Someone to Watch Over Me

CHAPTER 18 Wednesday, 13 January 2010

The traffic on Skólavörðurstígur Street had started to build up again. The rumbling of the cars carried in through the half-open window and the exhaust fumes worked their way into Thóra’s office. After one ill-advisedly deep in-breath she exhaled and grimaced, held her nose until she’d shut the window and then used the sheet of paper in her hand – which happened to be a list of the residence’s employees and specialists – as a fan. That seemed to disperse most of the stink, but perhaps she had just grown impervious to it. Nonetheless, she felt a bit better when she sat down again. It was hard enough to form an opinion on who from the list she should speak to next, without suffering respiratory failure into the bargain. Glódís had included far too many people, fourteen full-time and ten part-time, and there was no way of knowing in advance which of them might provide any useful information. Thóra was still waiting for the director to answer her e-mail requesting the name of the man who had looked after Tryggvi. Thóra had also put a cross by one name: Glódís herself. And actually, she could also cross out Friðleifur Guðjónsson, the night watchman who had died in the fire. It wasn’t as though she’d get anything from speaking to his gravestone, but Thóra still hesitated to cross out his name. Her pen hovered over the black lettering without touching the paper as she stared contemplatively at the letters. The young man had been hit at the base of the skull before the fire was lit. Was it to prevent him from helping the residents get out, or was there some other reason?

Thóra reached for the file containing the autopsy report in order to reassure herself that she’d remembered the sequence of events correctly. Indeed she had. The man had been hit from behind and died of smoke inhalation in the blaze, probably as he’d lain unconscious. She tapped her pen lightly against the edge of the table. Might the fire have been designed to kill the night watchman? The filmmaker had mentioned that Friðleifur had received visitors at the home, so it was possible that he’d fallen out with a guest that night. Nocturnal visits weren’t permitted, but who was supposed to enforce that rule when the watchmen were alone on duty? It was also entirely possible that the criminal had thought he’d killed the night watchman and had set the place on fire in a desperate attempt to conceal the evidence. People in extremis can do the most unbelievable things, and what better way to conceal a murder than to make it look as though the violence had been directed at someone else? It could be that the same man had impregnated Lísa, which might have led to a fatal argument with Friðleifur. Thóra couldn’t quite imagine it, since the watchmen could hardly have allowed their visitors to roam freely around the apartments at night, but it was just about conceivable. She knew nothing about Friðleifur Guðjónsson other than the little information contained in the testimony in the case files, and the good opinion of the filmmaker, although that was of little use. People rarely spoke ill of the dead, even though they might have cultivated less than flattering thoughts about them while they were still above ground.

On the other hand, it would be easy to speak to the man who shared shifts with Friðleifur, since his name was readily available in the files. Thóra looked up his mobile number and rang it, but he didn’t answer and it didn’t go to voicemail. Until she could reach him, the only way to determine whether she was on the right track was to speak to Friðleifur’s relatives. She looked at the clock – almost five – and hurried to dig out the names of the man’s parents from the files. No one answered the landline, and the mother’s mobile was either turned off or out of range. However, Friðleifur’s father Guðjón answered his at the second ring. It sounded like he was driving.

She introduced herself and offered to call later if it was inconvenient.

‘Inconvenient? What do you mean?’ The line was crackly, but she could hear his surprise.

‘It’s just that I can tell you’re driving.’

‘That’s no problem. I’m about to park.’ A moment later she heard the engine shut off. ‘Did you say you were a lawyer? Are you from the bank?’ Thóra explained carefully who she was and who she worked for. There was a long silence. For a moment she thought the man was going to hang up, but then he suddenly started speaking again, his voice now a great deal sharper. ‘What the hell do you want from me?’

‘I’m trying to get to the bottom of how this fire occurred and part of that process involves speaking to the employees of the centre and the families of those who died.’

‘As if we know anything. You must be pretty desperate if you think that the family members are holding on to some sort of secret information. Do you really think we wouldn’t have told it to the police when they were investigating the case?’

