Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Because of the photo of Lena?’ Matthew asked, surprised.

‘No, not that. I’m going to talk to her about that first. If something comes of it, then hopefully it won’t be long before I can formally request a reopening of the case. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she also knows, or at least suspects, something about who abused Lísa. That way I could start putting together a complete theory of what happened there.’

‘Then why are you wondering about the police?’

‘Precisely because of Lísa.’ Thóra turned the computer screen towards Matthew. ‘What if there’s a picture of the man on this site? They could make use of it in their investigation of the abuse.’ She saw that he didn’t quite get it. ‘We let Ragna look at the photos, do you get it? Show them to her one by one.’

‘Aren’t you obliged to tell the police? Is there even any question about that?’

‘Yes I am, but I’m worried they wouldn’t tell me the outcome and then the opportunity to help Jakob by discovering who really started the fire will slip out of my grasp.’

‘If they find out that way, they wouldn’t hide it from you, would they? You’d be given the information.’

‘Not necessarily. They’ve already looked into it once, with Lísa, so there’s bound to be some reluctance to rekindle the investigation. Ragna isn’t exactly an ordinary victim and it’s not at all clear whether she’d want to press charges or communicate with the police.’

‘Call the police. Then visit Ragna afterwards and ask her what she told them. She knows you’re trying to help Jakob, so she shouldn’t be trying to hide anything from you.’

Thóra picked up the phone. Sometimes it was best just to go for it. She dialled the number of the police station and asked to speak to the same man she’d spoken to before. Some time passed before his voice came on the line. He didn’t seem particularly enthralled to hear from her and clearly expected her to try to get something from him regarding the investigation of the case concerning Margeir’s phone. However, she knew that would be a waste of time and instead got straight to the point, as much as she could with a case so hard to explain. It was easier said than done to explain to him that a burnt-down community residence for the disabled out in the middle of nowhere had once been a party den, and that on a Facebook page set up in memory of one of the people who’d died there, they would probably find some photos of a man who made a habit of sexually abusing paralysed girls.

The response she got was probably a reflection of how bizarre the whole thing sounded. ‘You know, I’m really busy with something else at the moment so I can’t promise anything. If I’ve understood you correctly, this girl’s not going anywhere any time soon, so there’s probably no great rush. But I’ve made a note of what you’ve said and we’ll look into it when things slow down. I doubt it’ll be this week, but next week, hopefully.’

Thóra hung up and turned to Matthew. ‘Come on, we need to stop off at a florist’s. Let’s go to the hospital. Jakob can’t hang around waiting for the police to find time for this.’

On the sofa, Matthew sighed deeply.

Jósteinn removed the processor from a computer that he’d taken apart and placed it on a plastic tray. His plastic gloves were making his hands sweaty and he desperately wanted to remove them and scratch until the top layer of skin dissolved into little particles that he could sweep off the table top into the bin. That bin, a poisonous green colour, had got on his nerves ever since he’d gained access to this room several years earlier. He had long ago stopped keeping track of how much time he’d done at Sogn; the number of years might as well be the number of stars in the sky. If he were to count them down, things might look different, but here he would remain until he either kicked the bucket or got so decrepit that the authorities no longer believed him capable of perpetrating a crime. Neither of these visions of the future was to his liking, but this didn’t keep him awake at night; here he had his computers, and he understood them much better than the people who would otherwise be getting in his way in the world outside.

His Achilles heel had always been the fact that he didn’t understand other people. The psychiatrist who had evaluated his mental state for the court said that Jósteinn had all the symptoms of a sociopath – a person who lacks morals because he isn’t able to learn from past mistakes or experience and is therefore governed almost exclusively by antisocial urges. Regret, said the same doctor, doesn’t exist for him. This diagnosis was entirely correct; Jósteinn wouldn’t have wanted to change anything he’d done in the past, except perhaps to hide it better from the police so that he could have had longer before getting caught. Then he could have created more memories to comfort himself with. It wouldn’t have changed anything if he had harmed or abused more people – either way, he could never serve more than this one life sentence.

It would undoubtedly have been easy to trick the doctor; he knew how to appear perfectly normal even though emotions were completely foreign to him – well, all except for anger, which he knew intimately. As a child he had learned from experience and trained himself to smile when people tried to be funny, or to put on a sad face when they complained. The problem was that he’d had a tendency to overdo the emotions, which had always made others uneasy. He could have tried to dodge a correct diagnosis in order to receive a conventional sentence, which would have been shorter, but he had become as indifferent to his own suffering as he was to that of others. Maybe it was all the faces he’d been forced to confront as he played the part of a normal man who went to work every weekday morning, all year round. Every moment of eye contact with a colleague at the computer workshop had been agony, but he’d had to grin and bear it in order not to raise suspicion. The job had suited him perfectly; he had lived and breathed computers since his teenage years and it hadn’t required much human interaction. He would surely have given up and been arrested much sooner if his workplace had been busier. The torment of other people had slowly but surely weakened the self-preservation instinct that had kept him beneath the radar of the authorities, and caused him to blurt out things about the pictures. He couldn’t remember when this aversion to meeting people’s gaze had first manifested itself; it had simply grown, calmly but quietly without his awareness, until finally it took all the strength he could muster to make even the briefest eye contact.

‘Dinner’s ready.’ The door behind him had opened and in the doorway stood a guard whose name Jósteinn could never remember. ‘Pack up your things; you might not be allowed to continue after dinner.’

‘Why not?’ Jósteinn lifted the processor and held it up to the light. He could often salvage parts from a machine that had been dismissed as useless, but this time, unfortunately, he suspected that this wasn’t the case. He needed a processor for the computer he was building. Oh well – the nobodies who got his renovated computers would have to wait a little bit longer this time.

‘We’re expecting a man from Prison Services who needs to discuss something with you. Probably the incident with Jakob.’ The man leaned against the doorpost, his arms crossed over his chest. ‘Hurry up.’

‘Have you heard whether we might be getting more computers? It’s funny how things don’t seem to get thrown away so much now that we’re in recession. Do you think they’ve been saving much money that way?’