Someone to Watch Over Me (44 page)

Thóra sighed. ‘I’m glad someone’s happy.’ She looked up. ‘I’ll talk to her, that’s not a problem. I’m just trying to understand what this means. Was she just there on a normal visit as a friend of Friðleifur, or was she there to get – or do – whatever made the care home as desirable an after-hours nightspot as the photos suggest?’

‘She’ll be able to give you an answer to that, surely.’

‘Probably. But there’s something else bothering me.’

‘Oh?’ Matthew had closed his eyes. He had stopped at Thóra’s office on his way back from the gym because he knew that Thóra’s meeting with the sheriff would be over. It had actually taken less time than anticipated; the former couple had been too depressed to bother committing themselves much, since their debt was huge, even though they were planning to share the burden.

‘I don’t know, maybe I should have contacted the police.’

‘Because of the photo of Lena?’ Matthew asked, surprised.

‘No, not that. I’m going to talk to her about that first. If something comes of it, then hopefully it won’t be long before I can formally request a reopening of the case. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she also knows, or at least suspects, something about who abused Lísa. That way I could start putting together a complete theory of what happened there.’

‘Then why are you wondering about the police?’

‘Precisely because of Lísa.’ Thóra turned the computer screen towards Matthew. ‘What if there’s a picture of the man on this site? They could make use of it in their investigation of the abuse.’ She saw that he didn’t quite get it. ‘We let Ragna look at the photos, do you get it? Show them to her one by one.’

‘Aren’t you obliged to tell the police? Is there even any question about that?’

‘Yes I am, but I’m worried they wouldn’t tell me the outcome and then the opportunity to help Jakob by discovering who really started the fire will slip out of my grasp.’

‘If they find out that way, they wouldn’t hide it from you, would they? You’d be given the information.’

‘Not necessarily. They’ve already looked into it once, with Lísa, so there’s bound to be some reluctance to rekindle the investigation. Ragna isn’t exactly an ordinary victim and it’s not at all clear whether she’d want to press charges or communicate with the police.’

‘Call the police. Then visit Ragna afterwards and ask her what she told them. She knows you’re trying to help Jakob, so she shouldn’t be trying to hide anything from you.’

Thóra picked up the phone. Sometimes it was best just to go for it. She dialled the number of the police station and asked to speak to the same man she’d spoken to before. Some time passed before his voice came on the line. He didn’t seem particularly enthralled to hear from her and clearly expected her to try to get something from him regarding the investigation of the case concerning Margeir’s phone. However, she knew that would be a waste of time and instead got straight to the point, as much as she could with a case so hard to explain. It was easier said than done to explain to him that a burnt-down community residence for the disabled out in the middle of nowhere had once been a party den, and that on a Facebook page set up in memory of one of the people who’d died there, they would probably find some photos of a man who made a habit of sexually abusing paralysed girls.

The response she got was probably a reflection of how bizarre the whole thing sounded. ‘You know, I’m really busy with something else at the moment so I can’t promise anything. If I’ve understood you correctly, this girl’s not going anywhere any time soon, so there’s probably no great rush. But I’ve made a note of what you’ve said and we’ll look into it when things slow down. I doubt it’ll be this week, but next week, hopefully.’

Thóra hung up and turned to Matthew. ‘Come on, we need to stop off at a florist’s. Let’s go to the hospital. Jakob can’t hang around waiting for the police to find time for this.’

On the sofa, Matthew sighed deeply.

Jósteinn removed the processor from a computer that he’d taken apart and placed it on a plastic tray. His plastic gloves were making his hands sweaty and he desperately wanted to remove them and scratch until the top layer of skin dissolved into little particles that he could sweep off the table top into the bin. That bin, a poisonous green colour, had got on his nerves ever since he’d gained access to this room several years earlier. He had long ago stopped keeping track of how much time he’d done at Sogn; the number of years might as well be the number of stars in the sky. If he were to count them down, things might look different, but here he would remain until he either kicked the bucket or got so decrepit that the authorities no longer believed him capable of perpetrating a crime. Neither of these visions of the future was to his liking, but this didn’t keep him awake at night; here he had his computers, and he understood them much better than the people who would otherwise be getting in his way in the world outside.