The man was going to be a tricky interviewee, that much was certain. ‘A lot of what you discussed with the investigators back then didn’t find its way into the reports. They don’t include every little detail from the interviews. But just so you understand where I’m going, I have to rule out the possibility that the fire was directed at Friðleifur.’

‘No one would have wanted to harm him. He was just an ordinary guy. He’d never got on the wrong side of the law, never even got into a fight.’ The man’s voice faded, but then he added sadly: ‘Not even as a kid.’

After this the conversation went much better. The man’s anger diminished and he appeared to realize slowly but surely that Thóra’s intentions were good. She carefully formulated her questions so that it would be impossible to interpret them as being in any way negative towards Friðleifur. ‘So he didn’t hang around with anyone undesirable? Someone who might possibly have attacked him at work, and things might have escalated from there?’

‘No, I don’t think so. His friends were like him, easy-going, laid-back guys. Of course I wished he’d been a bit keener on the books, but I don’t know whether that had anything to do with his friends; they were all the same, and most of them dropped out of high school. Actually, I think Friðleifur was planning to go back to school. It’s just a hunch, but when I could finally bring myself to go through his room, I found a brochure of evening classes and some textbooks on pharmacology that he’d apparently bought. God knows he had enough time to study on the night shift.’

‘He lived at home, in other words?’

‘Yes – he didn’t exactly make a fortune from that job, or from his previous jobs, so he couldn’t afford payments on an apartment, and we weren’t in much of a position to help out either. It’s an incredible relief not to be stuck with an unsellable apartment on which you owe more than what you paid for it. Still, he was doing pretty well before he died; he’d become more sensible with his finances.’

Thóra’s mobile beeped, and she read the short text message as she spoke. It was from Sóley, asking whether she was coming home. ‘I don’t imagine you and your wife ever visited the home, though I understand your daughter sometimes dropped in there?’ She replied to Sóley as she waited for the man’s reaction: Soon.

‘Did she? I didn’t know that. Why do you mention it? If she visited him, I don’t see how it’d be relevant here; he and his sister got on well, that’s all.’

‘I was just wondering whether she could maybe assist me. An outsider might have a clearer perspective and I can’t see a statement from her anywhere in the case files.’

‘No, there wasn’t one; and as I say, I wasn’t aware she’d visited him there. Are you sure?’

The phone beeped again. ‘Well, I don’t see why my source would have made it up, or indeed how he would have known that Friðleifur had a sister at all. I’m certainly not suggesting that anything untoward took place, but I’d still be interested to speak to her.’ Thóra reached for her mobile to see the new message. Sóley still had to learn how to end these exchanges; every reply was always followed by another. Thóra had recently gone through it with her, but it didn’t seem to have had any effect.

‘I’d like to discuss it with her first. You don’t think I’d let you loose on her without asking her?’

‘No, no. Absolutely not.’ She prodded the phone’s keypad to see what her daughter had to say. On the screen she read 02 short hose, which meant nothing to her, but underneath it was a photo. ‘Perhaps I could just get in touch with you again in a few days, or you could call me, and by then you might…’ Thóra lost the thread of the conversation. The picture on the little screen was a long way from the kind of thing Sóley usually sent. It was a black, charred corpse leaning back in the remains of an office chair. The deformed head hung over the back of the seat as if the individual had been waiting to have his throat cut; his hands hung at his sides, black palms facing forward. She’d seen this image before. It was Friðleifur.

‘Are you still there?’ The man sounded concerned.

‘What? Oh, yes. I’m sorry.’ Thóra pressed the button to display the phone number and saw that the message was, of course, not from Sóley. ‘Did you just send me a text message?’

He sounded surprised now. ‘I wouldn’t know how to – I’m not good enough with phones to be able to send a message during a conversation. Why do you ask?’

