Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Fine.’ They waited to cross the street while a fleet of students’ cars passed by. Matthew had never been good at making small talk, but was grateful that Lena seemed to be an expert at it. She talked constantly, not about her brother or the fire, but about everything and nothing. All he had to do was interject with a couple of banalities every now and then, depending on what the cadence of her voice suggested was required.

He was relieved when they finally found some seats in Kringla Bar. He asked for a coffee and she ordered a Diet Coke, throwing her mobile phone unceremoniously onto the table and hanging her heavy bag on the back of the chair. As soon as the waiter was gone she started talking again, now chattering away about the price of textbooks and how her friend had had to postpone his studies because of it. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but shouldn’t we talk about the fire and Tryggvi?’ Matthew interjected. ‘Unfortunately I’ve only got about half an hour.’ This wasn’t exactly true, but it increased the likelihood that the girl would stick to the matter at hand. He was too old to be sitting in a bar, discussing young people’s problems.

‘Yes, of course.’ She smiled sheepishly and swept back her hair. ‘Of course I didn’t want to meet you to discuss the price of books. You’ll have to excuse me – I’m just a little bit nervous about this case and I find it difficult to talk about it.’

‘No problem.’ Matthew was silent. He preferred not to have to lead the conversation, because it could take him an eternity to get out of her what she really needed to say. He’d pinned his hopes on her having some specific piece of information up her sleeve that she wanted to share. When Lena continued to look at him awkwardly, he felt he had to say something. ‘Is it the investigation that’s making you anxious, or something else? There’s nothing about it that you need to fear. We’re just exploring whether any elements of the case were misconstrued.’

‘No, I’m not afraid of the outcome.’ Lena then seemed to realize that she sounded rather unconvincing and hastily added: ‘Well, not exactly afraid , but… It’s just, you never know what’s going to come up and that’s kind of unnerving.’

‘Are you referring to your brother? Are you worried that he’s connected to this somehow?’

‘Yes, actually. I know it’s really unlikely, but I’m still worried. I don’t know what effect it would have on my mum and dad. Can you imagine how they’d feel if they had to face up to the idea that the son they’ve been mourning was actually involved in starting the fire? Responsible for his own death, and all those other people’s? Even I can hardly get my head around it, and I’m nowhere near as close to the situation as they are.’ She said nothing as the waiter brought them their drinks, but then continued once he’d gone behind the pretentiously designed bar at the back of the room. ‘But in any case, you mustn’t think that I’ve decided he’s connected to this or anything. I’m just a bit worried.’

‘No, I don’t think that.’ Matthew sipped his coffee then wiped the foam from his upper lip. ‘I can’t tell you anything about your brother’s possible role in this, simply because I don’t know if he actually did anything.’

‘Are you a lawyer?’ Lena hadn’t yet touched her drink; instead she drew stripes in the condensation on the glass.

‘No, I’m not. I’m just helping Thóra. She’s a lawyer, conducting the investigation.’

‘I see.’ Lena stopped fiddling with the glass and placed her hands on the table. ‘So if I tell you something, you’re not bound to confidentiality.’ Matthew decided not to explain that lawyer–client privilege was intended for clients, not potential witnesses or other parties to a case. That would just complicate things, and besides, he wasn’t entirely clear on all the details. ‘Not professionally, no. But I’ll treat whatever information passes between us as confidential – though I would have to tell Thóra, who’d treat the information with the same discretion. However, if something emerges in our conversation that could prove Jakob’s innocence, she would almost certainly use it in one way or another. The most important thing is that an innocent person doesn’t shoulder the blame for someone else.’

‘Okay. Of course that’s fair.’ She took a slow, calm sip. ‘But you’re not sure that Jakob is innocent, are you?’

‘No, but the investigation is still ongoing, so that doesn’t mean much.’

‘But has something come out suggesting that Tryggvi had something to do with the fire?’ She blushed slightly and looked away from Matthew. ‘It would just be good if I had a little bit of advance warning. That’s why I called you. I’m worried about Mum and Dad and maybe I could start preparing them if there’s a chance of bad news.’

Matthew felt for her; her pain was obvious and he was convinced that she felt she had reason to be concerned, rightly or wrongly. ‘This must be hard for your parents. Do they have the same concerns as you; do they think Tryggvi might have been involved?’

‘No… yes… I don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to them. It always has been, actually, but now the situation is a hundred times worse. After Tryggvi died, they wouldn’t let me out of their sight and wanted to know everything I was doing, and they’re still really grumpy. It’s like they think something just as bad will happen to me and they want to prevent it but don’t think they could, and because of that they’re pushing me away, almost. As a result, I feel a bit neurotic too. I just want them to let me run my own life and have some time to myself – when I can.’

This was typical of young people who still lived with their parents and Matthew was fairly certain that he would have said precisely the same thing in his day, without needing to have experienced a family tragedy. ‘They just want the best for you.’ This was the answer that he absolutely would not have wanted to hear himself. ‘It’s our understanding that Tryggvi made significant progress at the centre, after undergoing special therapy that helped him to start expressing himself, or at least to modify his behaviour. Is that right?’

Lena shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t say he started expressing himself openly, but he’d grown more aware of his surroundings, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d finally have started talking to us, who knows? It’s not like he was making conversation or anything like that, though. Far from it.’

‘But he was starting to express himself in new ways, which was a huge improvement, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, compared to how he’d been before. He drew more, and his pictures were more focused.’

‘Is that how he conveyed messages? Through his drawings?’

‘No, not directly. I’m not sure he really thought of the drawings as messages to us. His mind didn’t work like ours and it wasn’t easy to understand what he was on about.’ Lena took another sip of her drink and was careful to place the glass precisely on the wet ring that it had left behind on the table. ‘There was nothing in them that suggested Tryggvi wanted to burn down the residence, if that’s what you were thinking. Tryggvi would never have planned anything; even if he was involved, it would just have been something that happened. He wouldn’t have thought about it beforehand. I’m quite certain of that.’

‘Do any of his pictures still exist? Besides the one in your living room?’ Matthew found the way Lena was talking about her brother’s pictures rather peculiar. It was as if she were trying to get him and Thóra to stop nosing around after them. If that was the case, her plan had completely misfired.