Jakob’s mother sat there wide-eyed, nodding her head after every sentence Thóra uttered. ‘How could these people let Jakob sit behind bars for this? I just don’t understand it.’
‘Her parents didn’t know. Einvarður’s only motivation was to ensure that the investigation didn’t home in on Tryggvi because of his fascination with fire. That’s why he got his cousin Ari to call you and offer his assistance when Jakob was arrested. He was afraid that otherwise the truth about the hit-and-run would come to light. Lena kept it completely secret; the photos on her father’s laptop were hers but she deleted them immediately, so he never saw them. It doesn’t explain how she was able to live with something so terrible, though; maybe she’d got used to it after keeping quiet about the death of the young girl. She was in the car with her mother and brother when the accident occurred.’
Thóra smiled at Jakob, who couldn’t keep still in his chair. ‘If she’s telling the truth, then the fire was unintentional. She’s probably been thinking that it would be unfair if she and Bjarki were made to pay for it. Everything in her story suggests that he was the one responsible, but that’s hardly surprising; he’s not exactly in a position to defend himself any more. Lena maintains that when they got to the residence, Friðleifur didn’t want to let Bjarki in and the two men ended up having an argument that she couldn’t make head or tail of. She had no idea about what Bjarki had done to the girls at the centre, or what had gone on between him and Friðleifur as a result. She persuaded Friðleifur to let them in and while she messed about with him, Bjarki went wandering through the building, found the petrol can in the storage shed that Lena had told him about and poured petrol all over the place. Lena says he was dead drunk and she’d forgotten to tell him what apartment Tryggvi lived in, so he poured petrol into all of them to be sure. He imagined that the petrol would ignite, form a carpet of fire along the corridor and in the apartments and would only last for a few minutes while the flammable liquid burned up. He’d noticed the sprinkler system on the ceiling and thought that that would save the day if things went wrong. He didn’t know the system was disconnected.
‘Shouldn’t we go now? It’s almost the evening.’ Jakob grabbed the arms of his chair and made an attempt to stand up, but his mother laid her hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him down again, saying that she’d be finished very soon.
Thóra continued, but started talking faster. ‘While Bjarki was carrying out his plan, Friðleifur became agitated and gave Lena the slip to see what was happening; perhaps he’d smelled the petrol. He came across Bjarki just as he was emptying the can and went ballistic. He rushed to the duty room to call the police, but Bjarki hit him on the back of the head with the can, so hard that Friðleifur was knocked out. What happened next isn’t entirely clear, but Lena says that they were horrified and planned to call an ambulance. To calm themselves down, they lit a cigarette that somehow caused a spark to fly into the petrol. This set off a sequence of events that two drunk kids were in no fit state to deal with. Lena says she ran in and tried to save the residents, but why she didn’t manage to actually get anyone out is a mystery. However, I expect this will help to reduce her sentence. Jakob spoke of seeing an angel; no doubt that’s what she looked like to him, in her long white dress and her gold headband, just like the angel on a poster in his room. But I suspect this wasn’t quite as innocuous as it sounds – as you might remember, Jakob said the angel was holding a suitcase, which turned out to be the petrol can. Her excuse for this is that she was so panicked that she took the can with her. But the fact that she and Bjarki had enough sense to wipe their fingerprints off it suggests that they can’t have panicked that much.’
‘What will happen to her?’ For the first time Jakob’s mother’s expression was severe; the soft lines of her face became sharp; the creases at the corners of her eyes deepened and her lips pressed into thin lines.
‘I don’t know. She’ll be sentenced, but it’s impossible to say whether the sentence will be suspended.’
‘Suspended? Well, it’s a shame Jakob wasn’t that lucky when he was convicted. How can they discriminate against people like this?’ She didn’t need to add what was all too obvious: that Jakob had been discriminated against ever since his conception, even by his Creator. ‘In her defence, she doesn’t appear to have been the main perpetrator in the case, plus the fire does seem to have been accidental. The fact that she quit smoking afterwards gives credence to her story about the cigarettes.’
‘I’m speechless.’
