Someone to Watch Over Me

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  What was really bothering her was not being able to see the link between these two cases. On the surface they seemed unrelated, save for the fact that in each of them innocent victims had died – but she was sure they must be connected, or why would the text have directed Margeir to Berglind’s house? The phone call from Berglind that came as they drove away, following the police at a distance, confirmed it. ‘I know where I’ve seen these letters and numbers …’

  Chapter 36

  Saturday, 23 January 2010

  Thóra and Matthew had been sitting with the man for nearly an hour, but he had not looked up once. As a result, it was impossible for Thóra to fathom Jósteinn’s reaction to her having found out about his computer activities; his averted face revealed nothing and everything he said was toneless. They were sitting as usual in the shabby living room at Sogn. Although it was quite spacious, being anywhere near this terrifying man always felt overwhelming. Although he didn’t say much, and most of what he said was fairly innocuous, it was impossible to ignore the disgusting details he dropped into the conversation every now and again like little reminders of his wickedness. It was precisely the unpredictability of their appearance that meant neither Matthew nor Thóra were able to arm themselves against them. Every time Jósteinn said something vile it startled them. Thóra was convinced that he was behaving this way because he knew he would probably never see her again – nor anyone else from now on, apart from those who lived and worked there.

  ‘We’re not here to discuss your compulsions, Jósteinn.’ Thóra moistened her dry lips. ‘You should speak to a doctor about them, or someone who can help you. We’re not interested in these things and we don’t have the expertise to work through them with you. If you can’t stick to the subject, then we’ll just have to get the information we need from the police.’

  ‘All right.’ Jósteinn ran his hand through his thin, greasy black hair. A comb had left light stripes where the scalp shone through. Thóra wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘all right’; all right, they could go to the police or all right, he would stop his sickening digressions? She decided to assume the latter.

  ‘Go over this again for me, just so that I’m clear on everything.’ Jósteinn had refused to allow them to record the conversation, and fearing that he wouldn’t open up, Thóra was limiting herself to only scribbling down the occasional word or two. ‘Just start at the beginning and repeat what it is you think Ari has done to you.’

  Jósteinn looked up now and stared out of the window, and Thóra and Matthew automatically followed his gaze. There was nothing to see but snow, the abandoned greenhouse and the bare branches swaying in the wind. ‘He betrayed me. Maybe it’s not that surprising, but nevertheless, he did. It couldn’t have been anyone but him. He was the only one who knew about the pictures besides me.’

  He let out a short, joyless laugh. ‘I thought lawyers were supposed to protect their clients’ interests, not run to the police with information.’ Without turning from the window, he asked: ‘What would you do if you had to defend a man and found there was more evidence against him?’

  Thóra had no interest in making herself the topic of this man’s conversation. ‘Generally, lawyers aren’t in the habit of handing over to the police evidence that is detrimental to their client’s case.’ She neglected to mention that the nature of Jósteinn’s crimes was such that few would take pains to assure that he remained a part of society. ‘But it isn’t the lawyer’s role to conceal evidence on behalf of his client. Are you certain you didn’t ask him to get rid of them? You were in solitary confinement and I’m sure you were concerned that the photos would be found.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t like that. I merely warned him that the photos existed, and told him that I’d hidden them in a flowerpot on my grandfather’s grave. No one else visited the grave, so they would be left alone there. It didn’t take him long to fetch them and send them to the police, anonymously. No one else could have done it and though I’ve always known it was him, I haven’t been able to verify it until recently.’ Again Jósteinn laughed coldly. ‘This computer came to me so that justice would be done, pure and simple.’

  Thóra and Matthew were speechless. If justice always won out, this man wouldn’t be sitting here, he’d be six feet under with his grandfather. Thóra was the first to regain her composure. ‘How did you know the computer contained data concerning you? You’ve got a pile of machines here at the moment – surely you don’t go through all of them that closely. Aren’t most of them useless, anyway?’

