Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Someone to Watch Over Me

‘So the fire was accidental, if all of this is true and correct. Not that we’ll ever be able to know for sure. When Jósteinn hired me for this investigation he said something like “a child who’s had their fingers burned might still want to play with fire”, which is how it turned out.’ Thóra was speaking to Jakob’s mother. His attention had long turned to something else and he was now waiting excitedly to go out into the sunshine with Mummy. The investigation of the case was complete and a reopening of the case before the Supreme Court secured; the conclusion to the case was thought to be so likely to come out in Jakob’s favour that a temporary decision regarding his release from Sogn would be hurried through the system. ‘Lena says she met Bjarki at school and they’d been to several parties together along with some of her other friends, including the one at her house on the night of the fire. When only the two of them were left – apart from her best friend, who was passed out on the sofa – she got the idea of going over to the residence to sober up a bit. After they’d made sure that Friðleifur was on duty, they went over there with Bjarki at the wheel, smashed. Lena isn’t sure whether she came up with the idea of getting Bjarki to scare her brother on the way there, or if it was after they arrived, but either way she asked him to do it. She remembers telling him that Tryggvi was simultaneously fascinated with fire and terrified of it. The theory behind her drunken plan was that Tryggvi would be frightened back into his shell, ensuring the accident remained unsolved.’

Jakob’s mother sat there wide-eyed, nodding her head after every sentence Thóra uttered. ‘How could these people let Jakob sit behind bars for this? I just don’t understand it.’

‘Her parents didn’t know. Einvarður’s only motivation was to ensure that the investigation didn’t home in on Tryggvi because of his fascination with fire. That’s why he got his cousin Ari to call you and offer his assistance when Jakob was arrested. He was afraid that otherwise the truth about the hit-and-run would come to light. Lena kept it completely secret; the photos on her father’s laptop were hers but she deleted them immediately, so he never saw them. It doesn’t explain how she was able to live with something so terrible, though; maybe she’d got used to it after keeping quiet about the death of the young girl. She was in the car with her mother and brother when the accident occurred.’

Thóra smiled at Jakob, who couldn’t keep still in his chair. ‘If she’s telling the truth, then the fire was unintentional. She’s probably been thinking that it would be unfair if she and Bjarki were made to pay for it. Everything in her story suggests that he was the one responsible, but that’s hardly surprising; he’s not exactly in a position to defend himself any more. Lena maintains that when they got to the residence, Friðleifur didn’t want to let Bjarki in and the two men ended up having an argument that she couldn’t make head or tail of. She had no idea about what Bjarki had done to the girls at the centre, or what had gone on between him and Friðleifur as a result. She persuaded Friðleifur to let them in and while she messed about with him, Bjarki went wandering through the building, found the petrol can in the storage shed that Lena had told him about and poured petrol all over the place. Lena says he was dead drunk and she’d forgotten to tell him what apartment Tryggvi lived in, so he poured petrol into all of them to be sure. He imagined that the petrol would ignite, form a carpet of fire along the corridor and in the apartments and would only last for a few minutes while the flammable liquid burned up. He’d noticed the sprinkler system on the ceiling and thought that that would save the day if things went wrong. He didn’t know the system was disconnected.

‘Shouldn’t we go now? It’s almost the evening.’ Jakob grabbed the arms of his chair and made an attempt to stand up, but his mother laid her hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him down again, saying that she’d be finished very soon.

Thóra continued, but started talking faster. ‘While Bjarki was carrying out his plan, Friðleifur became agitated and gave Lena the slip to see what was happening; perhaps he’d smelled the petrol. He came across Bjarki just as he was emptying the can and went ballistic. He rushed to the duty room to call the police, but Bjarki hit him on the back of the head with the can, so hard that Friðleifur was knocked out. What happened next isn’t entirely clear, but Lena says that they were horrified and planned to call an ambulance. To calm themselves down, they lit a cigarette that somehow caused a spark to fly into the petrol. This set off a sequence of events that two drunk kids were in no fit state to deal with. Lena says she ran in and tried to save the residents, but why she didn’t manage to actually get anyone out is a mystery. However, I expect this will help to reduce her sentence. Jakob spoke of seeing an angel; no doubt that’s what she looked like to him, in her long white dress and her gold headband, just like the angel on a poster in his room. But I suspect this wasn’t quite as innocuous as it sounds – as you might remember, Jakob said the angel was holding a suitcase, which turned out to be the petrol can. Her excuse for this is that she was so panicked that she took the can with her. But the fact that she and Bjarki had enough sense to wipe their fingerprints off it suggests that they can’t have panicked that much.’

‘What will happen to her?’ For the first time Jakob’s mother’s expression was severe; the soft lines of her face became sharp; the creases at the corners of her eyes deepened and her lips pressed into thin lines.

‘I don’t know. She’ll be sentenced, but it’s impossible to say whether the sentence will be suspended.’

‘Suspended? Well, it’s a shame Jakob wasn’t that lucky when he was convicted. How can they discriminate against people like this?’ She didn’t need to add what was all too obvious: that Jakob had been discriminated against ever since his conception, even by his Creator. ‘In her defence, she doesn’t appear to have been the main perpetrator in the case, plus the fire does seem to have been accidental. The fact that she quit smoking afterwards gives credence to her story about the cigarettes.’

‘I’m speechless.’

Thóra shook her head. The case was complicated. DNA tests had revealed that Bjarki had impregnated Lísa, and even though the justice system hadn’t punished him, it was perhaps a comfort to Ragna to know that the sentence he had received was stringent, and not eligible for appeal. Margeir was still in custody, awaiting trial for the death of Bjarki. His defence was also based on the claim that Bjarki’s death had been an accident, and in the end he was only convicted of trying to set fire to the body afterwards. Sentence had not yet been passed on Lena’s mother for the hit-and-run. Fanndís had confessed to everything, but in Iceland there were few prece-dents of people being sentenced to prison for having knocked down and killed someone. There were even fewer where the driver had also fled the scene, although someone had been sentenced for this very crime only six months before. However, the driver in that case had had a colourful criminal record and his conviction was simultaneous with one for another crime, while Fanndís’s record was spotless. Einvarður had been moved sideways to a similar position and news of his part in covering up a crime was not widely reported in the media. Jósteinn’s case was mentioned nowhere at all, and nor was Einvarður’s involvement in the handling of the evidence.

Glódís Tumadóttir was not as lucky as Einvarður. As far as Thóra could make out, the real reason for her dismissal wasn’t cutbacks and optimization, as the media stated, but had more to do with her performance in Jakob’s case and how she had acted as Einvarður’s puppet in the hope that he would advance her career. When his position in the hierarchy weakened, she lost all her support. Apparently Glódís had informed the head of the Regional Office that Einvarður had got her to cover up additional costs associated with Tryggvi’s special needs in terms of food and therapy; in effect, costs that Tryggvi’s parents would normally have had to shoulder themselves had been paid for out of the limited funding due to other residents. When this was put to him, however, Einvarður feigned complete ignorance, claiming that he had believed it to be part of the residence’s service and that he would of course repay the difference. E-mails that Glódís had submitted to back up her story proved nothing; Einvarður had taken great care not to say anything that could possibly implicate him in any way. Her desperate bid to have her dismissal rescinded was doomed from the start.