Someone to Watch Over Me

CHAPTER 2 Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Her name was Grímheiður Þorbjarnardóttir, and if she had a nickname she chose not to reveal it to Thóra. She seemed on the defensive, and had firmly declined to take off her slightly tatty coat, sitting there still bundled in it despite the warmth of the office. She had, however, quickly removed her hand-knitted shawl, matching hat and lined leather gloves and placed them in her lap. The hat and shawl were a similar colour to the coat, but not close enough to match. Grímheiður had probably not been wearing the coat when she bought the wool, and the result was a little jarring. The woman’s swollen red fingers fiddled with the shawl’s fringe as her eyes searched for a place to put it.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to hang up your coat for you?’ Thóra held out her hand hopefully. It was one of those winter days when the cold north wind fights the sun for control and neither appears to be winning. As long as the battle was raging Thóra could not open the windows; the winds were hitting the building square-on, and the slightest chink in its armour would immediately turn her little office into a walk-in fridge. Keeping them closed was only marginally better, because the merciless sun made a furnace of it. Over the years Thóra and Bragi, her business partner, had somehow never got round to buying curtains, which made it nigh-on impossible to be in the office on cold, sunny days like this one.

‘No.’ Grímheiður’s reply was curt, bordering on rude. She appeared to realize this, because her cheeks, already red from the heat, darkened even further. ‘I mean, no thanks. It’s okay.’

Thóra nodded, let her outstretched hand drop and decided to get down to business. ‘As I mentioned on the phone, I’ve been asked to look into your son’s case, on the grounds that he’s been wrongfully imprisoned.’ She paused to allow Grímheiður to respond, but the woman neither spoke nor reacted. ‘Since you are your son’s legal guardian, I don’t wish to accept this case without your consent. Of course I could take it on without consulting anyone, but I’m unwilling to do so without the full cooperation of you and your son. I will also speak to the lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court as Jakob’s supervisor; as you know, he is responsible for ensuring that Jakob doesn’t stay at the institution any longer than necessary. Obviously any move to reopen the case would concern him.’ Grímheiður was staring impassively at the table, and Thóra couldn’t be sure if she was actually paying attention. ‘Since your son’s development is…’ Before the meeting began Thóra had tried to come up with the right terminology to describe Jakob without offending anyone. Now that the time had come she couldn’t remember what she’d decided on, so she’d have to wing it and hope for the best. ‘Since Jakob has Down’s syndrome your opinion holds even more weight than it usually would, although of course I will discuss it further with him if you wish us to proceed with the case. I would like to reiterate that this is free of charge for both of you, so your consent does not affect Jakob’s finances, for which you are the legal executor.’ Jakob, unlike Jósteinn, had been deprived of control over his finances and the court had appointed his mother as his legal proxy. ‘As I told you on the phone, your son has made friends with this Jósteinn, who is adamant that he wishes to cover the cost of the investigation. I feel I should say that I don’t fully understand why he’s doing this and am finding it hard to shake off the feeling that he has some motive beyond pure philanthropy, but that’s not for me to judge at this stage.’

‘I’ve met him.’ The woman’s thin lips tightened, causing them to almost disappear. ‘I don’t like him. But Jakob seems to consider him a great friend, and he’s a good judge of character despite his learning disability.’ Grímheiður fell silent and resumed smoothing out the fringe of her shawl.

Thóra didn’t know what she could add to this without embarrassing herself by revealing her ignorance of mental disabilities. She knew little about people with learning difficulties, or at least those that were as severe as Jakob’s, and it made her feel stressed and uncomfortable. No doubt there was plenty of information out there, but Thóra hadn’t had much time and had decided to wait until she was sure the case would be ongoing. And that all depended on the woman who now sat before her, melting. ‘But leaving aside the ques-tion of the purity of Jósteinn’s motives, what’s your opinion on this? Do you see any sense in it? What effect do you think it would have on your son, given that there’s no guarantee of it changing anything? I can’t predict how he’d react if his case was reopened – let alone how disappointed he’d be if it didn’t do any good.’

