Someone to Watch Over Me (34 page)

Thóra was in a quandary; there was no way the woman could afford to pursue the case unless the firm simply did the work for free. ‘The rate doesn’t tell the whole story. The number of hours worked does tend to pile up in these kinds of assignments, but if everything goes to plan the majority of those hours would hopefully be reimbursed. In the part of the law that covers the reopening of cases, it’s stated that the cost of the petition – and of the new trial, if the petition is approved – will be paid by the State Treasury. On the other hand, we don’t know whether Jakob’s case will be reopened and even if it is, there’s no guarantee that the courts will consider the entire portion of the expenditure recoverable.’

‘But … ‘ Grímheiður stared open-mouthed, the colour now drained from her upper lip.

‘On the other hand, if I’m right, and Jósteinn still wants Jakob’s case to be reopened, then he’ll hopefully stick to his word about paying the cost. If that’s totally unacceptable to you after what’s happened, I will of course stop working for him, and then we can take the chance that the case will go well and the costs will be paid by the Treasury.’ Thóra felt sorry for Jakob’s mother; it didn’t take a psychologist to see that the woman had two choices, both of them bad. She could give the green light and indirectly receive money from a man who had maimed her son, or she could refuse any further assistance from this odious benefactor and effectively prevent Jakob from having any chance of returning home.

‘What would you do?’ Grímheiður directed her question to Matthew. She was of the old school; his words had more weight than Thóra’s, since he was more likely to come to a rational conclusion, being a man. Thóra didn’t let this bother her and smiled wryly to herself.

‘Me?’ Matthew had been following the conversation but clearly hadn’t expected to be directly involved. He carefully put down the doughnut that he’d been intending to enjoy, after Grímheiður placed a box full of them on the table in front of him, along with some coffee that she’d brewed the old-fashioned way. ‘Well, I guess I would let the investigation proceed. Look at Jósteinn’s payments as compensation for the injury. The damage has already been done and although it goes completely against your instincts to accept anything from this man, it’s the most sensible decision when you put aside your feelings and look at the bigger picture.’

‘In other words, it doesn’t matter where the assistance comes from.’ The woman appeared satisfied with Matthew’s answer and she filled his cup. ‘But what will people think?’

‘Does it matter?’ Matthew meant this sincerely; he cared little about others’ opinions. ‘The case is about Jakob, not some strangers in town.’

Grímheiður put the coffeepot down carefully on a tray that Thóra would have bet everything she owned Jakob had made. Her pale eyes suddenly filled with tears, which she self-consciously wiped away with her hands. ‘Sorry. I really don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

‘You don’t need to apologize for anything. I have a son; a daughter, too, and I understand how you feel. What Jakob’s been through, both last night and over the years, is more than most mothers have to deal with. You deserve credit for your endurance.’

‘Thanks,’ muttered Grímheiður, so softly that she could barely be heard. ‘He’s got to be allowed to come home. I’m so worried about him. What if he’s sent back to Sogn? What will this Jósteinn do then? Stab him again to send him back here? The hospital’s had its own cutbacks and they can’t keep readmitting him.’

‘I’d advise you to speak to the Icelandic Prison Service and even try to get the hospital on your side. Sogn is categorized as a hospital, not a jail, so these institutions could act jointly to get Jakob placed elsewhere, in consultation with the court – which would also have to get involved, since he was pronounced not criminally liable. It must be possible to find some sort of interim solution to his predicament. Unfortunately, Ari will probably have to be involved as well, as Jakob’s supervisor, but I can speak to him if you’d prefer not to.’ Thóra was afraid that no matter what solution the authorities chose, it would be one that neither Jakob nor his mother would be happy with – although at least he would be safe.

‘I’ve never been good at talking to government agencies, and certainly not to that lawyer.’ Grímheiður glanced quickly at Thóra. ‘I’ve never been able to speak plainly to those people about what’s on my mind.’

Thóra assumed the woman meant government officials. ‘Maybe I can help you.’ You never knew, perhaps Einvarður would be willing to use his contacts within the Ministry of Justice. The Prison Service answered to the Ministry and it was the least Thóra could do for Grímheiður and her son.