  ‘You can always retrieve data. It takes time and patience, but I’ve got enough of both. I do this with all the computers that come to my workshop. People think it’s impossible to do anything with them but that’s usually not the case. No one has any idea what I’m doing here; the staff know so little about computers that I can tell them anything. And in any case, they’re all happy as long as I’m shut away in my little cubbyhole. When Einvarður’s laptop landed on my table I hit the jackpot. Not just because it was his computer, but because he’d forgotten to take his 3G key out of the case. With that I was able to go online without anyone knowing, and even make phone calls all over town. The idiot had taped the password to the key.’ He continued to stare at the snow outside. ‘It was all most enjoyable, and what I found on the hard drive made it even better.’

  Matthew cleared his throat. ‘So you found e-mails sent between Ari and his cousin Einvarður, in which Ari offered the ministry evidence pertaining to your case, in exchange for his not being disbarred due to impending bankruptcy?’

  ‘Oh, it was more than that.’ Jósteinn stopped staring out of the window, directing his attention back at the embroidered cushion he’d put in his lap when he sat down. ‘There were e-mail exchanges between Einvarður and other people in the ministry, including the person investigating the case. He’s no idiot, that Einvarður, despite appearances to the contrary. He saved the e-mails because he was merely an intermediary. He worded them in such a way that even if they were made public he would have looked pretty much blameless. And he would probably even have become a hero.’

  ‘And the police and prosecutor went along with it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. How can temporarily disbarring one lawyer compare to putting me behind bars for the rest of my life? Less hassle for a much better outcome.’ Jósteinn sounded triumphant. ‘But the people involved in this had no idea that it would mean Ari would then owe Einvarður a favour – a favour that he then cashed in when the residence burned down and he needed an inside man in the investigation and the trial. There were e-mails about this too, and again I think that Einvarður wanted to shield his own position if these exchanges came to light. He words the messages so as to protect himself, puts some words into Ari’s mouth and in doing so is able to hide behind bad legal advice, although it ought to be clear to anyone who reads them how he set things up.’

  ‘If anyone actually does get to read them, at this point.’ Following a visit from a Ministry of Justice representative, all the computers had been removed from Jósteinn’s workshop, and Einvarður had almost certainly got his laptop back and subsequently destroyed it. He himself had been partly responsible for this, having put in a request to get it back after his meeting with Thóra and Matthew – although the ministry representative hadn’t appeared immediately. Perhaps Einvarður hadn’t wanted to come across as being too eager to get his computer back; or perhaps the matter simply had to go through the right channels before it was possible to take action. One thing was clear, in any case – the computer was gone.

  Jósteinn tugged at a loose thread in the middle of the cushion’s embroidered cover. ‘It’s up to you to prove who did it. And you should be able to, now that you know what you’re looking for.’

  ‘None of what you claim to have read proves anything about the fire. It’s all very interesting, but if Einvarður doesn’t admit straight out in an e-mail that he started the fire, there’s no evidence pointing to him. There’s another man und
er suspicion now, and he appears to be an extremely plausible candidate. Plus, Einvarður was at a ball in Selfoss that evening, along with his wife. It would be difficult to demonstrate that he’d driven to town in order to start the fire before driving back out there. His wife would surely have known about it and she would never have agreed to it.’

  ‘You’ll work it out.’ Jósteinn tugged on the end of the thread, which he’d finally got a good grip on, and pulled it slowly from the cushion. The thread belonged to the largest of the roses and it was bright red. ‘Have you ever pulled the guts out of a mouse?’ He’d started again with his shock tactics.

  ‘No, and we never will,’ growled Matthew.

  Jósteinn put the cushion down next to him but continued to stare at it. ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Would you mind getting back to the computer and the files?’ Thóra felt nauseous and couldn’t bear any more of these deviations. ‘Was there nothing there that could be considered concrete proof that he arranged the fire?’

  Jósteinn shrugged. ‘That’s what I was telling you. You’re not listening. His son, Tryggvi, had suddenly started to open up a bit and seemed to want to communicate a few things. Although they were ecstatic about his progress, they were very disturbed by what he wanted to communicate. Understandably.’ He placed his hand back on the cushion and Thóra felt her gorge rise at the thought of him pulling another thread from it.