Grímheiður stopped fiddling with the fringe and clenched her fists until her knuckles whitened. Then she relaxed them and let her shoulders droop. ‘When I found out I was pregnant with Jakob, my husband and I had long since lost all hope of having children. We were both already in our forties, and of course we were delighted. When I underwent an amniocentesis, as I was advised to due to my age, we also found out what sex the baby was.’ She inhaled sharply and sat up straighter. ‘Well, anyway. I was steered towards aborting the foetus, not explicitly, but quite emphatically. Neither I nor my husband could bear to contemplate it, despite everyone saying it would take over our lives completely; on the contrary, that was precisely why we wanted a baby. It made no odds to me that I’d have to stop working, though we certainly enjoyed having two wages. Neither of us made a huge amount of money; we barely hit an average wage. But either way, an abortion was out of the question. He was our child, no matter how many chromosomes he had.’

Thóra couldn’t help but be impressed. She was sure that faced with the same dilemma her choice would be different, but that was irrelevant since she already had two children. Perhaps the decision hadn’t helped the woman’s marriage; she was the only one registered to the telephone number Thóra had called. ‘Are you still married to Jakob’s father?’

‘He died when Jakob was ten. Another victim of nanny state bureaucracy. He was a plumber, and he was sent east to Hveragerði to do a small job for a contractor. It was early May and they’d put summer tyres on all the company cars, but their regulations don’t control the weather and he hit black ice. He flipped his car over on Kambarnir and died instantly.’ The woman looked away and gazed out of the window. ‘He hadn’t liked the look of the weather, so he’d called the police to see if he could put on winter tyres. They said no.’ She paused. ‘When Jakob turned twenty the system went to work to put him into a sheltered community. The social worker who handled his case felt it best for him to move away from me, since in her infinite wisdom she thought I was overprotecting him and inhibiting his development. I’m still not sure quite how it was all sorted out, since I know that at the time there was a long waiting list for the community. For some reason the others on the list were turned down and Jakob was squeezed in. If you ask me, their so-called support was just the opposite: you never got what you wanted, and you never wanted what you got.’

‘Were you opposed to him living in a sheltered community?’ It was a ridiculous question given what the woman had just said, but Thóra always preferred to have everything spelled out to prevent any misunderstanding.

Grímheiður didn’t seem to mind. ‘Yes, I certainly was. He was too, but that just made it more of a challenge for the system, and in the end they won and I let myself be persuaded. But my doubts didn’t arise from any fears about his future; if I’d had a crystal ball, obviously I would have fought harder. I just wanted to have my son with me; I thought I could care for him better than complete strangers, off somewhere in the middle of the city. And his benefits made a difference, too. It’s very hard to run a household alone. After he moved out, the residence received the lion’s share of his monthly allowance and what little was left wasn’t even enough to keep him in clothes and shoes.’

‘How long had Jakob been living there when the centre burned down?’ Thóra was careful not to say when he set the centre on fire.

‘Nearly six months. Not long.’

‘And was he happy there, or did he not have the chance to settle in properly?’

‘He was terribly unhappy, really depressed. Maybe not as bad as he was after the fire, or when he was transferred to the Secure Psychiatric Unit at Sogn, but still miserable. Jakob needs stability, not turmoil.’

‘Then you think it might be inadvisable for me to take on this case? It will inevitably be a disruption for him.’

The woman gave Thóra a look of fierce determination. Her face bore the marks of a difficult life; deep wrinkles fanned from the corners of her eyes to her temples, like the sunbeams Thóra’s daughter drew in the sky in all her pictures. Even deeper furrows lay across her forehead, but although her face was lined with signs of stress her eyes were like a teenager’s, the whites clear and the demarcation of the irises sharp. ‘Someone called me today from Sogn and advised me to ask you to leave it, for Jakob’s sake. I was having a few doubts, but after that call I made my decision and I won’t change my mind.’