‘I would be very grateful.’ Two more tears appeared, but Grímheiður wiped them away immediately, sniffed and pulled herself together. ‘How’s it going with the case otherwise? Have you found anything that might help Jakob?’

Thóra told her the main details of what she was working on, without actually giving anything away. There was no way of knowing whether it would bear fruit, and she was keen not to give the woman some scrap of information that she might obsess over for a lifetime if Thóra didn’t make any progress. ‘Hopefully I’ll be able to complete this over the next few days and then I can assess whether there’s reason enough to request a reopening of the case.’

‘Do you want to see his room?’ The question came out of nowhere. Perhaps the woman wanted to elicit even more sympathy from Thóra, in order to increase the likelihood that her assessment of the evidence would be favourable to Jakob.

‘Certainly.’ Matthew got up off the kitchen chair with lightning speed. A fear of being confined in a small kitchen with an unfamiliar, weeping woman had overcome him.

They followed Grímheiður into a small carpeted hallway where the door to Jakob’s room was located. ‘Here it is. Just waiting for him to come home.’ She opened the door and waved them in ahead of her.

‘Very nice,’ said Thóra, just to have something to say. It was difficult to comment much on the room; it was like every other room in the apartment, packed with things and three sizes too small for its contents. Still, there was not a speck of dust to be seen. There was even a radio playing softly, as if Jakob had just stepped out. Thóra looked around. ‘You certainly have kept it looking tidy. I wish it were this clean at my place.’

‘I don’t have much to occupy me these days. Jakob was never much for cleaning up his room, and I was used to helping him. Now what I’d like most of all is for some naughty little boy to make a mess of everything so I can remember how things used to be, but I wouldn’t dare.’ She looked at some of her son’s things that had been set up on a shelving unit. ‘Something might break, and Jakob is so careful with his belongings.’

Matthew gently lifted a pair of binoculars that stood on end on the bedside table. ‘These are fantastic.’ He held the binoculars up to his eyes.

‘They were a Christmas present from me and his father. The year before he died.’

Matthew put the binoculars down hastily. He left the other things alone and started examining the posters hanging on the wall above the bed, which was neatly made. There were loads of them, some overlapping; for example, the bumper of a Formula One car peeked out from beneath a poster of the Manchester United football team. ‘What’s this?’ Matthew pointed at a rather faded picture of a figure on a white background, on which were written the words:
Even angels have bad days
. ‘Isn’t this an angel?’ He looked at Thóra and then at Grímheiður.

‘Funny that you should ask about this poster in particular.’ Grímheiður smiled. ‘It’s been a favourite of Jakob’s for almost ten years. He got it at the summer camp he went to run by the State Church. It was an experimental project, but I don’t know if they carried it on because Jakob was too old by the following year to be eligible to go. Perhaps the course wasn’t run again.’

Thóra went over and stood next to Matthew to look at the poster. Perhaps the picture could explain Jakob’s reference to the angel when he was trying not very successfully to describe the fire. The mind sometimes sought out the familiar when it was under great strain. As the caption indicated, the angel’s existence had once been brighter; its golden halo had fallen from its head and the little harp in its arms had a broken string. It was missing one sandal and a feather drifted to the ground from one of its small wings. Thóra sensed that their interest in the poster surprised Grímheiður, and she asked the first thing that crossed her mind. ‘What made you say the course might not have happened again?’

‘Oh, it was a bit of a disaster. Although Jakob loved it and the organizers did what they could to make the experience memorable, some of the participants had far too many problems to fit in there.’

‘Oh?’ Thóra turned away from the wall.

‘Yes, all sorts of things happened that I can’t imagine the staff would have wanted to encounter again.’ Grímheiður shook her head, her expression sad. ‘No one had properly considered how the participants might cope – just like at that damn residence.’ She took two steps over to Jakob’s desk, lifted a blue stapler and blew invisible dust off it. ‘One girl nearly drowned when she fell into a river near the camp that she was constantly visiting, another ate poisonous mushrooms, and then there was one who tried to set his sleeping bag on fire. That was a close call; things could have turned out far worse.’ Grímheiður put the stapler back down on the table, positioning it in precisely the same spot. ‘That boy didn’t enjoy being at the summer camp at all, and I can’t understand who could have thought that he would. He was very autistic and couldn’t tolerate new circumstances. The poor thing.’ Lowering her voice, she added: ‘He died when the centre burned down. Tryggvi.’

