Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

It was Monday morning, so it had to be coffee. Einvarður sat carefully, making sure not to sit on his jacket, and gave the knot of his tie a slight tug, as if to assure himself that it was still centred and tightly secured. ‘Before we begin I’d like to ask you one thing that is understandably of great import-ance to me: do you think there’s a real chance that Jakob has been wrongfully detained?’ Einvarður stared into Thóra’s eyes as if he had a lie detector in his own, dark blue ones.

‘Yes, I do.’ Thóra didn’t need to pretend. The more she considered it, the less likely it seemed that poor, simple Jakob had been responsible. ‘I have significant doubts about the statements he made during his interrogations and in court, and I also feel that he’s very unlikely to have been able to conceive of and carry out such a complicated deed.’

‘It really wasn’t that complicated, surely?’ Einvarður’s expression was suddenly fierce. ‘You just pour out some petrol and light it.’

‘It required a bit more than that, if you think about it: you’d have to get hold of the petrol and leave all the fire doors open, and I would seriously question whether Jakob even knows what a fire door is. If his version of events is viewed with his disability in mind, my hunch is that he saw the perpetrator, but without being able to identify who it was. And there’s another detail that raises questions, which is too complicated to go into here. But in a nutshell, I feel that he doesn’t have the mental ability to have pulled this off without succumbing to the fire himself.’

Einvarður had listened to Thóra attentively without giving any visible indication of what he thought of her explanations. ‘The police, the prosecution and two different courts disagree with you.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ Thóra replied without any irony or irritation. She hadn’t expected the man to have anything but doubts about her investigation and was actually extremely surprised that he’d even agreed to meet her and Matthew. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that this is my conclusion after studying the case, and that’s why I have decided to look into more than just the files that form the basis of those parties’ opinion. This visit is part of that.’

‘Who do you believe did start the fire, if it wasn’t Jakob?’ The man’s voice was devoid of any feeling as he said these words, which somehow gave them more weight than if they’d been spoken in anger.

‘I haven’t formed an opinion on that yet, but obviously I hope to do so. In a petition to reopen a case, there’s no stronger position than being able to categorically identify the guilty party.’

‘And am I to understand from this visit that you believe me to have been involved?’ Einvarður smiled jovially.

‘As I said, I haven’t formed an opinion as to who might have been responsible. I don’t yet have enough evidence to do that.’ Thóra smiled back at him, but Einvarður paled slightly. He had clearly expected Thóra to laugh off this ridiculous notion. ‘But no, I haven’t come here because I think you’re responsible. I was hoping that you could give me a better insight into life at the home, and whether there was anything about it that seemed off-kilter, not as it should have been.’

Einvarður seemed to have regained his composure and was now as slick as before. ‘Well, that’s a difficult question, I must admit. We just visited our son and didn’t really follow the goings-on at the residence very closely; after all, the idea was for the residents to have their own place of refuge, one they could look on as their own apartment.’

‘When you say we, do you mean you and your wife?’ Thóra assumed that the man was married; he was wearing a rather broad gold band. There wasn’t a scratch to be seen on its highly polished surface.

‘Yes.’ He reached for a large framed photograph on the shelf behind him. ‘And our daughter.’ He handed Thóra the photo. ‘This is Fanndís, my wife, and our daughter Lena. And this is Tryggvi.’ He pointed at the photo, leaving a fingerprint over the face of his deceased son on the otherwise spotless glass. ‘No one should have to experience such a thing.’

Thóra took the photo and didn’t know whether he meant having such a sick child or losing him under such tragic circumstances. She assumed he meant the latter. The family photo had been taken indoors, and in fact the background suggested that they were in their son’s apartment at the centre. Father and son sat on a little sofa, while Einvarður’s wife leaned on the sofa arm next to her son and the daughter stood straight as an arrow at the other end. They were all strikingly beautiful. Einvarður appeared relaxed even though he was dressed in an even smarter suit than the one he had on now. His arms were around the shoulders of his wife and son. Fanndís, also dressed stylishly in a salmon-pink shift dress, smiled radiantly at the camera. Their daughter was wearing a white full-length dress with a yellow headband, which made her look rather like a Roman priestess. The children each resembled one of their parents; the daughter looked like her blonde, exceptionally beautiful mother and the son like his dark-haired father. They all looked as if they could work as models, except perhaps the son who, although very good-looking, was lacking a little in concentration. The other three were looking straight at the camera and smiling, but he looked a bit off to the side, staring at something outside the frame that was attracting his attention more than the photographer. His hands were also in an unnatural position, the fingers of both tangled together as if in a peculiar prayer. In addition, his fingers seemed to be slightly less in focus than everything else in the photo, as if they’d been moving quickly. Unlike the rest of his family, he was dressed in casual clothing.

‘Excuse my rudeness,’ said Thóra. ‘I should have started by expressing my sympathy. I’m not going to pretend to understand how you feel; I just can’t imagine it. It must have been horrible.’ She handed Matthew the photograph. ‘Your son was really very handsome.’

‘Yes, he was.’ Einvarður took the photo from Matthew, who had had a good look at it. ‘But that was the only good card fate dealt him. Mentally, he was in his own little world, and none of us who cared about him could access it.’ He put the picture back on the shelf, making sure to position it so that it faced straight ahead.

‘Did he never express himself – never speak or use any kind of sign language?’ Thóra wanted to know whether there was any point in asking whether the boy had told his parents anything useful about life at the care home.

Einvarður shook his head. ‘No, he never said a word. He understood what people said, or so we believe, but he never communicated. He was extremely interested in illustrated educational books but we never knew for sure whether he read them or just looked at the pictures. Sometimes he stared at the same page for a long time.’

‘But do you think he was aware of his environment?’

‘No, I doubt it. At least, I don’t think he understood or noticed what happened around him in the way that we would. My wife disagreed with me, of course. In the twenty-two years that we had Tryggvi, we never could decide about that, which is maybe the best indication of how incomprehensible his life was, at least to those of us who are supposedly normal.’

‘So your wife thought it was possible to reach him?’ Maybe she was better informed than Tryggvi’s father.

Einvarður placed his palms flat on the desk and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘She thought so, and she never gave up on the idea that it might be possible to find a way of treating Tryggvi as, or training him to become, a fully functional member of society – or close to it, at least. It seemed impossible to me, but obviously I didn’t want to dash her hopes. Of course, secretly I shared her dream – I even had modest hopes of my own. Stranger things have certainly happened.’ He leaned back in his seat. ‘We’ll never find out whether or not it would have worked.’