Thóra shook her head. The case was complicated. DNA tests had revealed that Bjarki had impregnated Lísa, and even though the justice system hadn’t punished him, it was perhaps a comfort to Ragna to know that the sentence he had received was stringent, and not eligible for appeal. Margeir was still in custody, awaiting trial for the death of Bjarki. His defence was also based on the claim that Bjarki’s death had been an accident, and in the end he was only convicted of trying to set fire to the body afterwards. Sentence had not yet been passed on Lena’s mother for the hit-and-run. Fanndís had confessed to everything, but in Iceland there were few prece-dents of people being sentenced to prison for having knocked down and killed someone. There were even fewer where the driver had also fled the scene, although someone had been sentenced for this very crime only six months before. However, the driver in that case had had a colourful criminal record and his conviction was simultaneous with one for another crime, while Fanndís’s record was spotless. Einvarður had been moved sideways to a similar position and news of his part in covering up a crime was not widely reported in the media. Jósteinn’s case was mentioned nowhere at all, and nor was Einvarður’s involvement in the handling of the evidence.
Glódís Tumadóttir was not as lucky as Einvarður. As far as Thóra could make out, the real reason for her dismissal wasn’t cutbacks and optimization, as the media stated, but had more to do with her performance in Jakob’s case and how she had acted as Einvarður’s puppet in the hope that he would advance her career. When his position in the hierarchy weakened, she lost all her support. Apparently Glódís had informed the head of the Regional Office that Einvarður had got her to cover up additional costs associated with Tryggvi’s special needs in terms of food and therapy; in effect, costs that Tryggvi’s parents would normally have had to shoulder themselves had been paid for out of the limited funding due to other residents. When this was put to him, however, Einvarður feigned complete ignorance, claiming that he had believed it to be part of the residence’s service and that he would of course repay the difference. E-mails that Glódís had submitted to back up her story proved nothing; Einvarður had taken great care not to say anything that could possibly implicate him in any way. Her desperate bid to have her dismissal rescinded was doomed from the start.
‘You must try not to let it trouble you.’ Thóra smiled again at Jakob. ‘The most important thing is that you’ve come home, Jakob, and now you can start to get your life back to the way it was before. That’s a pretty happy ending, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Jakob looked from her to his mother. ‘But I would be even happier if we could go out now.’
Thóra laughed. ‘You can go. There’s no point in being free if you have to hang around a lawyer’s office and listen to them saying lawyery things.’ She escorted them out. They said their goodbyes in the firm’s lobby and it seemed as if Jakob’s mother would never stop thanking Thóra. When Jakob finally managed to get her out of the door, Thóra watched as they walked hand in hand down the steps. She was filled with satisfaction and had an overwhelming desire to go home. Home to her family. She was equally satisfied with her phone conversation with Berglind the day before, where Berglind had thanked Thóra for having solved the case of the hit-and-run accident and apologized modestly for having gone on at such length about the haunting, which now appeared to have been rooted in the unkempt state of the house and Margeir’s visits to their garden. All was well that ended well and Thóra really didn’t want to tu
rn around and see Bella painting her fingernails black at the reception desk, even though she knew she would have to. She had to get her handbag before going home, and on the way she had to stop for an appointment, for which she would need to have her credit card handy. A Brazilian wax in honour of Matthew’s appointment at the bank, as well as her parents getting the keys to their apartment that evening. At this moment there was only one thing that bothered her more than her secretary and her anxiety about the pain she would soon be experiencing. Einvarður and his family would never be subjected to real justice, even though they had denied it to Jakob, Ragna, the girl who had been killed on Vesturlandsvegur Road and her parents, as well as all of those who died in the fire.
Fanndís rubbed her ear as she stared up into the starless night sky from the living room window. The silence was absolute. None of them was keen to turn on the television or the radio. News reporters had a tendency to ambush them when they least expected it, and if there was anything that really freaked them out, it was news stories about their affairs. She hated the reporters’ singsong tone, characterized by an ever-increasing emphasis that reached its peak at the end of every sentence. It made her feel nauseous. She was aware of Einvarður on the couch behind her because she could still hear him rustling the pages of the book he was pretending to read.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Fanndís did not turn around, but continued to stare out of the window and worry at her ear.
‘What?’ Her husband’s voice was gruff. This was the first thing he’d said since thanking her for dinner.
‘Coffee. Do you want some coffee?’ Fanndís turned to him, letting her hand drop after arranging her hair to cover her inflamed red earlobe. ‘It’s so cold in here now. Did you call the plumber?’
