Someone to Watch Over Me (23 page)

‘Surely that means Jakob?’ Fanndís glared at Thóra. ‘I would recommend that you send him for a DNA test. I don’t know how he appears to you, but he’s prone to violence and in my opinion he’s entirely capable of doing that.’

‘He’s been ruled out,’ replied Thóra. ‘Whoever did it is still out there and may have even more on his conscience – like the fire, perhaps.’

Two cups of coffee later, Thóra and Matthew said goodbye. Matthew had reappeared just before Thóra decided that she’d got enough. When they heard the front door shut behind them, she nudged him with her elbow and asked where he’d really gone, but she couldn’t get him to answer the question until they were actually sitting in the car. ‘I noticed a young woman listening in as we sat in the living room. When she realized I’d spotted her she looked quite embarrassed, but she seemed to regain her composure and beckoned me through to speak to her.’

‘And? What did she say?’ The conversation was moving too slowly for Thóra.

‘Her story didn’t match her mother’s, that’s for sure.’

The garden was not a pretty sight; as the snow gradually disappeared in the day’s unexpected warmth, the yellowing lawn and empty flowerbed were starting to peek through. The unkempt bushes in the borders were slipping out from under their melting burden and their last remaining leaves were falling to the ground. There was no reminder of the summer that Berglind longed for so passionately, except Pési’s red plastic spade. She wrapped her dressing gown tightly around herself and slipped her bare feet into the rubber boots she’d fetched from the garage. They were icy and she felt her toes scrunch together in an attempt to gain warmth from each other. Of course she should have got dressed properly before going out, but she knew that if she’d given herself time for that she would have lost her bottle. The dead raven in the middle of the garden would have stayed there, right in her line of sight, until Halli came home, and she couldn’t bear it. Berglind grabbed the handle on the sliding door and pulled it energetically before her courage deserted her.

She was met with cold, damp air and as she drew in a deep breath through her nose, what she smelled reminded her of the compost heap they’d tried to get going the previous year but had got rid of due to the stench. She hoped the smell wasn’t coming from the bird’s remains, though she knew that was impossible; the corpse hadn’t been there the night before and there was no way it could have started to rot so quickly, especially not in winter. Nevertheless, she covered her nose with one hand as she walked across the wet grass, prepared for the worst. In the other hand she held a spade and a plastic bag so that she wouldn’t need to touch the bird’s body; her bravery had its limits. The stench grew stronger the closer she got, and her steps involuntarily grew shorter and slower. Perhaps the bird had been there longer than she thought; maybe it had emerged from the snow during the night when it had started to melt, but that seemed highly unlikely – there had been no noticeable hump where it now lay. Once Berglind had got close enough to reach for the bird she realized that the smell had nothing to do with the small corpse; it was simply in the air. But it was impossible to say what
was
causing it, because it seemed all-pervading, thick and repellent. She leaned the shovel against her body in order to free up both hands, and pulled the collar of her dressing gown up over her mouth and nose. By tilting her head and squeezing the dressing gown between her cheek and her shoulder she could protect herself from the stink. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold the dressing gown in place for long before the collar dropped back to her shoulder, so it was imperative that she get this over with quickly.

Berglind bent down carefully and arranged the plastic bag so it would stay open. The sooner she got the remains into it and tied it off, the better. As if to make her life harder the wind blew the bag shut as soon as she opened it; the stillness that had greeted her when she’d first gone out into the garden had proved to be illusory. Berglind reached for a pebble lying close by to hold the bag in place. This on its own wasn’t enough to keep the bag open, so she decided to grab some more stones from the gravel strip bordering the flowerbeds at the edge of the garden. Her collar fell from her face as she walked over, so she buried her mouth and nose in the crook of her elbow to block the odour, which the wind hadn’t managed to disperse. She immediately felt better and by the time she reached the edge of the beds she could smell only a faint whiff of washing powder.