‘So you’re against it?’ Thóra was both relieved and disappointed. She had wanted to take the case, but also felt compelled to refuse it. Sometimes it was good to let others make decisions for you, but she was a little irritated that someone had tried to influence Jakob’s mother, even if it had been done with good intentions.

‘No, absolutely not. I want you to take the case, and spare no one in your investigation. Neither me nor Jakob. I’m done with following the advice of people who think they know best. It’s my decision now.’

Thóra smiled weakly. ‘Nevertheless, I feel that you should think it over a little longer. Those are not strong grounds for such an important decision. There are other factors you need to consider; the few advantages would be hard-won, and the disadvantages could be considerable. You should think through all the possible outcomes.’

‘I’ve already done that, and my decision is the same: I want you to take the case. I would be a fool if I refused it on Jakob’s behalf; I would never be able to afford the cost of reopening his case myself.’ Grímheiður stared at Thóra, her blue eyes wide like a child’s. ‘Jakob is innocent and his name should be cleared, sooner rather than later. I don’t have many years left, I’m sure, and when I’m gone there won’t be anyone to look after him. So it’s now or never. I would give anything to spend whatever’s left of our lives together, but not the way things are now. Not like this.’

In Thóra’s experience family members usually thought their loved one was innocent; she had seen them react as if the accused were a cute little bunny rabbit that by sheer bad luck had ended up in the talons of the legal eagles. She thought back to the guileless young man she’d seen at Sogn and decided that a bunny wasn’t such an absurd metaphor in this instance. ‘Before I make my final decision I’d like to see the evidence you’ve brought.’ She watched Jakob’s mother reach for an old-fashioned briefcase made of cracked plastic.

‘I’ve not thrown any of it away; I just couldn’t.’ The woman put the briefcase on the desk with a solid clunk; it was heavy. ‘You’ll read this differently from me, but hopefully you’ll see what I think is obvious.’ She started to stand but had forgotten the shawl, hat and gloves in her lap. They dropped to the floor and the woman bent down, red-faced, to pick them up. After straightening back up she spoke again. ‘Jakob didn’t set the home on fire, so he didn’t kill anyone. He deserves to come home.’

‘I hope so,’ was all Thóra could say. What the poor boy deserved remained to be seen.

Thóra’s eyes had gone dry from squinting at the computer screen. She hadn’t opened the briefcase, as clearly it would take a while to go through its contents; she also feared she’d find images or descriptions of charred corpses, and needed to prepare herself mentally. So she had decided to write a few e-mails and then read up on Down’s syndrome. Thóra didn’t know much about it, but maybe the condition had been known to cause aggressive behaviour or psychotic episodes that could explain why Jakob had turned to arson, if indeed he did have anything to do with the attack.

Despite extensive online searches and a lot of reading, she found nothing conclusive. She did, however, find herself much better informed about the syndrome. She learned that it was caused by an extra chromosome, and that various disorders were associated with it including learning disabilities, heart defects, poor muscle tone and a below-average life expectancy. The average life span of a person with Down’s syndrome was said to be around fifty years, but most of the articles pointed out that this was an extraordinary improvement compared to half a century ago, when it had only been twenty-five. Various other characteristics were mentioned: facial features were markedly different from the average western appearance and the tongue was often too large for the mouth, as a result of which it often protruded. The palms of the hands had only one transverse line instead of two like most people. Other features were listed, most of them unlikely to be relevant to the case and many too technical for Thóra to understand them fully. She assumed she would find an analysis of Jakob himself in the briefcase, and that it would include his IQ score, though these were generally held to be highly subjective; the IQ of individuals with Down’s syndrome was usually around 35–70. This was a broad range, so the generalizations she was unearthing told her little about Jakob.