  ‘How do you think it will look if it turns out his wife drove away after running over and killing that girl? Is that any better than what I did? I didn’t kill anyone.’ He fell silent and then added mournfully: ‘More’s the pity.’

  Matthew shifted on the couch. ‘And it turned out that his son was a witness? He was in the car?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jósteinn’s voice was as emotionless as before. ‘He was in the front seat and he saw everything. The daughter was also a passenger in the car. Tryggvi’s violent reaction to the collision caused his mother to just keep driving, or so they say, although it might lead one to suspect that she’d simply had a bit too much to drink.’

  Thóra sat silently. No doubt this was the reason why Tryggvi had hated being put in a car. It must have been a shock to Fanndís and Einvarður that when the treatment of their beloved son finally appeared to be producing results, it should also involve what they feared most. The boy had finally been able to interact with his surroundings, albeit to a limited degree, but when he tried to express himself it was to tell the world about the fatal accident on Vesturlandsvegur Road. The irony of it. The prone figure in the picture wasn’t Lísa at all, but the young babysitter, and the peace sign must be the car’s steering wheel. When the string of characters was viewed in reverse, it showed the licence-plate number of their family car, NN180, the car that Fanndís had been driving that evening. ‘And Ari took on Jakob’s case to make sure no incriminating evidence would get out during the trial?’ He had already told her this, so it was a rhetorical question.

  ‘All he knew was that he should keep everything concerning Tryggvi, his drawings and how fascinated he was with fire, out of the picture and prevent any suspicion from falling on him. Glódís, the director of the centre, was also drafted in to help Einvarður cover up a few things, without being told why. If she’d given it just a bit of thought, she would have realized that by doing so she was endangering an innocent man. Jakob. Actually, Einvarður never says anywhere that they started the fire; that’s just what I inferred from some other things I found on the laptop.’

  ‘Such as?’ Matthew leaned forward but then jerked back immediately when he realized how close he’d got to Jósteinn.

  ‘Some photos that were uploaded to the computer. I found several that were taken on the night of the fire. Einvarður thought he’d deleted them, but computer files aren’t deleted completely unless the area where they’re stored is written over. Laymen generally don’t know this.’ Jósteinn gave a small, lazy yawn, as if he were bored with his visitors and the topic of conversation. ‘Aren’t you at all interested in knowing who started the fire? I still haven’t told you. Well, since I can’t send you helpful clues any more, I’ll have to just come out with it.’

  Now Thóra and Matthew’s attention suddenly peaked. ‘Weren’t you suggesting that Einvarður started it?’ Thóra hoped that he wasn’t about to say something about guts or other internal organs.

  ‘It wasn’t him, it was his daughter. Lena.’

  They barely spoke on the way home, lost in their own thoughts. Jósteinn’s story fitted with everything that had already come out in the investigation as well as filling in the missing pieces. According to him, the photos from the party that Lena had held at home that evening showed her wearing a long white dress – the same dress Thóra had seen her wearing in a photo at her parents’ house, taken the night before the fire. When she’d added a gold headband, she looked exactly like an angel, the ‘angel’ Jakob had seen. Jósteinn had got into all the case files Einvarður had saved on his computer, and had done his research into who was who and what was what. He’d discovered the Facebook page and realized what was in Lísa’s autopsy report, in addition to finding the photograph of Friðleifur’s burnt corpse, which he’d sent to Thóra by text message. He had dutifully compared the photos on the Facebook page to those taken at the party at Lena’s house that night, and had found some familiar faces. As the night wore on the number of guests in the photos diminished. Finally there were only three left, and of these, one was asleep on the sofa. The other guest was Bjarki, whom Jósteinn had recognized from the Facebook page.

  The very last photo taken was of Lena. She was leaning forward on the kitchen table with a Bacardi Breezer in front of her, her hands and her white dress all sooty. It was no wonder her father had deleted the photos. There was absolutely no doubt about what she’d been up to.

