Someone to Watch Over Me

CHAPTER 5 Thursday, 7 January 2010

The residence stood on the edge of the neighbourhood – if it could be called a neighbourhood. Paved streets lay between empty plots that were still waiting for houses to be built on them. At one junction after another the street signs served as uncomfortable reminders of the area planners’ broken dreams. It would be a long time before any happy families drove down Mímisbrunn, Friggjarbrunn or any other ‘brunn’ to their new homes. If anyone was thinking about building there, they would either have to have a lot of spare cash or a loan at favourable terms, neither of which was available these days. It was as if Iceland’s castles were no longer in the sky but had crash-landed there on the outskirts of the city to remind them to be more cautious next time around. The roundabout that was meant to keep traffic flowing smoothly now did nothing more than complicate the route of anyone who strayed there by accident. Thóra stared out of the window while Matthew sat at the wheel, just as dumbfounded as she was by what they saw. As they turned a corner a single house appeared at the end of a cul-de-sac, but instead of lessening the surreal atmosphere, this solitary building only underlined it.

‘I guess the people who first noticed the fire must live there?’ Matthew nodded towards the house, which dis-appeared from view as they exited the roundabout. Thóra had told him all about the case before asking him to accompany her on this tour. She was more comfortable having him along; she didn’t know her way around the area, least of all in darkness and with a light snow falling. This way she could concentrate on finding the place without having to worry about driving. Also, it was just nice to have company.

‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘I don’t remember the name of the street, but there aren’t many houses to choose from.’

‘Are you going to pay them a visit?’ Matthew’s voice suggested he sincerely hoped not.

‘No. There was nothing unclear about their testimony, at least nothing that has any bearing on the verdict. They didn’t see anyone, they didn’t hear anything, they simply went to sleep and then woke to the smell of smoke when it was already too late. Who knows, maybe something will come to light that’ll change my mind, but I don’t think I have anything to discuss with them.’ Thóra squinted in order to read the sign ahead of them. ‘I think we should turn here.’

Matthew took his eyes off the road briefly and smiled at her. ‘You don’t say. It’s either turn here or drive off-road onto the open moor.’

‘Well, you never know,’ said Thóra. ‘According to the map I looked at, we should almost be there. We drive to the end of this road and from there a little dead-end street should lead off to the home.’

‘If it’s still standing,’ said Matthew. ‘Maybe it was demolished. The way you described the fire made it sound as if it was practically destroyed, there can’t have been much to restore.’

But the house had been neither demolished nor restored. A large concrete shell stood exactly where the map said it should, at the end of a short road that had probably only been built to serve this one house. That it should have been allocated a name was rather generous, since it looked much more like a driveway. A low fence marked the boundaries of the large plot surrounding the centre and a wide gate swung gently back and forth as if it wanted to invite them into its solitude.

‘Well, now.’ Matthew drove slowly up to the building’s entrance. There he stopped the car and glanced at Thóra. ‘Are you happy to look at it from here or do you want to walk around the house?’

Thóra had already buttoned her coat up to her chin to keep out the cold. ‘We’re getting out, of course. I’m hoping we can get inside.’ And with that she quickly climbed out of the car, so as not to have to listen to Matthew’s objections. As soon as she shut the door she noticed two things: the bracing cold, that would be unbearable if the wind were blowing, and a vague smell of smoke, despite the considerable amount of time that had passed since the fire. Thóra took a deep breath to convince herself that she wasn’t imagining it, and although the smell was faint it still made her nose prickle. She pulled the collar of her coat right up under her eyes to keep out the unpleasant odour. She saw Matthew wrinkle his nose too as he stepped out of the car, but he only shuddered slightly before pushing his repulsion aside. He wasn’t the kind of person who would hold his nose, but Thóra knew him well enough to realize that was exactly what he was longing to do.

They walked around the house, surveying the damage. The windows were boarded up from the inside with plywood panels, and around them the white paint of the exterior walls had turned black, especially near the top, where you could almost make out the shadow of the flames that had blazed up into the sky.

‘The glass probably shattered in the heat.’ Matthew shone his torch on one of the frames. ‘I’m no fire expert, but I doubt the residents who died broke the windows themselves.’ He lowered the beam. ‘Or the fire-fighters might have done it when they were trying to rescue them.’

