Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

Thóra doubted it. What Jósteinn had said completely explained the attack. He believed Thóra’s investigation would make better progress if she had easier access to Jakob.

Thóra didn’t tell Matthew about her suspicions until they’d left the hospital. ‘Are you serious?’ Matthew stopped, seeming upset. He was always direct and to the point about everything, and for him not to have told her about the bank’s offer was the closest he’d ever come to scheming. To manipulate events in the way Thóra believed Jósteinn had done was so alien to him that all he could do was gawp at her.

‘I can’t prove anything, or confirm it without asking him directly, but it completely fits with what we discussed.’

Matthew shook his head irritably. ‘I don’t know which is crazier – to attack someone like that unprovoked, or to injure them for a specific purpose.’

‘No question – it’s crazier to do it for a purpose.’ Thóra breathed in the cool air. ‘He’s not a normal man, remember. He’s capable of anything.’ She looked up along the building and saw Jakob’s face in the window. He wasn’t watching them leave, he was just peering out over the hospital grounds, in the direction of his mother’s house. She turned back to Matthew. ‘If I’m right, there’s no question that Jósteinn wants to keep the case going.’ She pointed at the sad sight framed in the window. ‘If so, then I’ll keep investigating. That’s all there is to it.’

Matthew said nothing.

The jogger was flagging, but he focused on his goal. He chose a car parked up ahead in the distance and thought only of getting that far. Then and only then would he slow down. This way he hoped to be able to resist the temptation to stop, put his hands on his knees and breathe as deeply as his lungs could tolerate. Last autumn he had run this same circuit without breathing through his nose, but after being largely sedentary during the winter he had expected too much of himself on this first warm, ice-free day of the new year. He was alone, which would no longer be the case as spring approached, when he would hardly be able to go ten yards without meeting other joggers. Then they would feel exactly like he did now, whereas he would be one of the few in shape. For a moment he managed to forget his fatigue as he imagined himself in the spring sunshine, straight-backed, going at an even pace, passing one red-faced, sweaty runner after another.

At the moment when he was feeling best about himself, his body decided that it had had enough. Suddenly he couldn’t take another step; the burning in his lungs became unbearable, his heart pounded, he tasted blood and his legs were on fire. He stood panting on the pavement and it crossed his mind to take a taxi home. It was a long trip back and there were few things more embarrassing than staggering along in your running gear. However, his taxi plan fell apart because he had neither a phone nor money on him; there was no one out and about in the area, even though he was only a short distance from the popular Nauthólsvík Beach. He sighed heavily. It was then that he spotted the bench. He could rest there and massage the worst of the pain from his legs. Then he would have some hope of making it home free of shame – albeit not very quickly.

The surface of the bench was cold but he got used to it immediately, as if his body had reached its maximum level of pain. The bench was neither warm nor comfortable, but he couldn’t recall ever having been so glad to sit down. Slowly but surely the pain receded, but now he was aware that his body temperature was dropping rapidly; he was dressed lightly, since he hadn’t been planning to sit outside, not moving, in these tight, thin clothes. The wind that had felt so agreeable such a short time ago was now cold and biting, and his sweaty body quickly became chilled. He really ought to keep moving, but he couldn’t get himself to stand up immediately. He hammered his folded arms against his chest, as his grandfather had taught him when he was a small boy. It helped.

When he’d stopped punching heat into himself, the lapping of the waves caught his attention and he held his breath to enjoy it to the utmost. He turned to look across the bay and stare at the ocean. A loud electronic jingle suddenly tore through the peace and quiet, giving him a massive shock; he had thought that he was there alone and felt uncomfortable at the thought that someone had snuck up on him unawares. He turned around to look but saw no one. The ringing continued, however, now higher and more intense. The jogger quickly worked out where it was coming from; he noticed a blue gleam beneath the bench and reached down to pick up a rather cheap-looking mobile phone. On the blinking screen he saw the word Mum and for a second he considered answering, but he was still so exhausted that he didn’t trust himself to explain to this person who he was and how he had come to be answering a stranger’s phone. Instead he stared at the screen until the ringing stopped, at which point a message appeared: 7 missed calls . Some drunk idiot must have lost his phone last night and was probably still asleep at home. The jogger turned back to the sea; the phone could wait, he would take it home with him and then call the mother to let her know where she could come and get it. He decided to check whether the guy’s wallet might also be around somewhere, so that he could return it along with the phone.

It was then that he spotted the feet in the brown scrub where the land sloped steeply down to the sea. He actually had to think about it for a minute before he realized what they were; at first he thought they were funny-looking rocks, but then saw that they were black shoes, and that in the shoes were feet, which also looked oddly blackened. The realization shocked him out of his fatigue, and he forced his stiff legs to walk over towards the dip. He was afraid of what he might see when the rest of the body became visible; hopefully it was just the drunk owner of the phone who’d had too much fun the night before, but the completely motionless feet and the rather uncomfortable position of the body suggested otherwise. He noticed an odd burnt smell coming off the brown scrub as he approached, and thought to himself how strange it was that someone had decided to lie down in the one place where the scrub had been burned and the smell was so bad; although this was a trivial point when you also considered that he was partly lying in the grass and partly hanging down a rocky slope. Just before the entire body came into view, the jogger realized that no one, either living or half-dead, would choose this as a place to rest.

As he ran off in search of help, having forgotten all about the phone that he was clutching in one hand, the jogger felt neither pain nor fatigue. The only feeling left was nausea.

‘I just thought you should know.’ Thóra took the old woman’s hand, which was rough and cold, and felt it jerk at her touch. Thóra had called Grímheiður after her visit to the hospital to tell her what she thought she’d understood about the reason for Jósteinn’s attack. The panic this seemed to have provoked in Jakob’s mother had prompted Thóra to drop by and see her on her way home. Now she and Matthew sat with her in the narrow kitchen that Jakob missed so much. The apartment was small but welcoming and reminded Thóra of her grandparents’ home when she was a child, which had had ornaments along all the walls whose sentimental value far outweighed their actual price. Here, framed photographs took pride of place, most of them of Jakob at various ages, but also some of his deceased father. ‘I completely understand if you want to think about this a bit; even if as a result you might prefer me to resign from the case.’