His Achilles heel had always been the fact that he didn’t understand other people. The psychiatrist who had evaluated his mental state for the court said that Jósteinn had all the symptoms of a sociopath – a person who lacks morals because he isn’t able to learn from past mistakes or experience and is therefore governed almost exclusively by antisocial urges. Regret, said the same doctor, doesn’t exist for him. This diagnosis was entirely correct; Jósteinn wouldn’t have wanted to change anything he’d done in the past, except perhaps to hide it better from the police so that he could have had longer before getting caught. Then he could have created more memories to comfort himself with. It wouldn’t have changed anything if he had harmed or abused more people – either way, he could never serve more than this one life sentence.

It would undoubtedly have been easy to trick the doctor; he knew how to appear perfectly normal even though emotions were completely foreign to him – well, all except for anger, which he knew intimately. As a child he had learned from experience and trained himself to smile when people tried to be funny, or to put on a sad face when they complained. The problem was that he’d had a tendency to overdo the emotions, which had always made others uneasy. He could have tried to dodge a correct diagnosis in order to receive a conventional sentence, which would have been shorter, but he had become as indifferent to his own suffering as he was to that of others. Maybe it was all the faces he’d been forced to confront as he played the part of a normal man who went to work every weekday morning, all year round. Every moment of eye contact with a colleague at the computer workshop had been agony, but he’d had to grin and bear it in order not to raise suspicion. The job had suited him perfectly; he had lived and breathed computers since his teenage years and it hadn’t required much human interaction. He would surely have given up and been arrested much sooner if his workplace had been busier. The torment of other people had slowly but surely weakened the self-preservation instinct that had kept him beneath the radar of the authorities, and caused him to blurt out things about the pictures. He couldn’t remember when this aversion to meeting people’s gaze had first manifested itself; it had simply grown, calmly but quietly without his awareness, until finally it took all the strength he could muster to make even the briefest eye contact.

‘Dinner’s ready.’ The door behind him had opened and in the doorway stood a guard whose name Jósteinn could never remember. ‘Pack up your things; you might not be allowed to continue after dinner.’

‘Why not?’ Jósteinn lifted the processor and held it up to the light. He could often salvage parts from a machine that had been dismissed as useless, but this time, unfortunately, he suspected that this wasn’t the case. He needed a processor for the computer he was building. Oh well – the nobodies who got his renovated computers would have to wait a little bit longer this time.

‘We’re expecting a man from Prison Services who needs to discuss something with you. Probably the incident with Jakob.’ The man leaned against the doorpost, his arms crossed over his chest. ‘Hurry up.’

‘Have you heard whether we might be getting more computers? It’s funny how things don’t seem to get thrown away so much now that we’re in recession. Do you think they’ve been saving much money that way?’

‘Get a move on, Jósteinn, or I’ll write you up. You’re a whisker away from losing this job.’

‘Fine.’ This was the advantage of being diagnosed as a sociopath; it was clear to those who looked after him that he didn’t care about being punished. So just as he’d suspected, his circumstances hadn’t changed after he’d attacked Jakob. He had carried on rebuilding computers and every day was like the previous one, which was like the one before, and so on. No doubt there would be consequences, but they would be meaningless and only imposed as a formality. He put down the processor and stood up. The smell of food from the kitchen had followed the guard into the room. Hunger was a physical sensation and not connected to his state of mind, which meant he felt it like everyone else. Not all aspects of his humanity had been left out when he was created. ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Lamb stew. Just right in this weather. If you don’t hurry up, all the meat will be finished. Everyone’s famished from lunch today.’ Lunch had been a vegetarian dish that was the Sogn cook’s first attempt to nudge the menu in a healthier direction. The tasteless stodge had been left almost untouched on people’s plates as they left the dining room, bitterly disappointed. Everyone except for Jósteinn, who’d left as hungry as the rest of them, but also very satisfied. His hunger was a diversion. Now, however, he’d got bored of it and would pounce eagerly on his supper. Since he’d attacked Jakob, he had to sit alone at a table far from the other inmates, which suited him just fine. He stood up, pleased at the thought of eating undisturbed by the meaningless chatter of those idiots. ‘Why haven’t you turned off the lamp? You know you’re supposed to do that before you leave the room.’ The guard nodded his broad chin towards the Luxo lamp screwed to the work table.