Einvarður slammed the book shut and placed it on the coffee table. ‘No, and no. I don’t want coffee and I didn’t call the plumber.’ He stood up. ‘I think I’m going up to bed.’
Fanndís stood in silence. Not because she had nothing to say, but because she couldn’t get up the nerve to start. The life of this three-person family was in ruins. Everything they’d built up and strived for; all of it was gone, and they had fought for nothing. Einvarður was in a difficult position at the ministry and his dream of an exciting ambassadorial position had come to nought. Lena had dropped out of university and rarely came out of her room, and certainly never on her own initiative. It was as if they’d all been forgotten. The phone had stopped ringing. She couldn’t even remember what the ring sounded like any more. It was sad how shallow friendship was when it came down to it – and family, too, even though Fanndís knew she only had herself to blame in that regard; she hadn’t made much of an effort to keep in touch with her family in recent years. It also occurred to her that perhaps she’d exhausted her friends’ sympathy quota a long time ago.
She watched her husband walk out of the living room without even looking at her or asking whether she was also going to bed early. It didn’t particularly surprise her. Even though he hadn’t said so explicitly, he blamed her for the way things were now. She was the one who’d run over the girl. She was the one who’d kept going, after only stopping long enough to see in the rear-view mirror that she was dead. At the time, Einvarður had said he understood why she’d reacted as she did: Tryggvi’s screaming had confused her and Lena’s crying hadn’t exactly helped. He’d never breathed a word about the thing they both knew, that the other reason she hadn’t stopped was the wine that she’d been drinking. Perhaps it was the reason he blamed himself. He had declined an invitation to dinner at his aunt’s house that evening, but if he’d put his work aside then it would have been him at the wheel. The thought of his aunt made Fanndís even more uncomfortable. She’d contacted Einvarður yesterday and told him that the police were making enquiries about that evening, asking whether Fanndís had consumed any alcohol. The woman hadn’t wanted to tell Einvarður what she answered, which meant that the police knew she’d had a few glasses.
Determined to make herself some coffee, even though she’d have to drink it alone, Fanndís went into the kitchen. Maybe she could persuade Lena to come downstairs and join her for a cup. Otherwise she’d just drink it alone at the kitchen table – as she so often did nowadays. The aroma of the beans gave her a welcome feeling of anticipation and satisfaction; she brought the tin to her face and inhaled deeply. Then she poured a handful of beans into the mill and ground them – for rather too long, in fact. Once the coffee was in the coffeemaker and the water had started to boil, Fanndís felt a bit better again; the familiar sound of the bubbling water calmed her down and allowed her to forget for a moment how hopeless everything was. They would simply have to face the facts and make the best of their situation. Time would surely heal all wounds and their problems weren’t any worse than those that other families had overcome. Perhaps it was the first step on the road to a better future to realize this simple fact. Although the ambassadorial position was out of the picture for Einvarður, that wasn’t to say that a lower-level placement in an embassy abroad was out of the question; that or work for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs at NATO or another international institution. The situation couldn’t get any worse – just better.
Suddenly the coffeemaker shut itself off. Fanndís looked in surprise at the machine, which now stood silent on the table in front of her; the water that had just been boiling was now still. She tried to restart the machine but nothing happened. She checked whether the cord at the back had come loose, but it turned out that wasn’t the problem. Typical. Fanndís resisted picking up the coffeemaker and letting it fall to the tile-covered floor, and limited herself to imagining how the glass shards would fly in all directions and bits of plastic would skitter across the floor. Then she noticed that the clock on the oven was blinking as it did on the rare occasions that the power went off. Fanndís exhaled through her nose, then took a deep breath. But it didn’t invigorate her – instead, her mouth was filled with a foul taste. It was as if she’d breathed in through a rusty pipe. She retched at the taste of iron and involuntarily turned to the sink. Thankfully, she didn’t vomit, and felt herself getting used to the disgusting tang. She stretched out to the window to let in some fresh air, but jumped back when she thought she saw a person or a shadow right outside.
She grabbed at her chest as if to calm her rapid heartbeat and stood there like that, frozen, waiting for it to slow down. Then she noticed that frost had begun to creep slowly but surely over the windowpane, clouding her view out into the darkness.
Someone to Watch Over Me Page 43