Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘Where did this oxygen treatment take place, might I ask?’

‘Oh.’ Lena shut her eyes but opened them again immediately. Her face was scarlet. ‘God, I just wish I’d never gone there. And you know what the worst thing is in all of this? We’re not even friends any more. I’m in all this mess because of her.’

Thóra and Matthew’s sympathy for the death of her friendship was limited. ‘Where did the oxygen treatment take place, Lena?’ repeated Thóra.

The young woman’s cheeks turned even redder. She seemed to be aware that soon there would be no going back and she still believed she could persuade Thóra and Matthew to keep this information to themselves. ‘Inside one of the apartments, where there was an oxygen supply in the wall.’

‘An empty apartment?’

‘Uh… no. My…’ She looked angry again. ‘My ex friend went into Lísa’s apartment. I know because I saw Margeir go in with her and I knew exactly where each person lived.’

‘And Lísa had nothing to say about this, or what?’ Matthew didn’t know as much about the residents as Thóra did and he obviously didn’t remember what condition Lísa had been in.

‘She wasn’t conscious, so it didn’t matter to her.’ Lena didn’t look Thóra in the eye when she said this. ‘I don’t think.’

‘And did she sit in a chair during the treatment, this friend of yours?’ Thóra was virtually crossing her fingers in the hope that this had been the case.

‘I don’t know, but I would think so. I didn’t go in.’ The hot flush in Lena’s cheeks was nearly gone. ‘You’ve got to believe me that I regret this massively and I do know it wasn’t right. But it wasn’t me who was most in the wrong. It was Friðleifur and Margeir. It’s their fault.’

‘We’re not judging you, Lena. The only thing we’re interested in is whether Jakob is innocent. However, I must admit that I don’t quite understand why you wanted to meet Matthew and me. I’d have thought you’d want to avoid drawing attention to yourself.’

Lena’s friends were closing their books and putting them into their rucksacks. Lena watched them but didn’t seem about to go anywhere. ‘I was hoping to find out how your investigation was going. Mum and Dad never tell me anything and I was afraid that you’d suspect Tryggvi; I actually just wanted to find out whether you thought he was in the frame. Then I was afraid that you’d found this out and that you’d make a big deal out of it. I just wanted to get an idea of what was going on.’

‘Why did you think that we would start suspecting Tryggvi?’ Thóra saw that Lena’s friends were just about to stand up; they turned round to try to make eye contact with her, but to no avail. ‘We don’t suspect any one person. Not yet.’

‘I was just worried. Maybe it wasn’t logical, but I was worried about Mum and Dad. They seemed really freaked out when this investigation started. I sort of confusedly connected it directly to Tryggvi; I got the feeling that they’d heard he was being investigated. I wanted to be involved and I thought I could get information from you. If I’ve wasted your time, I apologize. I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

‘You must have had some specific reason for believing your brother would end up under the microscope?’ As Thóra said this, Lena’s girlfriends stood up and appeared to be fussing about a bit with Lena’s stuff. Things were doubtless complicated by the fact that it wasn’t just her textbooks, but also a huge coat, a rucksack and a sports bag that she’d left with them. Thóra hoped that it would take them plenty of time to find what they were looking for so that she could get an answer to her question.

Lena appeared to be thinking hard. ‘No, not really. As I said, it was my mum and dad’s reaction that stressed me out, not really anything to do with Tryggvi. They were acting so weirdly and I thought it was probably because of him. But now I think I know why they were behaving like that and it has nothing to do with Tryggvi or the fire.’

‘Might I ask what it does have to do with?’ Thóra spoke quickly because the girls had started to gather up Lena’s things. Lena’s expression grew fierce but her anger wasn’t directed at Thóra.

‘Yes, of course you can ask, it doesn’t matter to me,’ she said, although her expression suggested otherwise. ‘Dad has a mistress. Or at least I think he does.’

‘Oh?’ Thóra certainly hadn’t expected this. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s hardly relevant to the case, as you rightly said.’ She added cautiously: ‘Is he seeing a former employee of the residence, or someone at the Regional Office for the Disabled?’

‘No. A woman at work. She’s called Begga, I think.’

So the woman whose formatting skills Einvarður missed was good at other things besides word processing. ‘How do you know this?’

Only now did Lena appear to pay attention to her girlfriends, but she answered Thóra nonetheless. ‘I came across them arguing about her and they started acting all sad when they saw me.’ She did her best to appear detached and unconcerned about her parents’ marital troubles. Her friends, wide-eyed and curious, had nearly reached the table where they were sitting. Lena stopped talking and her friends stood awkwardly next to them.

One of them said, ‘We didn’t know if you wanted this put in your folder, Lena, or just in the bag?’ She handed Thóra, who was between her and Lena, two sheets of paper stapled at the corner. It appeared to be an exam or some homework. On the front was a large red ‘9.7’, with a circle drawn around the score.

Thóra held the papers out to Lena. As she did so she caught sight of the girl’s full name. ‘Is your full name Helena?’ She’d been an idiot. The cryptic text message she’d received before really had been meant for her: how did Helena get burned as a child?

‘Yes, why?’ Lena took the papers from Thóra’s hand.

‘I thought your name was Lena; I didn’t realize it was a nickname.’

‘No, no, my name is Helena, but I’ve always been called Lena.’ She stood up and her friend handed her her coat. ‘I’ve got to go now, I hope that you… you know, what I was talking about before. They don’t need to hear about this… you understand.’ These friends clearly weren’t her closest confidantes.

‘Could you possibly give us two minutes?’ Thóra directed her words at the two other girls who left immediately, telling Lena they were going out for a cigarette. Thóra turned back to Lena. ‘Do you have any scars? I know it might sound like a ridiculous question but someone told me you’d been burned, is that right?’

Lena opened and shut her mouth like a dying fish on dry land.

‘What does that have to do with the case?’

‘Do you have any burn scars, Lena? It’s obvious what it has to do with the case.’

‘Who told you that? Whoever it was is a complete idiot. Okay, if you really want to know, I was burned on one leg.’ She lifted her trouser leg, revealing a shiny, whorled patch of skin that stretched up her calf and disappeared under the hem of the pulled-up fabric. Another customer’s eyes widened. Lena dropped the trouser leg down again irritably, unaware of his shock, although Thóra suspected that she wouldn’t have cared if she had seen him. ‘It happened when I was a kid, it’s not from starting the fire that night, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘What happened?’ asked Matthew calmly.

‘Tryggvi accidentally set some ornaments on fire one Christmas and I was too little and too stupid to get away when the fire spread.’ She turned angrily to Thóra. ‘Did you know that even Christmas ornaments can catch fire? I bet no one else who’s made that mistake is also suspected of having torched a community residence. But you can probably guess why I didn’t tell you about it. You would have jumped on Tryggvi even though he had nothing to do with the fire.’ She grabbed her bag and looked ready to storm out of the room, fire in her eyes. Thóra stood up quickly and took her by the shoulder.