‘I suspect I may be coming back.’ Jósteinn grinned at the floor. ‘It’s unlikely anyone would be coming on official business at this hour. It’s far too late and you don’t want me sitting with the others in the living room tonight. Do you?’ The guard’s silence spoke volumes and Jósteinn smiled wryly. ‘No, I think we both know I’ll be back later.’

The guard didn’t bother protesting. They were both intelligent men and there was no point arguing a lost cause; everyone knew that Jósteinn was allowed to be there whenever he wanted – even at night. Anyone trying to keep Jósteinn from what he called his work was fighting a losing battle; the fork buried in Jakob’s head was still too fresh in the staff’s minds for them to leave him unsupervised in the company of others. It was easier to let him spend his time messing about in the little workroom. This suited him just fine, and he wished that he’d thought of doing something similar before. He resolved to repeat this tactic every time the staff relaxed their grip. Now all was as it should be; he had everything his own way again, and he could use this lawyer woman to stir up that idiot Ari. It delighted him to think how many others were tangled in his web. Everything was proceeding as planned, and that simpleton Jakob would get what he wanted in the process. That was fine for him, and meant nothing to Jósteinn. ‘It’ll be really great to get my teeth into some meat,’ he said to the guard as he walked past him out into the corridor. His voice was devoid of joy or hope, yet he hadn’t felt this good in years. Wasn’t life wonderful?

Ari sat in his office and stared at the answering machine, which blinked to indicate the messages awaiting him. The small screen next to the light displayed the figure seventeen. This was certainly a fair number of unanswered calls, but it was far from being the highest figure the device had displayed. He’d already run through the numbers, most of which had also shown up on his mobile phone. In fact, friends and acquaintances had given up calling once he hadn’t answered twice in a row. They knew which way the wind blew. Others who knew him less well were more optimistic. The lawyer, that Thóra who was working on reopening Jakob’s case, had called the office five times, for example, and the same number of calls to his mobile. He would have to come up with some story to feed her, something that would explain why he hadn’t answered his phone for days. He could hardly tell her the truth, but it was rather nice that there were still lawyers out there who didn’t know what he was like.

But it was still all her fault. Her investigation of Jakob’s case had caused him worries that had eaten away at his self-control little by little, like acid, until he’d headed straight for the cards. He had resolved to stay away from them some time ago,
not
because he’d been diagnosed as a gambling addict – that had been a huge exaggeration, he had simply enjoyed taking risks – but because he was unlucky by nature. He lost more often than was healthy – always, in fact – and for some incomprehensible reason this lack of luck had been interpreted as addiction. Of course his day would come. It didn’t take much knowledge of probability to see that a huge win was on the horizon. He deserved it. Even though he didn’t remember much beyond the first few hours of this most recent spree, he imagined that it had progressed in the same way as usual: he had gone online to play for a little while in the evening, and before he knew it the night was over and all the winnings that he’d initially accrued had been lost, and far more besides. Now he would sleep for most of the day. When he finally dragged himself out of bed he would try to compensate for the previous night’s loss. And then it would be morning again, and he would have to give in to his fatigue as the jackpot moved a little further into the distance once more. And then the cards would stop working. With tiny gains that only very slightly offset the huge losses, it took him four nights to bankrupt himself.

Ari didn’t want to contemplate how high his next credit card bills would be; he had never dared to add up all the spending limits on all of his cards. He found the best approach was to throw out his bills unopened, then call the card companies and have his accounts frozen one by one, while negotiating permission to pay the bills monthly until the debt was erased. This payment plan took a long time, and after the króna crashed he had maxed out his cards even more quickly than before. The wretched exchange rate was precisely what made the Internet casinos so exciting now: the stakes felt so much higher than they were before the króna fell.