Someone to Watch Over Me tg-5 Page 25

  ‘It’s my understanding that she can convey messages with her eyes. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Not everyone is capable of communicating that way. I hope I’m not insulting you.’

  Thóra shook her head. ‘Could you explain this “locked-in syndrome”?’

  ‘It’s one of the worst afflictions imaginable, to my mind. It’s a brain-stem injury that severs contact with all the muscles controlling voluntary movements, except those that move the eyes. There’s actually an even worse version, in which you lose control of your eyes as well. It’s sometimes likened to being buried alive and it’s very different from a coma, because the person affected is still conscious. In other words, the lower part of the brain is damaged, while the upper part is fine.’

  ‘What about the nerve endings? Can these people feel anything?’

  ‘Yes, often, as in this case. The girl’s name is Ragna Sölvadóttir; she ended up like this after falling from a great height several years ago, and she has no hope of recovering. Usually the syndrome is the result of a stroke or accident, sometimes other causes, but luckily it’s rare. I don’t know what’s happened to her, but I imagine she’s been moved to another residence or a similar institution. She can’t just go home while she waits for a place to open up, and her parents have moved out of Iceland. In search of work, I believe.’

  Thóra couldn’t think of much to say. The thought of this syndrome sent chills up her spine, but she pushed it out of her mind. Was there any possibility that the person who had impregnated Lísa had also made a move on this girl, who was in a similar condition? Perhaps she could get a description of the man, which might allow them to track him down. ‘You don’t know whether something in Apartment 02 was connected to a hose, a hose that could be described as short, specifically? That was Natan’s apartment. Forgive the odd nature of the question, but I can’t really explain it any better since I received the information in a rather cryptic message.’

  Linda shook her head. ‘I can’t remember anything like that. If this is related to the fire in any way, then I would doubt the information, because Natan couldn’t have been involved. If he was, I’d be flabbergasted.’

  ‘What about the others who lived there? Is it possible that one of them, or one of their relatives, could have done it? I mean, both the fire and this situation with Lísa.’

  The woman pondered the question for several moments. ‘I can’t think of anyone, to tell you the honest truth. Although the centre had only been up and running for a short time, I managed to get to know everyone there pretty well, and no one comes to mind. Naturally, I didn’t know their relatives as well, but I seriously doubt any of them would be capable of such a terrible thing. Most parents of disabled children that I’ve known, which is quite a few down the years, only want the best for their child and would fight tooth and nail for them. These people would be the very last to commit murder; I simply can’t see it.’

  Few people could imagine someone killing another person, but nevertheless, it happened again and again. ‘I’ve watched some footage from the residence, taken by the filmmaker who spent a bit of time there.’

  Linda nodded, clearly remembering the man.

  ‘In the background I heard some words that have come up in my conversations with Jakob, but I can’t find an explanation for them and I was hoping that you could tell me what they mean.’

  ‘What were the words?’ The woman seemed surprised.

  ‘Look at me… Repeated by a man, I think, quite angrily.’

  Linda gave Thóra an indecipherable look. ‘Yes. I’m familiar with that phrase. Tryggvi had a therapist who used rather unorthodox methods to stimulate the boy. He would repeat the phrase over and over in his attempts to reach him. He actually forced the boy to look into his eyes in order to get a response. It made Tryggvi howl; he found the therapy enormously stressful, and the man would react by howling back at him. It was quite distressing to hear.’

  ‘A therapist? Was he a developmental therapist like you?’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s expression hardened. ‘Tryggvi’s parents, especially his mother, wanted him to undergo unconventional treatment in the hope of achieving a better result than they were seeing with us. The couple hired this man, Ægir Rannversson, but I never could work out what his qualifications or his educational background were. He’d recently come back from some time abroad, where he’d worked on or studied autism, but it wasn’t at any respected educational institution, that much is certain.’

  ‘And did his method produce any results?’ The silence was even longer this time, but finally the woman spoke up again. ‘Yes, it did. Whether they would have been permanent, I can’t say, but he did get the boy to express himself more than anyone had dared hope, though he wasn’t about to start speaking or anything like that. He articulated himself more through these incredible drawings he did. I mean, I couldn’t have interpreted them, but the main change was in how much more alert he was to his surroundings. He was highly autistic, and he found lots of everyday things intolerable. He was captivated by strings of lights and candles – he could stare at them for hours at a time. But he hated the sound of the toilet being flushed, for example, or the phone ringing. These things became significantly better after his treatment, however, and who knows how much more he might have improved if the treatment had been able to continue. Mind you, he could just as easily have regressed over time; it had happened before. His mother told me that he couldn’t bear being near a TV that was turned on, and later radios, too, for no obvious reason. But of course no one knows what might have happened. Following complaints from the residents and their families about the noise from his sessions, Tryggvi’s parents put a stop to them and chose not to move his therapy elsewhere, since it was out of the question to try to get the boy into a car. Luckily, the progress he’d made seemed to stick, even after the treatment stopped.’