Thóra bent down and picked up a large piece of glass she’d stepped on. ‘I don’t think so, as the glass has fallen out here – the windows must have been smashed from inside.’ She let it fall. ‘Anyway, I have a report from the Fire Prevention Unit that I’m sure will explain. It looked too complicated to read when I first went through the files.’ They came to a side door, which led through to the garden behind the building. It had a large board nailed across it, and beyond it stood a garden table with two broken legs and no accompanying chairs.

There was a large gap at the lower edge of the board. ‘The catch has come off.’ Thóra pushed carefully on the hastily attached fastening and it gave way. ‘We can go in if we want.’

‘Er, yeah – no thanks.’ Matthew looked unimpressed. ‘You can see it isn’t safe. The roof is probably hanging by a thread and it could collapse on top of us. I don’t care about me, but you’re not going in there.’

‘Come on.’ Thóra took a torch, pushed again on the board and shone her light on the ceiling of the side passage. ‘The ceiling here is made of concrete, so it’s not going anywhere. Have a look.’ Matthew seemed grudgingly convinced about the sturdiness of the structure but continued to try to dissuade Thóra. Even as he was using all his strength to enlarge the opening so that they could slip through, he carried on warning her about all the dangers that might await them. Then they were inside the building.

The torch wasn’t much use in the pitch-black. All the windows were covered, preventing the dull gleam of the streetlights from filtering in, yet a layer of water glistened on the floor. ‘I didn’t realise we would ruin our shoes.’ Thóra felt the ice-cold water leak through the seams of her canvas trainers.

‘We’re not the first unauthorized visitors to come here.’ Matthew aimed his torch at a corner, where several beer cans lay, along with a cigarette packet and some other paper rubbish. ‘This could hardly have been here when the house caught fire.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ It looked to Thóra as if it had been a kind of living room, although the furniture had been removed. On a wall, empty shelf-brackets jutted out forlornly. Shards of broken pottery were scattered in the water on the floor but it was difficult to work out where they had come from; probably vases, or pots for houseplants. ‘Shall we try and go further into the house? It’s divided into various apartments and it would be good to have a look at them. Our shoes are ruined anyway.’

Matthew pointed the light down at her feet. ‘You’re not kidding.’ He then shone it back into the house to check what lay ahead. At the end of the room a corridor led in two directions. ‘We can have a look around, though I don’t quite understand what you think we’ll find. There’s nothing here that’s going to make any difference. It’s an empty shell and it’s been inspected plenty of times before – and under better conditions.’

‘I’ll feel better having seen it with my own eyes. The descriptions I read only tell half the story – they give a two-dimensional view of the situation instead of the three-dimensional one that will help the witnesses’ testimonies really make sense.’ She was grateful that it was too dark in the building to see Matthew’s expression. She doubted he’d think much of this justification and it was imperative that she set off before he could protest and drag her out. She walked in the direction of the corridor. ‘It won’t take long.’

They set out cautiously; they had no idea what might be hidden in the shallow water and neither of them was interested in falling into it – the fact that it had soaked their feet was quite enough. The water deepened a little when they entered the corridor, enough to cover the edges of their shoes at the ankles. They both shivered, and Thóra recalled the old saying that as soon as the cold gets hold of your feet, you’re cold all over. Once they’d passed the little kitchen, the doors of the apartments began. They were all open, and Matthew pointed out that they were obviously flame-resistant fire doors, because the only damage visible on them was a layer of soot. Then he pointed his torch up at the ceiling, and they both stared at the little sprinklers running the length of the corridor.

‘This shouldn’t have been possible.’ Thóra felt as if the smell of smoke had intensified just at the thought of how horribly the residents died, and how they’d been screwed over both by other people and by fate. ‘It was a total fuck-up; maybe that’s why they were in such a rush to close the case. I’m sure there’s a reason it was wrapped up so quickly, though I suppose it didn’t help that they couldn’t keep the suspect in a normal detention cell.’