‘Sorry, I just got a bit confused.’ Thóra found it difficult to concentrate on speaking to Guðjón with the image on the screen filling her mind. Who had sent it, and why? She hurried to wind up the conversation. ‘Will you speak to your daughter, then, and let me know? The sooner the better.’ The man agreed he would and said goodbye. Who knew if he’s keep his promise? As soon as he hung up she turned back to the message on her phone. She was in such a rush that it felt like she had ten thumbs and she was afraid she’d deleted the message in her clumsiness. Luckily she hadn’t. She checked the phone number from which the message had been sent, but now it appeared to have been sent from the phone company Telecom. After a rather lengthy call to the company, during which she was transferred twice to different departments, she was informed that it had probably come from the free SMS service that they offered on the Internet. When Thóra reported that she’d also received three strange messages from ja.is, the man on the line sighed and told her that the best thing would be for her to request that such messages be blocked from reaching her phone. It was very easy and could even be done online. When Thóra said that she wasn’t keen on the idea, the man sighed again; clearly this wasn’t the first time the messaging service had been misused, and he must be tired of having these conversations. When Thóra explained to him that her enquiry had to do with a court case, the man’s tone changed and he told her that all messages sent from the Internet were actually registered and traceable, but that it took time to trace them. He pledged to look into it as soon as he could, but couldn’t promise he’d find anything. He took down her mobile number and the time of the message, which he said was enough information, and they hung up.

Thóra took a closer look at the photo. It wasn’t very clear on the little screen but she recognized the subject nevertheless. A similar photo had been included in the police records found in one of Ari’s files, but not in the documents Jakob’s mother had given her. The photo was one of several taken at the scene before the bodies of the dead were removed. They had all caused Thóra’s hair to stand on end and each and every one of them had imprinted itself so strongly onto her mind that she didn’t need to see them clearly in order to recognize them again. She called Matthew.

‘How can I enlarge a photo that I received in a text message?’

‘Oh, hi, Matthew. How are you, Matthew?’

‘You’ll get a hi later, when I come home. I seriously need to find out how I can view a photo from my mobile in an ordinary size. Do you know how?’

‘Umm…’ Matthew clearly didn’t relish admitting that this was beyond his knowledge, even though he was rather more technologically minded than Thóra. ‘I don’t know how you would do it on your phone but it must be possible to find out.’

‘So you know how to do it on your phone?’ Perhaps Thóra could forward the message to him.

‘Umm…’ Matthew sucked his teeth. ‘No, not exactly.’ Before Thóra could say anything he added hastily: ‘If you still have the cables that came with it, you should be able to upload the photo to your computer. If you’ve lost them, I’m sure Gylfi could help you with it.’

‘Do we know anyone who keeps those cables somewhere they can actually remember?’ As soon as she said this she remembered that they did: Matthew himself. She added hurriedly: ‘Anyway, see you in ten minutes.’

Before Thóra left her office she looked up photos of the scene in order to confirm to herself that the little photo was of Friðleifur’s body. Luckily it was among the first that she pulled out, so she was spared from having to trawl through the entire mess once more. It was quite clear that the subject of the photo was the same, and in fact it looked like exactly the same photo. Who the hell had access to the police photograph database, and why had they sent it to her?

‘It’s the murderer, and he’s trying to frighten you.’ Thóra’s mother’s face was creased with worry. ‘You need to stop the investigation before he comes and sets us on fire.’

Thóra rolled her eyes. ‘How about if we drop this subject while we’re eating?’ She smiled at Sóley and little Orri, who were gazing wide-eyed at her. Unfortunately, her mother had walked in on Matthew and Gylfi as Gylfi was working on uploading the photograph to her laptop – at the exact moment that the photo had appeared in all its glory on the screen. She wouldn’t stop going on about it until Thóra had explained the situation, and was still fretting now.

‘Is the murderer coming to kill us?’ Sóley put her fork down. ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ Then she realized what she’d said and added: ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Murrr-err.’ Orri was still too young to understand what the word meant but was sensible enough to realize that it was something terrible, and therefore belonged in the same cat-egory as exciting things like dinosaurs and crocodiles.