Thóra also took some time to familiarize herself with the laws and regulations that might apply to Jakob specifically as an intellectually disabled person, and quickly noticed the change that had occurred in society’s attitude towards this group. The names of older laws, which had been dropped before current legislation on issues pertaining to the disabled, revealed an attitude that no longer existed: a bill from 1936 was named the Law on Idiot Asylums and one from 1967 the Law on Institutions for Imbeciles. In a report accom-panying the bill for the latter law Thóra found this era’s definition of intellectual disability, which was then called ‘feeble-mindedness’. This term applied to a number of different categories: people who had IQs lower than 50 and were either ‘morons’, if their IQs were between zero and 24, or ‘imbeciles’ if their IQs went from 25 to 49; and ‘idiots’, whose IQs were between 50 and 70 or 75. The words were like needles in Thóra’s eyes and the scant resources that had been available to these poor people were equally painful; at the time there was no choice apart from placement in an institution, regardless of an individual’s age or gender. No respite care or assistance was available, meaning that the parents of a severely disabled or hard-to-control child had no other choice than to send it away. This had changed, thank goodness, but there was no doubt a long way to go before everyone’s needs could be accommodated.

She also found a report on the number of developmentally disabled people in Iceland: it was around half a per cent of the population, which was not small. Thóra also looked specifically for information about sheltered community residences and discovered that the implementation of this form of living had begun in 1980, so there had been time to gather some experience regarding how they could best be run. According to the information she found, these units were homes for small groups of disabled people, generally not more than six, all aged sixteen or older and each under the one-on-one supervision of at least one staff member. The staff’s responsibility was to provide support and therapy, with a view to advancing the residents’ independence and life skills. The administration and setting up of these homes was at the expense of the state, although the money came from various of its budgets: construction costs were paid out of the Disabled Investment Fund, staff salaries from the Treasury, and communal expenses were taken from the residents’ insurance benefits, accounting for up to seventy-five per cent of the amount. All in all there were almost ninety such establishments in Iceland, totalling around four hundred and fifty residents.

The telephone on the desk emitted a peculiar sound, start-ling Thóra. The ring tone was very loud and high-pitched – their secretary Bella must have changed the setting, probably just to annoy her. Thóra suppressed her anger and lifted the receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘Your parents are here to see you; should I show them in, or tell them you’re not here?’

Thóra knew her parents were standing in front of Bella as she spoke. The girl was a lost cause. ‘Show them in.’ There was no point telling her off, if only because once Thóra started she wouldn’t be able to stop.

Her parents appeared in her office doorway, and after greeting them she invited them to sit down. They seemed ill at ease, and small talk about the weather did nothing to loosen them up. Finally her father got to the point, and the reason for their agitation became clear.

When he had finished explaining, Thóra stifled a sigh and took the paperwork her father was holding out to her. ‘So you don’t think you’ll be able to pay back the loan? Did this eventuality never occur to you when you bought the house?’ The property her parents had financed with a massive foreign-currency loan was a rather grand summer home in Spain; the purchase price looked high to Thóra, even without the doubled exchange rate of the euro. ‘The monthly payments would be crippling, even if you weren’t retired.’

‘We were advised that we could let it out, and the rent would cover the mortgage payments. The former owners said they were going to take care of it for us,’ said Thóra’s father, as her mother nodded vigorously beside him.

Thóra ground her teeth. ‘Of course they did.’ She flipped to the clause in the agreement that specified the payment amounts. ‘According to this, the property was purchased entirely on credit. A one hundred per cent mortgage is pretty risky, whatever the exchange rate, and I doubt that the rent would ever have covered the payments, even without the global financial crisis and a decline in the Spanish tourism industry.’ She looked up at them. ‘So you started renting it out? Did the rent pay off the mortgage, initially?’

They both looked sheepish, shifting in their chairs. ‘Well…’ said her father.

‘How much of the monthly payment did it cover? All of it? Half? A third?’ She hardly dared go any lower. ‘How do you think I can help you with this? And why didn’t you tell me that you’d bought a house in Spain? You’re in a very tight spot, it’s almost impossible to default on a mortgage.’

‘We didn’t want to get you involved at the time, but we were hoping you might know a way to get it converted to a bullet loan?’ He smiled weakly, clearly realizing this was not a viable option. Thóra’s mother still seemed hopeful, though, and was nodding her head even more energetically than before.

