Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Yeah, sure.’ Gylfi clicked on a box marked ‘Search’ and entered ‘Friðleifur’. In a second the results of the search appeared, twelve in all. None of them turned out to have his surname. On this page it was also possible to choose to view the results for groups that were connected to this name in one way or another. There turned out to be five, one of which was called Final Goodbye – Friðleifur . It had three hundred and thirty-eight members. ‘Bingo.’

‘Go into that page.’ Thóra wanted to grab the mouse from her son but stopped herself in case she messed up what they’d already found.

‘You’re lucky – it’s an open group, so you don’t need to get someone’s permission to become a member,’ Gylfi told her. ‘You do have to become a member to see it, though. Do you want to?’ The arrow rested above the tab for that choice.

‘Absolutely. Is it really not possible to see it otherwise?’

‘No. Not as far as I can tell, anyway.’

‘Are you sure this is wise?’ Matthew’s expression made it clear that he wasn’t exactly happy with the idea.

‘Yes, of course. What’s there to worry about? Click on it, Gylfi.’ Once again the screen changed and they found themselves viewing a page dedicated to preserving the memory of Friðleifur. Thóra asked Gylfi to enlarge the man’s photo. She didn’t recognize him, having only seen a picture of him dead, after the fire had completely ravaged his features. He’d been dark-haired, with rather pockmarked skin around his jaw, probably due to adolescent acne. It was a sad picture, somehow; his smile looked rather mournful, as if he knew what was in store for him. His straight teeth were visible behind his dark lips and he appeared likeable, even handsome in his own way. His hair was curly and unkempt, falling over his forehead and down into his eyes. The photo was grainy, as if it had been enlarged several times; this made it seem unlikely that it was his relatives who had set up the page.

‘Do you want to swap seats?’ Gylfi stood up. ‘You should be all right now – it’s hard to mess it up once you’re in.’ Matthew took his seat and Gylfi left them with a yawn. ‘Just call me if you get in any trouble.’

According to its opening text, the page had been set up to allow the friends of Friðleifur, who had died far too young, to say their final goodbyes. It gave the date of his death and people were encouraged to convey their sympathies and to share photos of Friðleifur. Members were asked to make sure their photos were tasteful and it was made clear that any photos that were considered inappropriate would be removed. Nowhere did it state who was responsible for creating the page or who managed it.

‘You can find anything on the web,’ said Matthew. ‘I guess it’s not quite life after death, but Internet after death?’

‘Hey, I think this is a pretty good idea – and probably a useful part of the grieving process. I guess it’s just a modern version of the obituary. Maybe this is how we’ll be remembered one day.’ She scrolled through some comments from those who had visited the page. The most recent post was four months old, but there were numerous other entries.

‘Ugh.’ Matthew was far from impressed by Thóra’s vision of the future. ‘Am I crazy, or are these comments a bit weird?’

Thóra nodded. ‘I’ve often thought of you as crazy, but you’re right, this isn’t really what you’d expect to see on this kind of page.’ Most of the posts were about drinking and hangovers. She read them aloud: ‘‘‘Thinking about you after a mad session – my head’s killing me. Wish you were here!”; “Got wasted on Friday, thought of you often”; “Friðleifur, mate, where were you at the weekend? I puked my guts out, it’s not the same without you” . Of course I don’t know how young people remember their dead friends, but this is pretty weird.’ She continued to browse through the posts, which went on for several pages. ‘There must be something here that my mys-terious texter wants me to see… “Miss you loads, am really hungover”; “Cheers, mate! I’m raising a glass to you”; “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, got ducking frunk, life without you sucks big time”; “Miss you, our hero – we’re lost without you”.’

‘What do they mean?’ Matthew watched as Thóra continued to skim through the posts. They were all along the same lines. ‘Was he a drug dealer?’

‘What makes you think that?’ Thóra ran her eyes down the screen without seeing anything that might help her; there were just endless messages about partying. ‘I’m wondering whether Friðleifur and the other night watchman were selling access to the bodies of the two girls, Lísa and Ragna. To the other residents, even.’

‘Now hang on a minute, there are far too many people posting messages here for them all to have come to the residence for something like that, surely? It can’t be something many people are into and besides, there are lots of posts from women, too. I don’t think you can read anything into this other than that he prevented his friends from drinking themselves to death, since everybody on here seems to have got really drunk after he died and wished he was there to stop them.’

‘My interpretation is that his friends simply got really drunk in his memory. Maybe he was a huge party animal and mostly hung around with people who spent their whole lives getting wasted.’

‘That doesn’t make much sense – why would a party animal get a job working night shifts at the weekend?’

‘Unless he drank at work, as he was suspected of doing. Maybe he did hold parties there after all. And he only worked every other weekend.’ She read the final posts, which were also the oldest, dated about a month after Friðleifur’s death. ‘“Have an awesome time with God, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you – party in heaven!”; “Bye Friðleifur, trouble-shooter deluxe, I miss you, man”; “Friðleifur, my friend, have a good trip to heaven, when we meet there one day it’s gonna be mega” . ’ Every comment was in the same vein.

‘Did you notice whether any of the people who’ve posted are connected with the case?’

Thóra shook her head. ‘If they are, I’ve missed it. I can’t actually remember all the names, but from the little pictures they all look on the young side, so I doubt any of them worked at the centre. Apart from Friðleifur and Margeir, who were both around twenty, all the employees were much older than the writers of these comments. Also, it looks to me as if these are just his friends. There are no comments from any relatives as far as I can tell.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Do you think Gylfi or Sigga might know anyone from this group? It might be worth showing them the pictures and comments – maybe they could work out why the messages are so weird.’

‘Maybe, although these people don’t really look like secondary schoolers to me. They also seem a lot more involved in the party scene than Gylfi and Sigga. But you never know.’ Thóra was beginning to feel more confident about navigating the site and managed quite easily to arrange the group’s members into alphabetical order, with their profile picture and country of origin also showing. As it turned out, this didn’t help much, because all the members seemed to have chosen not to share their personal information or profile pages with strangers. Nevertheless, she went through the list in its entirety and noticed two familiar names: Margeir and Lena. Neither of them had posted a comment. It wasn’t that odd that they’d joined the group; Margeir was Friðleifur’s main colleague and Lena had told Matthew that she’d met Friðleifur during her visits to the residence.