  Jósteinn had also found Margeir and started bombarding him with text messages and phone calls with the help of Skype; he had managed to steal a credit card number from a staff member at Sogn to purchase domestic credit. He was convinced that Margeir was more closely connected to the case than had yet been discovered, because he was in so many photos on the Facebook page and must at least have known what was going on. Jósteinn had sent him the sequence of characters from Tryggvi’s drawings, which Ægir had mentioned submitting to Einvarður when he was dismissed. The report also mentioned the mirror imaging, which made Jósteinn realize that the characters needed to be read backwards. By searching the computer for various versions of the character sequence, in which he also tried exchanging numbers and letters, he found an electronic tax return that Einvarður had also stored on his laptop. In it was the licence-plate number. No wonder he’d turned pale when he realized that the laptop was still in use. On closer inspection, Jósteinn noticed that the car had vanished from the following year’s tax return without any mention of it having been sold, and another car had been added. Thóra found this quite ingenious, since it would always be possible to claim to have forgotten to delist the car, which had probably stood in the garage since the night of the hit-and-run. Tryggvi had written the licence-plate number on his drawings. He probably didn’t actually understand its meaning, but he was able to connect it to the vehicle and the accident. Because he drew things in mirror image, no one had realized what he was trying to say when he drew his vague pictures of the accident again and again. When Margeir scribbled the number in the frost on the windowpane, the little boy had seen the reverse image. Jósteinn hadn’t anticipated this coincidence. Thóra had been able to verify through Berglind, who had called her the previous evening, that this was the licence-plate number of a car that Einvarður had used two or three years ago. She’d assisted him in filling out the mileage log, so she had often entered the number over the years.

  ‘Do you want to go straight to the police?’ asked Matthew, as the lights of the city appeared on the horizon.

  ‘No. Let’s go down to the office; I need to make a copy of this.’ She opened her hand and looked at the li
ttle USB stick. She hadn’t wanted to put it in her handbag in case it got damaged rattling around among all the other rubbish in there. On it were all the main files concerning the fire and the accident that Jósteinn had found on the laptop. He had hidden the key long before the computers were taken. He said he’d always assumed he’d be found out in the end.

  She had to hand it to him, that bastard Jósteinn: he was cunning.

  Chapter 37

  Tuesday, 9 March 2010

  The sun was low in the sky and it shone in Jakob’s eyes, but that didn’t diminish the joy that radiated from his face. He was still wearing his Coke-bottle glasses, but the bandages were gone now and they sat much better on his ears, though one of the arms was still rather bent and would never be the same, any more than the eye in which he’d lost his sight. His ear was fine, but the blind eye was always pointing in a different direction to the other. This drew attention to the odd pupil, which had been oblong, rather like a cat’s, since the attack.

  ‘So the fire was accidental, if all of this is true and correct. Not that we’ll ever be able to know for sure. When Jósteinn hired me for this investigation he said something like “a child who’s had their fingers burned might still want to play with fire”, which is how it turned out.’ Thóra was speaking to Jakob’s mother. His attention had long turned to something else and he was now waiting excitedly to go out into the sunshine with Mummy. The investigation of the case was complete and a reopening of the case before the Supreme Court secured; the conclusion to the case was thought to be so likely to come out in Jakob’s favour that a temporary decision regarding his release from Sogn would be hurried through the system. ‘Lena says she met Bjarki at school and they’d been to several parties together along with some of her other friends, including the one at her house on the night of the fire. When only the two of them were left – apart from her best friend, who was passed out on the sofa – she got the idea of going over to the residence to sober up a bit. After they’d made sure that Friðleifur was on duty, they went over there with Bjarki at the wheel, smashed. Lena isn’t sure whether she came up with the idea of getting Bjarki to scare her brother on the way there, or if it was after they arrived, but either way she asked him to do it. She remembers telling him that Tryggvi was simultaneously fascinated with fire and terrified of it. The theory behind her drunken plan was that Tryggvi would be frightened back into his shell, ensuring the accident remained unsolved.’