Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Get a move on, Jósteinn, or I’ll write you up. You’re a whisker away from losing this job.’

‘Fine.’ This was the advantage of being diagnosed as a sociopath; it was clear to those who looked after him that he didn’t care about being punished. So just as he’d suspected, his circumstances hadn’t changed after he’d attacked Jakob. He had carried on rebuilding computers and every day was like the previous one, which was like the one before, and so on. No doubt there would be consequences, but they would be meaningless and only imposed as a formality. He put down the processor and stood up. The smell of food from the kitchen had followed the guard into the room. Hunger was a physical sensation and not connected to his state of mind, which meant he felt it like everyone else. Not all aspects of his humanity had been left out when he was created. ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Lamb stew. Just right in this weather. If you don’t hurry up, all the meat will be finished. Everyone’s famished from lunch today.’ Lunch had been a vegetarian dish that was the Sogn cook’s first attempt to nudge the menu in a healthier direction. The tasteless stodge had been left almost untouched on people’s plates as they left the dining room, bitterly disappointed. Everyone except for Jósteinn, who’d left as hungry as the rest of them, but also very satisfied. His hunger was a diversion. Now, however, he’d got bored of it and would pounce eagerly on his supper. Since he’d attacked Jakob, he had to sit alone at a table far from the other inmates, which suited him just fine. He stood up, pleased at the thought of eating undisturbed by the meaningless chatter of those idiots. ‘Why haven’t you turned off the lamp? You know you’re supposed to do that before you leave the room.’ The guard nodded his broad chin towards the Luxo lamp screwed to the work table.

‘I suspect I may be coming back.’ Jósteinn grinned at the floor. ‘It’s unlikely anyone would be coming on official business at this hour. It’s far too late and you don’t want me sitting with the others in the living room tonight. Do you?’ The guard’s silence spoke volumes and Jósteinn smiled wryly. ‘No, I think we both know I’ll be back later.’

The guard didn’t bother protesting. They were both intelligent men and there was no point arguing a lost cause; everyone knew that Jósteinn was allowed to be there whenever he wanted – even at night. Anyone trying to keep Jósteinn from what he called his work was fighting a losing battle; the fork buried in Jakob’s head was still too fresh in the staff’s minds for them to leave him unsupervised in the company of others. It was easier to let him spend his time messing about in the little workroom. This suited him just fine, and he wished that he’d thought of doing something similar before. He resolved to repeat this tactic every time the staff relaxed their grip. Now all was as it should be; he had everything his own way again, and he could use this lawyer woman to stir up that idiot Ari. It delighted him to think how many others were tangled in his web. Everything was proceeding as planned, and that simpleton Jakob would get what he wanted in the process. That was fine for him, and meant nothing to Jósteinn. ‘It’ll be really great to get my teeth into some meat,’ he said to the guard as he walked past him out into the corridor. His voice was devoid of joy or hope, yet he hadn’t felt this good in years. Wasn’t life wonderful?

Ari sat in his office and stared at the answering machine, which blinked to indicate the messages awaiting him. The small screen next to the light displayed the figure seventeen. This was certainly a fair number of unanswered calls, but it was far from being the highest figure the device had displayed. He’d already run through the numbers, most of which had also shown up on his mobile phone. In fact, friends and acquaintances had given up calling once he hadn’t answered twice in a row. They knew which way the wind blew. Others who knew him less well were more optimistic. The lawyer, that Thóra who was working on reopening Jakob’s case, had called the office five times, for example, and the same number of calls to his mobile. He would have to come up with some story to feed her, something that would explain why he hadn’t answered his phone for days. He could hardly tell her the truth, but it was rather nice that there were still lawyers out there who didn’t know what he was like.

But it was still all her fault. Her investigation of Jakob’s case had caused him worries that had eaten away at his self-control little by little, like acid, until he’d headed straight for the cards. He had resolved to stay away from them some time ago, not because he’d been diagnosed as a gambling addict – that had been a huge exaggeration, he had simply enjoyed taking risks – but because he was unlucky by nature. He lost more often than was healthy – always, in fact – and for some incomprehensible reason this lack of luck had been interpreted as addiction. Of course his day would come. It didn’t take much knowledge of probability to see that a huge win was on the horizon. He deserved it. Even though he didn’t remember much beyond the first few hours of this most recent spree, he imagined that it had progressed in the same way as usual: he had gone online to play for a little while in the evening, and before he knew it the night was over and all the winnings that he’d initially accrued had been lost, and far more besides. Now he would sleep for most of the day. When he finally dragged himself out of bed he would try to compensate for the previous night’s loss. And then it would be morning again, and he would have to give in to his fatigue as the jackpot moved a little further into the distance once more. And then the cards would stop working. With tiny gains that only very slightly offset the huge losses, it took him four nights to bankrupt himself.

Ari didn’t want to contemplate how high his next credit card bills would be; he had never dared to add up all the spending limits on all of his cards. He found the best approach was to throw out his bills unopened, then call the card companies and have his accounts frozen one by one, while negotiating permission to pay the bills monthly until the debt was erased. This payment plan took a long time, and after the króna crashed he had maxed out his cards even more quickly than before. The wretched exchange rate was precisely what made the Internet casinos so exciting now: the stakes felt so much higher than they were before the króna fell.

He had used up his toothpaste at home some time ago and had to resort to brushing his teeth with water, which clearly wasn’t very effective. He blew vigorously in the hope that his bad breath had gone, but it remained just as foul. The few krónur he had in the firm’s account would be enough for some food and a tube of toothpaste until he was able to pay some of his outstanding bills. He’d better do that shortly; he would log in to his bank account on the Internet to check on its status, but he had accidentally left his ID-code key at home after trying to move some funds across to one of his credit card accounts in the hope that it might be authorized again. It turned out that he had very little to transfer and in any case, a woman at the credit card company had said it would take twenty-four hours to clear. That was too long to wait where Lady Luck was concerned – she seldom visited him, and then always only for a brief period. So the jackpot slipped from his grasp once again. Although he was frustrated about this, neither that nor the losses of the past few days was his chief concern. Should he call this Thóra or leave it alone? The depression that always overwhelmed him at this point was at its peak, and he couldn’t cope with any bad news.