‘That can’t be done.’ Thóra didn’t want to waste their time pretending to entertain the idea. ‘Your position is even worse than it was, since you haven’t paid anything for several months. It’s probably been flagged as a bad debt at the bank, and if you don’t make a payment very soon you could wind up bankrupt.’

‘Is there nothing that can be done? Some sort of legal trick?’

‘Nothing I can think of. The lawyers who draw up these mortgages are no fools, and the bank loaned you the money in good faith. The sellers who conned you into buying this place also seem to have protected themselves pretty well, since it states quite clearly here that they offer no guarantee that you’ll be able to rent it out.’ Thóra gently laid the papers on her desk and tried to keep her composure. ‘This is a very tricky situation, and I’m sure you’ve tried to come up with a solution. The house is up for sale, which is good, but I doubt it will sell quickly and you’re very unlikely to make your money back on it. Whatever you do make should shrink your debt, at least. But the property market is as dead there as it is in Iceland, so the house is unlikely to sell any time soon.’ Thóra sighed. Her parents weren’t the first to show up in her office looking for a magic solution to insurmountable financial difficulties. ‘How were you planning to get yourselves out of this?’

‘Well, we do actually have an idea,’ said her father. Her parents exchanged a glance. ‘We can’t rent out this bloody place in Spain, except for a week here and there, but what we have done is put our house here in Iceland up for sale, and we’ve had a good offer that will allow us to pay off the other mortgage monthly until we can realistically put that house on the market. We’ve also found a nice flat we can afford without endangering the Spanish payments. The thing is, we’d have to hand over the house immediately, but we can’t move into the flat for two months. That is, if we decide to do it.’

Thóra’s mother had stopped nodding along with her husband and was watching her daughter’s reaction closely.

‘And where would you stay until your flat is ready?’ Thóra swallowed hard, just resisting the temptation to cross her fingers. She was an only child.

‘Well, we were thinking maybe we could just bunk in with you.’ Now they were both smiling eagerly. ‘We wouldn’t be any bother, and we’d even help out with the housework.’

Thóra was struggling to stay calm. Of course she wanted to help her parents out of the financial hole they’d dug for themselves. They had been very good to her throughout her life and she was more than grateful for that. Her problem with the idea stemmed from her own domestic situation. Her house was a decent size, but there were quite enough people living there already. Besides herself, there were her two children, ten-year-old Sóley and nineteen-year-old Gylfi; Gylfi’s girlfriend Sigga; and their son Orri, now two and a half. Thóra’s partner of several years, Matthew, had also recently moved in. The addition of a fourth generation to the household would eat away even more at their limited amount of private time. ‘I see,’ was all she could say.

‘It won’t be for long, probably not even the full two months,’ said her father cheerily. ‘I’ll find work and then we can go to a hotel or get another short-term rental somewhere.’

Clearly nobody had broken the news to him about the unemployment figures. She didn’t want to discourage him by pointing out how much had changed since he’d retired, or that right now the one thing the market didn’t need was a career banker, even one who had ended up as a branch manager. As far as she knew his only saleable skill was managing other people’s money, which made it even harder to understand how they’d been duped. In fact they’d been doubly cheated: tricked into putting their savings into equity funds which, according to the sales patter, made you a handsome risk-free profit on the interest; and then advised to take out loans against their property portfolio to buy everything their hearts desired. The original amount her parents had put into this fund would have covered the bulk of the price of the summer home when they’d made the decision to buy it, but now it had been whittled down to a third of the size and things looked dire for them. Their life savings were as good as gone, and their debt to the bank – the same one that ran the stock exchange – had been too much for them even before the crash of the króna had doubled the size of the loan.

Now that she understood this depressing situation, Thóra could see why her parents had been so embarrassed. At first she’d thought they’d come to write their wills and were unsure how to broach the subject. That seemed a rather comical thought now that it was clear how little they had to divide up.

