Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘My husband must be on his way home by now. I can wait until tomorrow to call them.’

‘I think that’s very unwise.’ Matthew seemed to have got his breath back at last. ‘You should call immediately; if you wait until tomorrow morning I bet you’ll put it off again.’ They could both tell from Berglind’s expression that she wasn’t going to take his advice. ‘If you call tonight, you’ll be glad you did. There’s no way of knowing whether he’s done this before or whether he plans to do it again. There are plenty of strange people involved in the case about the fire.’

‘Do you think this guy has been here before?’ Berglind adjusted Pési on her hip; his grip had slackened and his eyelids were drooping. ‘I’ve sometimes felt as if someone were here in the garden.’

She reddened a tiny bit, so slightly that it was barely noticeable. ‘I thought it was just related to this… you know.’ She fell silent, but the possibility lingered of there suddenly being a logical explanation for some of the things that she had previously thought were supernatural.

Sveinn held out the drawing; he didn’t seem at all bothered about parting with it. ‘Just take it. As you can see I’m not doing anything with it, and it’s purely by chance that it didn’t end up in the rubbish bin ages ago.’

Thóra took the drawing, thinking to herself that she ser-iously doubted the filmmaker ever threw anything away. The box from which he’d pulled the drawing looked as if it contained everything relating to his documentary for the Ministry of Welfare. Maybe he was still pissed off that the project had been shelved. ‘That’s great – thanks so much for making the effort to dig this out for me.’

‘You’re welcome. You could have had it sooner if I’d known you wanted it. As you said the other day, it’s not exactly something you want hanging on the wall.’

‘No, and that’s not what I plan to do with it.’ Thóra thanked him again and hurried out to her car. She couldn’t disguise her joy as she hurried down the staircase of the block of flats. On her way back from Berglind’s she’d been cursing the fact that she didn’t have any of Tryggvi’s drawings to compare with Pési’s clumsy one, which Berglind had let them take. Matthew had then suggested that perhaps they could borrow the clip they’d watched at Sveinn’s and take a close look at the wall in Tryggvi’s room that was covered with his drawings, in the hope that they could enlarge a frame from the video recording. It was then that Thóra remembered that during the clip Tryggvi had handed the filmmaker one of his drawings, and wondered if he might still have it. She was fairly certain that the drawing would contain all the usual elements: the young woman lying down, who was probably Lísa; the person standing up, symbolizing his mother; the flames, the string of characters, and other little details that they hadn’t been able to make out due to the resolution in which they’d viewed the video clip. In a brief phone call the next morning Sveinn had confirmed that he still had the drawing and that Thóra was welcome to drop by and get it.

She jumped into the car and slammed the door hard behind her. ‘Bingo!’

Matthew drove off happily enough, although she knew he wasn’t quite as pleased as her. The bank had given him a final deadline that morning regarding the new job; the offer would only stand until Monday. They couldn’t wait any longer for an answer; he would have to make up his mind. Thóra tried to hide how much she hoped that he would take the job, confining herself to saying that her gut feeling was that he should. What she didn’t say, and what bothered her, was that the likelihood of him finding another suitable job in Iceland in the next few years was extremely limited. And if he didn’t have a job here, he would eventually drift away, whether or not her parents lived with them. For her it was Iceland or nothing; she had to stay here for her children, and her parents, and even for herself. If he moved away, their relationship would be over, whether it happened at a specific moment by mutual decision or whether it faded away slowly but surely. Any plans for keeping the relationship going long-distance would never work in reality. But it would be unfair of her to lay this at his door; it was his job and he would have to make the decision himself.

‘Do you have time to look at this with me before you go and see them?’ she asked. He had a meeting just before noon with the recruitment director; there was enough time, but he might want to have another shower, change his suit or put on a tie with stripes that sloped to the left rather than the right. He had the tendency to do such things after years of working in German banks. ‘I mean, you don’t need to do anything beforehand, do you?’

‘No, nothing.’ Matthew didn’t elaborate and Thóra didn’t know whether he thought it was useless to do any more preparation for the meeting, since he was going to say no, or whether he’d already decided to accept the job even though he’d told Thóra that he still had grave doubts about it. She decided not to question him any further; she would find out soon enough.

‘Then let’s go up to the office and have a look at the drawing. I’ve got instant coffee for you.’

‘The characters are the same, just in reverse order – though obviously it’s impossible to be completely certain about it, since the little boy isn’t a particularly brilliant artist.’ Thóra put down the magnifying glass between the two drawings. ‘It’s hard to determine whether this is the letter O or the number zero, and the same goes for this one – is it an “i” or the number one?’ She looked again at Pési’s drawing. ‘And then I can’t see whether this is a B or an eight. And maybe it doesn’t make any difference in the end, because no matter how you arrange these letters and numbers, they don’t make any sense.’

Matthew leaned back and rubbed his eyes. ‘There are some really intricate details in this picture – I don’t know how he even managed to draw them. It hurts my eyes to look at it.’ He reached for the magnifying glass. ‘Do you think this is Lísa?’ He examined the figure lying prone at the front of the drawing. ‘Did she have any other disabilities besides being in a coma?’

‘No.’ Thóra understood why he was asking. Considering how well Tryggvi drew, there were details in the picture that seemed awkward, particularly where Lísa’s body was concerned – if it was indeed meant to be her. One arm seemed to be turned backwards at the shoulder and her legs had two joints instead of a knee, one in the middle of the thigh and the other mid-calf. ‘Maybe this is his interpretation of rape or something. Perhaps the rapist had to put her body in a strange position in order to be able to carry out the act. Tryggvi’s sensory world was completely different to ours, of course, but that’s what it could have looked like to him.’

‘But she’s screaming; or at least her mouth is wide open.’ Matthew frowned at Thóra. ‘Could he also have forced her into oral sex? There’s something leaking from her mouth in the picture.’

‘Is that even possible, if the person is unconscious?’ Thóra took the magnifying glass from him and examined the gaping mouth. ‘But you’re quite right, it’s as if something is leaking out of one of the corners of her mouth.’

‘It’s a real shame that he couldn’t have drawn it just a tiny bit more clearly. Do you think that therapist, Ægir, could explain this any better?

‘Possibly. Mind you, I think he took a lot of poetic licence when he analysed the drawings before. I don’t think you can force one specific interpretation on them.’ Thóra pointed at the person standing upright. ‘Why, for instance, should this be a peace symbol that the figure’s holding, as he claimed? It certainly looks like one, but why would Tryggvi have been sticking a peace symbol in his drawings? People have to have some insight into human history in order to understand its meaning properly. At least that’s what I would have thought.’ She looked at the large ring that the figure was holding between its hands. ‘Jesus. And here I was thinking we’d be so much closer with this.’