She followed Matthew into the first apartment. They quickly took stock of everything inside it. Most of the furnishings had been removed. They called them ‘apartments’, but this tiny space barely deserved the name; the sleeping area, kitchen and sitting room were all in one open-plan area, with the bed in a nook next to the bathroom, the only part of the apartment that could be called spacious. They peeked into it and saw that it was tailored to the needs of a severely disabled resident; the shower area alone was at least twice as large as the one in Thóra’s house, and needed to be to accommodate the various handles and supports fastened to the walls. A shower-curtain, once cheerfully decorated with pictures of colourful fish, hung in tatters from the ceiling, sooty, crumpled and partially melted Thóra was careful not to touch the remains for fear of getting even filthier than she already was, and she wondered whether they’d have to install a shower area like this once eight people were living in her house, which currently had only one shower. Matthew still hadn’t been anything but positive about the prospective changes to the household, but Thóra knew he was only being polite; he must be dreading it as much as she was, if not more. Now that his job at the bank was a thing of the past, he’d be the one who’d have to sit at home most of the day with her parents. She’d have to take him with her whenever she could, otherwise everything would fall apart. She was even considering having a Brazilian wax, which a girlfriend of hers had raved about, in order to surprise him. Even though she’d heard that the first time it was like being skinned – without anaesthetic.

‘Do you know who lived where?’ Matthew tried to shut the charred wardrobe nailed to the wall next to the bed. It was empty apart from shelves that lay, black with soot, at its bottom.

‘I don’t know precisely but I remember that the most physically disabled ones lived in the apartments, opposite the shared bathroom. I read that somewhere. Where the others lived was probably listed in the files, but the information was scattered about and I still have to piece it all together. It will be easier now that we’ve been here, because now I have a clearer mental picture of it all.’ They moved through the next few apartments. When they came to the fourth, it was immediately obvious that it was intended for a severely disabled individual. A track was fixed to the ceiling, branching in several directions – over into a small side room with an imposing toilet, across to the place where the bed had probably been standing, and out into the corridor. They followed the track out and saw that it led to a large bathroom, ending over the largest bathtub that Thóra had ever seen. On the ceiling above the tub was some sort of apparatus, attached to the track. There was a sturdy steel hanger, upon which were fastened two chains ending in hooks. ‘What primitive contraption is this?’ Thóra pushed one of the chains slightly. It emitted a soft creak as it swung slowly back and forth. ‘This could hardly have been used for transporting people between rooms, could it?’

Matthew stopped the chain from swinging. ‘Actually, that’s exactly what it must have been for. They wouldn’t have been transporting water in buckets to the bathtub. I suppose there must have been ropes or something else at the bottom of this that got burnt in the fire. He tried to drag the contraption along the track but it appeared to be dented, because he could only move it a few centimetres. ‘I think this must have been used to move people, no matter how weird the idea might seem.’

‘Jesus.’ Thóra felt a sharp pang of pity. How did disabled people tolerate so much? Maybe it was better to have been born that way and not know anything different. But who was she to judge? No doubt she’d have to steel herself against what she’d be seeing and hearing in connection with this case. They followed the track on to the next apartment, which looked much like the previous one. The only difference was that on the wall next to the bed was a box with connective tubes, which she recognized from intensive care rooms in hospitals. The plastic labels beneath them were no longer legible.

‘This is probably for oxygen.’ Matthew, who had bent down to the box, straightened up again. ‘I expect the person who lived here needed oxygen during the night.’ In the dim light Thóra saw him frown. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be near the oxygen tank when the fire spread. Oxygen feeds fire and if it was in every other room here, that might explain why the damage was so extreme. The fire would have intensified and become uncontrollable in a split-second.’

It was clear that Thóra would have to go through the fire report. She hadn’t previously considered the oxygen, although she realized Matthew was right as soon as he mentioned it. She looked around in search of evidence of damage other than that attributable to the fire itself. ‘Might the fire actually have been caused by an explosion?’ she asked, although she didn’t see any evidence of one. ‘I mean, if the oxygen supply somehow ignited? Shouldn’t there be a tank somewhere in the house connected to these tubes in the wall?’

‘I would have thought so.’ Matthew looked underneath the box but there was nothing. ‘There’s no visible connection to a tank here, though there are lines behind the box. There must be an equipment room somewhere where it’s stored. I expect we’ll find it if we look through the whole place.’

