stared at the melting ice cube floating in her glass and corrected herself. ‘No, I’m absolutely sure.’

  ‘It’s also our understanding that he received visitors, in the mornings on the weekends and maybe during the night. Do you know anything about that?’

  Lena continued to stare at the ice for a moment but then shrugged apathetically. ‘I only know that he was told off about some beer cans; maybe he had visitors who were drinking beer or something. It wasn’t long before the fire, but I have no idea whether it was him, the other night watchman, someone they let in, or what.’ She looked up briefly from her glass at Matthew. ‘Do you think maybe they let in some visitors who started the fire?’

  ‘There’s really no evidence yet. But do you know which of their friends or acquaintances might possibly have come to visit? We need to speak to those people, if possible.’

&n
bsp; Lena shook her head. ‘No. It was just some people. I didn’t know the night watchmen that well. Friðleifur maybe a bit more, but I didn’t really know anything about him.’

  ‘What was the name of the other night watchman again?’

  Lena was silent and appeared to be engaged in a psychological tug-of-war. ‘You’ll find it out anyway, won’t you? Whether I give you his name or not?’

  ‘Yes, we already have it. He just hasn’t answered Thóra’s phone calls and I can’t remember it at the moment. Obviously he would know better than anyone what went on there at night-time even if he was sick at home on that particular night. Apparently.’

  ‘Okay.’ She took a sip of her drink and looked at her phone, as if she were hoping it would ring and save her. The grey screen stared back at her without blinking. ‘You won’t say where you got the name, will you? I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

  ‘No, no. I won’t say a thing, since there’s no reason to. As I said, we already have it – I just can’t remember it.’

  Lena nodded so slightly that it was barely noticeable. ‘Look, there were two different teams who worked on the night shift, one week on, one week off, and it was generally always the same guy working with Friðleifur. Occasionally it was someone else, but your best bet by far would be to talk to the man who usually worked with him. The others are probably less important, because they were only with him for the odd night now and then.’

  ‘And what’s his name?’

  ‘Margeir. I don’t know his surname.’

  Chapter 28

  Monday, 18 January 2010

  The hot tub was warmer than usual and dense steam rose in the cold. From the dark sky snowflakes drifted down onto Thóra and Matthew’s heads as they sat there soaking, with wrinkled fingers and just as wrinkled toes. Sóley was in the children’s pool with her arm round Orri, but Thóra didn’t take her eyes off them in case she lost sight of Sóley’s brightly coloured swimsuit and Orri’s chubby form in the steam that surrounded the group of kids in the shallow water. She and Matthew had given in to their repeated pestering and gone to the pool while Thóra’s mother prepared dinner. There weren’t many adults there and they sat alone in the hot tub; this was the life. This was actually the only sport that Thóra liked doing; unlike Matthew’s running, you could stop whenever you wanted. When you went out for a run, once you got exhausted you still always had to get back home.