‘Of course not. Grandma’s just joking.’ She saw that Sóley didn’t believe her one bit and added: ‘Don’t worry, there’s no murderer on the way. Just finish your food, darling.’ Thóra glared at her mother.

By the time the meal was over Sóley was her usual happy self again, since the adults had all started talking with false cheer about something entirely different. Thóra waited until her daughter had gone to bed and her parents were sitting in front of the television before returning to the computer to take a better look at the photo. Matthew sat down next to her at the kitchen table and shook his head after peering silently at the screen for a few moments. ‘It’s very strange, I have to say. Could it be that the person who sent you this didn’t realize that you have all the case files?’

‘Good question. I can’t think of anyone who could possibly be behind it. I mean, why would anyone send me this?’

‘As I said, maybe the person who sent it doesn’t know you already have the photos.’ Matthew leaned back from the screen. ‘But still, I don’t understand their motivation. Maybe the aim is to frighten you, as your mother so helpfully suggested at the table earlier. Perhaps the first step is to try and figure out who has access to the photo. The quality suggests it may not have come straight from the camera, so it might have been scanned.’

‘There are quite a few other possibilities. Apart from the policemen who worked on the investigation, the different parties involved in the case all received copies of the files: the judges, the public prosecutor’s office and Jakob’s lawyer, Ari. He let Jakob’s mother have a copy of some of the material, but that didn’t include the photo. I can’t quite see why Ari would want to send it to me again like this. He could have drawn my attention to it by sticking a Post-it on it, or just pointed it out to me when I visited him.’

‘Could someone in the justice system, the police or the prosecutor’s office, have done it?’

‘That’s possible, but why should anyone there want to bother me with something like this? They’d be in serious trouble if it came out, and I can’t see why anyone would take the risk. And whether the intention was to scare me or to help me, it seems like a weird way to send me a message. The police and the public prosecutor could easily summon me to a meeting if anyone there were interested in my investigation.’

‘What about the victims’ relatives? Were they given the files?’

Thóra shook her head slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Usually, every attempt is made to protect the relatives from the unnecessary distress of seeing an image like this. In order to be given a copy, you’d need to have an extremely good reason. I can’t imagine what grounds there might have been to turn over this photo to the parents or other relatives.’

‘What about the people who ran the centre? Do you think they’d have been able to follow the investigation?’

‘No doubt they would have, but not in any detail – and certainly not this kind of detail. This is just totally incomprehensible. The only thing I can think of is that someone within the system – someone who knows about my involvement and has access to this image – is losing their marbles.’

‘Or had already lost them.’ Matthew looked Thóra in the eye. ‘If Jakob is innocent, the criminal is probably on the loose. Maybe your mother was right. This photo is certainly enough to frighten someone off, but the message could have been clearer. I’d hazard a guess at ‘mind your own business’ or something along those lines, though.’

‘But if that’s the case, the real murderer would have to be a policeman, a lawyer or a judge. Or Jakob’s mother. None of whom seem very likely.’ Thóra lifted her phone. ‘Speaking of the message, what could 02 short hose mean?’

‘An apartment number? Weren’t the residents’ apartments numbered 01, 02 and so on?’

‘Yes, actually they were.’ Thóra exhaled. ‘If I remember correctly, 02 was the number of Natan’s apartment, but there was no hose there to my knowledge, long or short. Maybe the girl who’s still alive might know what it means.’

‘Isn’t that a good enough reason for you to find her? Maybe this text isn’t a threat at all, but a suggestion. She’s the only one still alive who knows what it was like to live there. Maybe she was even involved in the case.’

‘She’s paralysed and she can’t speak. I don’t know how she could possibly have been involved.’ Thóra shut her laptop. ‘But I obviously do need to meet her. First I’ve got to find out who she is, and where she is.’

‘That shouldn’t be hard.’ Matthew smiled. ‘As far as I can see, your real problem will be how to question her.’

Thóra closed her eyes. ‘Fantastic – this case just gets better and better.’