She couldn’t see exactly where the gravel was, as in this shaded part of the garden the snow was still untouched by the sun. She rooted with her toe in the frozen white and after a quick search found what she was looking for. She cleared away the snow from a little patch and bent down to pick up the largest of the stones – at which point her hair became tangled on one of the bushes. Berglind became irritated that she hadn’t pestered Halli enough in the autumn when he wriggled out of pruning them; if he’d given in to her nagging, this wouldn’t have happened. Her scalp smarted as she tried carefully to untangle her hair; it was as though the bush was resisting. It wasn’t until she took hold of all the hair that had wound itself round the branches and yanked with all her might that it came free, tangled and split from the struggle. A strand still hung from one of the branches, waving in the wind until it was gradually set free and blew away. Berglind watched it with annoyance and rubbed her sore head. She was really tempted to swear out loud, but didn’t; people round here already thought she was a bit crazy, and she wasn’t about to prove them right by talking to herself. She filled her hands with gravel and got ready to stand up, but was so startled by a hissing sound close to her ear that she lost her balance and fell back onto her arse in the wet snow.

Her heart pounded in her chest. She felt the cold sneaking in through her wet dressing gown as she stared into the yellow eyes peering at her through the hedge. The neighbour’s cat stood bold as brass at the edge of their garden, its back arched. Berglind could feel that the hair on her arms had risen as well. ‘Stupid animal,’ she muttered, past caring now whether anyone heard her. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ The cat responded with another hiss, louder than the first. ‘Get out of here!’ Berglind waved her hand in the hope of scaring it away, but it didn’t move. She was even more irritated when she pulled herself up and wiped her dirty palms on her white dressing gown, but then sighed – it was due to go in the wash anyway. She looked around for the gravel but it had vanished into the snow where she’d dropped it, leaving behind a pattern of black holes that roughly formed the shape of a face: two eyes and a gaping mouth. Against her better judgement she shuddered at the thought of poking around in imaginary eye sockets or down a black throat, and decided to fetch some new gravel. This time she took more care to avoid the branches, as well as keeping a wary eye on the cat as she gathered together another handful. Considering how it had been acting recently, she was right to be on her guard. Usually the cat came to them and stood meowing at the sliding door in the hope of getting something to eat – often successfully – but now it never came any closer than the edge of the garden, from where it watched everything closely. Berglind could easily pinpoint the time this change had occurred, but had chosen to block out her certainty that it was related to the exorcisms that had briefly freed them from the spirit in the house. Maybe the cat was the only one that understood Berglind, as it seemed as sure as she was that this ghost, or whatever it was, was still hanging around outside.

Everyone else had turned their backs on her, even those who were initially shocked and sympathetic. This proved what she had probably known all her life but hadn’t wanted to dwell on: that people’s interest in the problems of others was finite. They might feel sympathy for a while if someone had suffered a traumatic life event, but then they would expect them to deal with it and move on as if nothing had happened. She had experience of this herself – as a child, she had been hit very hard by the death of her grandfather, and initially her other relatives had found the way she grieved for him very touching. But as time passed, her tears were met with indifference or anger. ‘What a terrible show-off you are! How long are you going to keep this up?’ They whispered these things so her parents wouldn’t hear, but they didn’t seem concerned that she might still be upset. Now, twenty-five years later, she was again being accused of attention-seeking, and was even considered to be not quite right in the head. The same aunt who had hurt her with her callousness all those years ago had done it again when Berglind had bumped into her in the Kringlan Shopping Centre. She’d had to be honest when the woman enthusiastically questioned her about the haunting, and as Berglind began to walk away with Pési she had heard her aunt whisper conspiratorially to her friend: ‘She’s a queer fish – she always was, even as a child. But now it’s like she’s lost it completely. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been sectioned, or at least had the kid taken away from her.’ Berglind was desperate to turn round and give her aunt a piece of her mind, but instead she tightened her grip on her son’s hand and stalked away, her face burning and her eyes full of tears.