‘Tryggvi? Einvarðsson?’ Thóra was careful not to appear too interested, but this could be pretty significant, even though burning one’s sleeping bag wasn’t quite the same as using petrol to set a house on fire.

‘Yes, him.’ A light suddenly came on for Grímheiður. ‘Do you think he started the fire?’ Then she shook her head violently. ‘It’s impossible; he wasn’t any more capable of it than Jakob. Tryggvi never left his apartment voluntarily. He would never have gone swanning around the residence on his own initiative.’

‘No, no. Of course not.’ Thóra acted as if she were dismissing this idea. Clearly not everyone was aware of Tryggvi’s progress with the therapist. ‘Did you say it was a summer camp organized by the Church?’ It couldn’t hurt to get some more information about the incident with the sleeping bag.

From the small radio on the table came the tinny, irritated voice of the DJ complaining that the person who was supposed to take over from him hadn’t turned up.

Lena was lying on a nice soft sofa, but she couldn’t get into a good position, due to the weight of the book she was holding. She put it down on the glass table; she wasn’t reading it anyway, and there was no point making herself uncomfortable. She had been finding it difficult to focus and the simple act of her mother walking into the room in the middle of a phone conversation, indifferent to her daughter, had made her lose the thread. Instead of peering at the small print, Lena watched her mother. She crossed the room, making sweeping hand gestures. The person she was speaking to was probably making the same gestures, because Lena’s mother’s friends all acted more or less the same. If Lena squinted in their vicinity she had trouble telling them apart. It was mainly her mother who stood out; more often than not she was the centrepiece, but in a completely different way to how Lena was with her friends. Her mother was always the most miserable; she could complain the most and wallow in the others’ sympathy and empty words of encouragement. ‘
My dear Fanndís, I don’t understand how you cope, can’t you take a break and try to forget all of this for a while? God knows you deserve it
.’ Lena wished she could peek into the past and see what things had been like before Tryggvi was born and her mother became an embodiment of sacrifices for her child. Perhaps the women had been more like Lena and her friends, giggling and chatting together easily.

After Tryggvi’s death, Lena hadn’t expected significant changes, and she’d been proved right. Her mother, of course, no longer played the role of the steadfast and dedicated parent who gave her all for her disabled son; now she smiled bravely through her tears, unable to come to terms with her loss. Both roles were characterized by how her mother said one thing but implied the opposite. Once it had been:
Isn’t this terribly difficult for you, my poor Fanndís? No, no. You’ve just got to tough it out, even when everything seems hopeless.
Now it was:
But what do I really have to complain about? In the Third World there are people who have lost their children and can’t even feed the ones who are still alive.

Lena was suddenly overwhelmed by irritation. As if her mother had some sort of exclusive right to feel bad about Tryggvi. When all was said and done, Lena and her father had loved him just as much, even if they weren’t constantly seeking attention after his death. Lena had never discussed the subject with her friends; her grief, like all the other feelings churning inside her, was private. Other people couldn’t possibly understand. She doubted her father did, even though he’d had a very difficult time with it all too and hadn’t been able to hide it either from her or from others who knew him well. It was as if he’d shut off part of himself; he was never properly happy, even though he tried to pretend to be for his wife and daughter’s sake. Although it had often been difficult at home, Lena couldn’t remember having seen him as miserable as he was now. If she were forced to choose which of the three of them had been most affected by Tryggvi’s death, she would pick him.

‘Oh, thank you, my dear. I’m thinking of you too.’ Her mother hung up. She stared for a moment out of the living room window before turning to Lena on the sofa. ‘Don’t you have any classes today?’

‘It’s Sunday.’ Lena looked at her mother, having long since become accustomed to this kind of thing.