They completed their tour of the apartments without discovering much more. They were all very similar and had long ago been stripped of anything personal or individual, first by the fire and then by the clean-up. The very few things left behind told Thóra and Matthew nothing: broken window shutters on the floor, a pot lying on its side in the kitchen. Thóra hadn’t really expected to find anything of much signifi-cance, but they continued inspecting the house. In the night watchmen’s duty room they found nothing but an open key cabinet and a dirty whiteboard that was surprisingly undamaged compared to everything else they’d seen. They also looked in a large, empty room whose function was difficult to determine. The floor material seemed different to elsewhere in the house, and by dragging her toes along the surface Thóra noticed regular stripes that indicated it was tiled; the floor elsewhere had been smooth, probably carpeted. ‘Maybe this was a storage room.’ Matthew moved around the space, examining the walls. ‘Well, it wasn’t the equipment room. There aren’t any sockets here besides two standard ones.’ They left the building without working out what the room had been for, and looked into a few rooms which were accessed from outside: a cleaning cupboard with a bent steel basin that hung at an angle on the wall, and another smaller storage room.

It was still snowing, and they continued their circuit of the outside in a hurry. But they were forced to slow down when they came to three doors at the front of the house that had not been closed. One of them turned out to lead to the rubbish room, and another to an exterior storage area where a rusty, dirty lawnmower stood in one corner along with some broken garden tools, also rusty. The petrol had no doubt been stored here, and Thóra took a moment to examine the lock on the door, which appeared not to have been tampered with. It wasn’t locked, although that didn’t mean anything given that a long time had passed since the fire.

The third door led to what was indisputably the equipment room. On the wall were connective hoses with melted labels, and steel frames that could have supported canisters or tanks. Matthew shuffled his feet to preserve the tiny bit of warmth left in them. ‘Of course, this wouldn’t have been accessible from the house due to the risk of fire. Maybe other, more dangerous materials were stored here.’

‘This door has taken a real hit.’ Thóra tried to nudge the heavy steel slab that stood half open. It was so twisted that one of the four powerful hinges had broken and it wouldn’t budge. ‘Could this indicate an explosion?’

‘Yes, I would have thought so. Also, you can see that the plaster has fallen off in several places in here.’ He shone his torch on a large cracked patch of wall where the bare concrete showed through. ‘This could be from a canister that exploded.’

‘That must have made an incredible noise.’ Thóra stood up on tiptoe to see how close they were to the family home they’d driven past. She thought she caught a glimpse of its roof. ‘Why didn’t those people hear anything? Is it possible to sleep through an explosion but wake up to the smell of smoke?’

‘Who knows?’ Matthew turned off the torch. ‘Shall we get back to the car before our toes drop off from frostbite? I’m sure you’ll find out something about this explosion in the case files. There’s nothing more we can do here.’

Thóra nodded. They turned away from the house and walked towards the car. ‘I forgot to tell you a little detail I found in the reports.’ She looked sadly back at the ruins of the house. ‘One girl who died in the fire was pregnant.’

‘And?’ Matthew didn’t seem surprised. ‘Bad things can happen to anyone.’ He gave her a puzzled look. ‘You mean you find that strange because the woman was disabled? People are people, Thóra, regardless of whether or not their bodies are fully functioning.’

Thóra rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, do you think I’m that easily shocked?’ She exhaled irritably, but her annoyance quickly turned to sadness again. ‘The woman – or girl, rather – was comatose. That’s not what I call consensual sex.’

Matthew said nothing. He opened her door and Thóra climbed into the car. He hurried to the driver’s side, started the engine and turned the heater all the way up, then scrunched his fingers together and blew on them. When the warm air blowing from the heater started to inch its way over Thóra’s feet, it created a burning sensation that was almost worse than the cold. ‘Did the files say who the father was?’

‘No, it never came out and there wasn’t a single word about it in the verdict.’

‘Do you think whoever got the woman pregnant started the fire to cover it up?’ Matthew sounded highly sceptical. ‘That’s pretty drastic.’

‘I don’t know, damn it. But it could have been Jakob who did this.’

‘Started the fire? Or had sex with the woman?’ Matthew started backing out of the car park.

‘Either. Or both.’ Thóra leaned back in her seat and stared at the building in her wing mirror until it disappeared from sight.