More goose bumps sprang up on her skin, not from remembering the old woman’s spitefulness but because of what might be lying in wait behind her, whatever had scared the cat. She tried to conjure up the faces of those who had been good to her, in the hope of raising her spirits, but she could think of so few people that it just depressed her even more. She could actually count them on the fingers of one hand: her sister, the couple next door and one supervisor at work. Her sister was on her side simply because she had to be; she hadn’t actually ever said whether she believed Berglind or not, since in her opinion that was irrelevant. If Berglind was having a hard time, she was there for her and that was the end of it. The next door neighbours and her supervisor, on the other hand, had never doubted the haunting; they’d wanted to hear all the details and to be updated on any new developments. Whatever the future held, Berglind was eternally indebted to them. It took a special sort of person to swim against the stream.

But none of these people was here right now, only this unknown horror behind her, and she had to get back inside on her own, whatever it took. She didn’t have many options; she could hardly climb through the hedge and dash across her neighbours’ garden to get back to her own house, not least because the outer door was locked and the only way in was through the gate behind her. Nor could she wait where she was for the thing to go away; the wind was picking up and her soaking wet dressing gown provided little protection against the chill. She had to turn around and walk through the garden, past the dead raven and the other thing that she didn’t want to think about. She fixed her gaze on the cat, which looked straight back at her without blinking. It opened its mouth and hissed again, abruptly but loudly. There was no reason to hang around:
one, two, three, go!
Berglind raised herself up slowly as the cat continued to hiss deep in its throat. Now the animal seemed even more disturbed than when she’d been crouching down; its yellow eyes stared past her, as if at something behind her. Berglind stiffened. Why the hell had she gone out into the garden? She could easily have drawn the curtains if the dead bird was bothering her so much and tried to forget the ruffled black feathers and the wide-open beak screaming silently into the grey sky. Maybe the cat was just alarmed by the remains. Maybe the raven appeared to be alive and the cat was simply threatened by its size and was therefore trying to make itself as big as possible and warn the bird off by hissing. Had humans ever had a similar skill, it had long been forgotten, replaced by other abilities that were of more use to a civilized society but were no good at moments like this. Nevertheless, Berglind did her utmost to summon up something that would grant her strength, daring or fearlessness – but without success. There was nothing for it but to empty her mind, turn around and meet what awaited her.

The cat moved suddenly, interrupting Berglind’s thoughts of escape. It pulled one of its front legs back in towards its body and appeared about to retreat into its own garden. Before it went, it looked up at Berglind and yowled piteously. Then it turned and fled, its long striped tail the last she saw of it. Now she was alone, and although the cat’s presence hadn’t exactly filled her with confidence, she’d been happier with some sort of living being nearby. Now as in her life generally, she stood alone against the unknown. Halli had grown tired of her jumpiness, and her endless speculation about solutions to the problem, though he’d tried to conceal it. He’d recently started working longer hours, even though the company had long since stopped paying overtime and projects were scarce. Since the attempted exorcism, her attempts to interest him in her theories had been less and less successful. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted her to pull herself together and stop obsessing. The more time that passed since the strange phenomena, the more distant his memory of them became, and the old, rational explan-ations began to surface again. These days Halli seemed not to remember half of what had happened before his very eyes, and the rest he put down to the house’s structure. Any ideas about moving and starting again somewhere else were dead in the water; nobody could sell their house at the moment, and there was little hope that the situation would improve any time soon. When she mentioned that they could still live with her parents or some friends until the summer, when the long hours of daylight would drive away the darkness, he looked at her as if she were either stupid or crazy. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

A surprisingly warm gust of wind blew like a breath down the front of Berglind’s collar. Instead of warming her and making her feel better, it seemed to reanimate the stench, which had become less noticeable since she’d been forced to drop her arm away from her mouth and nose. Or maybe it had still been there and she’d got used to it, but the wind had suddenly made it stronger. Again it felt as if someone was breathing down her collar but this time from behind, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The stench grew even stronger, as though a ghost was standing right behind her and emptying air from its rotten lungs down her spine. The memory of the compost heap returned once more and Berglind fought a wave of nausea.
One, two, three, turn around and walk briskly into the house. One, two, three!
She remained where she was.