  Now it was Thóra’s turn to be silent. Neither Einvarður nor Fanndís had mentioned this; if anything, they’d implied that Tryggvi had made no progress. Sometimes what was left unsaid had the most significance. Given how concerned they’d been about their son’s development, it was extremely odd – and even odder to hear that they had actually paid attention to the complaints to such an extent. Might it not have been possible to tone down the screaming and conduct the therapy in a quieter manner? ‘So if he’d started to open up, would he have been a lot more likely than before to leave his own apartment? Was he perhaps even capable of roaming around at night?’

  ‘Maybe, yes.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday, 16 January 2010

  For once, the weather was glorious. Nevertheless, Thóra was thankful to be wearing a coat long enough to protect her bottom from the cold plastic benches in the stands. Out on the AstroTurf, Sóley ran around with the rest of the team, none of them showing any sign of following either the rules or the ball, which as a result was nearly always on their half of the pitch. This practice match had been set up at short notice and Thóra thought the coach had probably decided the cold conditions might benefit his team, allowing them to lose by fewer points than usual or even to manage a draw. This was rather optimistic, particularly in light of the fact that there was no risk of the team’s opponents mixing up the goals or losing sight of the ball in a flurry of snow.

  ‘Turn around, Sóley! Wrong way!’ called Matthew, cupping his hands around his mouth. Sóley stopped, turned to them and waved, smiling. As she did so, a group of girls ran past her after the ball. ‘She’s getting better,’ he said to Thóra, somewhat unconvincingly.

  ‘Isn’t it bad for the pitch to let them play in winter?’ Thóra knew less about football than Sóley, but she did know the pitch was new and she didn’t want the 6th Girls’ Division damaging it if they were only going to lose.

  ‘They’re so light it hardly makes any difference,’ Matthew replied. To further emphasize their minuscule stature, they were playing against a backdrop of the magnificent sparkling sea on the other side
of the pitch and the Reykjanes mountain range. ‘Go on, Sóley! Go on!’ Again Thóra’s daughter stopped to wave; the game was forgotten, and had been lost long ago.

  ‘It might not be a good idea to encourage her.’ Thóra glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes left. ‘It looks to me like her concentration can’t handle it.’ Her phone rang in her coat pocket and Thóra took it out. She didn’t recognize the number but the voice was familiar. It was Grímheiður, Jakob’s mother. At first Thóra seriously regretted answering, preferring not to let work interrupt her on the weekends, but after she’d spoken to the woman, she felt differently. She thanked Grímheiður and said goodbye.

  ‘What is it?’ Matthew was startled when he saw Thóra’s expression.

  ‘Jakob is being moved from Sogn. He was taken to the National Hospital with serious injuries last night, and underwent surgery on his eye.’

  Matthew turned back to the match. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Jósteinn attacked him. With a knife and fork in the middle of their meal. He’ll be lucky to keep his eye, and he has multiple other wounds, so I’m told.’

  This was enough to draw Matthew’s attention away from the ball. ‘What? I thought Jósteinn was his benefactor or something? Isn’t he paying for the investigation because he likes Jakob so much? Were they fighting about something?’

  ‘No, not as far as I understand. The attack was completely unprovoked, according to Jakob’s mother.’ Thóra put the phone back in her pocket. It was clear that this attack would have a decisive effect on the issue of reopening the case; surely Jósteinn was unlikely to continue paying for the investigation after what had just happened. ‘I really don’t know why I’m surprised. The man is ill, capable of anything, and I should probably be grateful that I didn’t leave my meeting with him with a fork in my temple or something.’

  Matthew wasn’t amused. ‘That’s enough of that kind of talk.’

  Thóra ignored him. She had no desire for any further communication with Jósteinn, but it was an interesting development nonetheless, and her desire to get Jakob out of Sogn was now quite strong. She knew it was dangerous to think this way; she mustn’t become emotionally attached to the case. That would increase the risk of her missing something, or simply ignoring anything that didn’t suit her. But unfortunately it wasn’t always possible to control one’s emotions, and it was simply impossible not to care at all about Jakob. ‘I don’t know, maybe I should go and see him in hospital. Take him some flowers or chocolates.’

  Matthew shrugged and turned back to the match again. ‘Would you be allowed? Won’t he be under police supervision?’

  ‘I think I would, given my involvement in his case.’

  ‘Then you’d better hurry up, because you won’t be in that position for much longer. Surely Jósteinn will stop paying for the investigation, now that their friendship has soured.’ Matthew suddenly sounded rather angry. ