Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Sigríður Herdís Logadóttir.’ Thóra had pretty much memorised the names of everyone at the centre and Sigríður Herdís had been the only deaf-blind one. She watched the girl handle the ball and various other things as the therapist handed them to her. Every time the woman handed her something new they repeated the exercise: one hand on the object, the other on the woman’s lips while she told her what the object was called; then they practised making the sign with their hands. From time to time the girl realized what she was holding and was the first to make the sign, at which she received cheerful praise from her therapist. Glódís stood there motionless the whole time, watching. ‘Is this the first video that you shot?’

‘Yes, they run in sequence. Why do you ask?’

‘I was wondering about the centre’s director. She was obviously there to ensure that everything proceeded properly at the start, but surely she couldn’t have followed everyone’s treatment, all the time?’

‘No, I agree, she couldn’t. She was quite suspicious of me at first, but then she got used to my presence and I started seeing less of her. I would’ve expected the residents to find it difficult having me around, but not her.’

Over the course of the videos the stony-faced Glódís stopped appearing in every shot. At first they watched every clip to the end, but when there was little to see beyond the daily lives of the residents, they started asking Sveinn to go through them more quickly. There wasn’t much to be gained from endless mealtimes and therapy sessions, and they found it uncomfortable to spy like peeping toms on the lives of these unfortunate people, now dead. In one of the scenes they spotted the young night watchman who had been on duty on the fateful night, and Sveinn paused the tape. ‘This one died in the fire. It was sheer luck that his co-worker didn’t die as well. He was off sick, or at least that’s what I was told.’

‘Is that significant?’ Matthew looked at Thóra.

‘I don’t know.’ She turned to Sveinn. ‘Were there watchmen on duty at the residence during the daytime? Or was it just evenings and weekends?’

‘It was staffed full-time on weekdays, so there was no need for a watchman except for the night shifts; but at weekends there were two of them working alone until noon, and then more people turned up to take care of lunch and receive visitors. I filmed there on several Sunday mornings because it was so quiet. That’s how I know the arrangement. The one who died was a nice guy, very good with the residents and really laid-back, like all the night watchmen. Once his sister and friend came to visit and helped out, although the smell coming off them rather suggested they were just finishing off a long night on the tiles.’

Matthew couldn’t hide his shock. ‘Was that allowed?’

‘Yeah, sure. They were fine really, and they weren’t there that long. There was no ban on visitors to the centre, except of course at night, although I was never there then. I expect the same went for the staff as for the residents – that friends and relatives could pop in as long as they didn’t get in the way. It wasn’t that common, I don’t think, but I probably have some footage of someone dropping in, somewhere amongst all this.’

In the event they didn’t find a relevant clip, despite going through what felt like hundreds of them. It would complicate the case endlessly if they had to factor in unscheduled visits by friends and family of employees, and it made Thóra wonder whether the only way to find the person who impregnated Lísa would be to take a DNA sample from every man in Iceland. She tried to push aside this idea and focus on the screen. One resident after another appeared and she was able to identify them all, since they were so few and their disabilities so different. Jakob appeared several times and in one shot he looked very upset, muttering constantly that he wanted to go home and being told again and again that this was his new home and that he should stop complaining and find something interesting to do. The video stopped suddenly when he pushed the lamp off his bedside table as he stomped furiously around the room. In other segments he just looked bored, and when he did join in any group activity it was with his head hanging sullenly. Tryggvi featured the least often, which Thóra imagined was due to the antisocial aspects of his autism. He only appeared twice, sitting in his room, in one instance drawing something that appeared to be a face without eyes, but with a mask over its nose and mouth, and in the other staring into space and rocking slowly back and forth. The wall of his room was more or less covered with his pictures, which all had a similar subject: an eyeless figure, prostrate and with a gaping mouth, and another person in the distance holding up a ring divided into three. The same peculiar sequence, O8INN, appeared in all of them. However, the pictures weren’t identical; when the camera panned slowly across the wall, prominent flames were visible in some of them. ‘Do you know what the pictures are meant to show?’ asked Thóra. ‘For example, this figure lying down.’ She had started to suspect that it might be Lísa. She must have always been in bed, and her eyes must have always been closed. Why the figure’s mouth was gaping like that was another story; maybe it was one of those artist’s secrets that would never be revealed.

‘I have no idea, but he was extremely meticulous in his drawing. You should have seen how he went about it – I forgot to slow the film down to point it out to you before. He drew it all in one movement without ever lifting the pencil.’ They waited as Sveinn rewound to the shot of Tryggvi drawing, and stared silently at the screen as it demonstrated his peculiar method. The young man showed no sign of hesitation; he drew the pencil at even speed back and forth across the paper. ‘I’d be willing to bet that if someone studied this, they’d find that he’d discovered a way to do it using the shortest line possible and with the fewest intersecting points. And he never stopped to think about it. Amazing.’

On the screen Tryggvi held out the picture behind him, in the direction of the camera, without looking up. ‘Thank you,’ a voice said, and a hand appeared to receive the picture, the video image wobbling slightly. ‘He gave me the drawing, the poor thing. I expect he’d run out of Blu-Tack to stick up the pictures and didn’t know what to do with them.’

‘Incredible.’ Thóra stared at the wall, which now filled the frame. ‘I’m not sure I’d have wanted these pictures hanging in my room. They’re just too sad – although he can’t have been bothered by them, if he wanted to display them so prominently.’

‘Well, I don’t know. The next time I came they were all gone, and they’d taken all the boy’s drawing implements. I never understood why, but maybe, as you say, the pictures did have a negative influence on him or something. He looked pretty sad after that, although he was hardly a bundle of joy before.’ He fast-forwarded through some shaky recordings of the corridor before letting the video play again.

Thóra’s eyes were starting to hurt, but suddenly something caught her attention. The man had walked down the corridor taking brief shots of the interior of each apartment. ‘Would you mind stopping?’ The screen showed apartment number six. Inside, someone was lying in bed; the short, dark hair could have belonged to a woman or a man. ‘Who’s this?’ Subconsciously, Thóra had been keeping count of the residents during the camera’s trip into the apartments, and all five had already appeared.

‘Oh, her. I don’t remember her name. She was living there but got sick or something, so she was at home or in hospital, I think, when the fire occurred. And because of that, she’s still alive.’