‘I’m sure we’ll sort something out,’ she murmured, forcing out a reassuring smile.

‘I know it’s crowded at your place, but maybe we could stay in the garage,’ said her father brightly. ‘I think I could make it quite cosy. I bet Gylfi would help me, and maybe also your… friend, the German.’ Thóra’s parents weren’t overly fond of Matthew, which she thought stemmed from two things in particular: firstly, they spoke no German and rather patchy English, and secondly, Thóra was pretty sure they were convinced he’d take their daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchild back to Germany with him. Maybe it was this that had pushed them into buying a summer home abroad. They were even less impressed when Matthew wasn’t offered work in the new bank that was built on the ruins of the old one; he was a foreigner, and was considered too expensive to retain. He still hadn’t found suitable work and his prospects were looking less than rosy. Actually, he was in pretty much the same boat as her father.

Her father smiled again, this time with more conviction. ‘As I say, it won’t be for long. I have complete faith that the króna will get stronger, and then maybe we can go to Spain and spend some time at the house. But as things stand right now, we can’t afford it.’ In other words, when he found a job he planned to celebrate by going on holiday.

Thóra smiled back at him, trying to put her heart into it despite her mixed feelings. ‘And even if it doesn’t happen and you’re with us the whole time, that’s fine. Of course you’re welcome to stay.’ She decided that for now she’d stop nagging them about making a payment on the mortgage. There would be plenty of time for that. ‘It gets quieter every other weekend, when the kids go to their father, so there will be more room for us.’ As she said this she realized how much she’d miss the few days a month she spent alone with Matthew. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to him.

Bella barged into the office, and Thóra wondered, not for the first time, whether it wouldn’t be wiser to lock the door when she had clients or visitors. She always came to the same conclusion – that Bella probably wouldn’t let it stop her.

‘Have you taken my stapler?’ Bella planted her hands on her hefty hips, glaring at Thóra.

‘No, Bella, I haven’t,’ replied Thóra calmly. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘It’s been stolen, and you’re the most likely culprit.’

‘Well, legally you can’t steal your own possessions. I own this firm, which means I can’t steal anything here.’ Thóra met Bella’s narrowed eyes levelly. ‘Please knock before entering next time, and shut the door behind you when you leave. Now.’ Thóra hoped the girl would leave before she spotted the stapler on Thóra’s desk. She had borrowed it that morning before her secretary arrived and forgotten to return it, though she had no intention of admitting this.

Bella turned on her heel without another word, but left the door open behind her by way of getting in the last punch. Thóra’s parents had watched the whole thing open-mouthed, and when the secretary had stomped out of earshot her mother whispered, ‘Can’t you get rid of that girl? She’s terribly rude.’

Thóra shook her head. ‘It’s complicated.’ The firm was stuck with Bella because she was the landlord’s daughter and her employment had been part of the terms of the lease.

‘That’s most unfortunate,’ tutted her mother, picking up her handbag and holding it tightly as if Bella might sneak up and pluck it off the back of her chair.

‘Well, Thóra, we can’t stay.’ Her father stood up. ‘You’ve probably got enough to do and we’ve got to get over to the estate agent to finalize the paperwork on the offer.’

Thóra gulped. ‘Of course.’ She followed them out and said goodbye, and when they were gone she hurried back to her office to call Matthew and tell him about the latest additions to their household. He would be so pleased. As she was dialling, her mobile beeped, indicating she’d received a text. Curious, Thóra hung up the landline and reached for her mobile. The message was from the Internet message service ja.is, so it could be from anyone. She opened it, thinking either the contents or the sign-off would identify the sender, but the one-word message didn’t make any sense to her; perhaps it had come to the wrong number?

Pregnant

She felt a sudden surge of panic. Was Gylfi’s girlfriend pregnant again? She hurriedly called her son, who thankfully had no clue what was going on and reassured her that Sigga was neither pregnant nor planning to be. Thóra was relieved, but something about the mysterious text still made her uneasy.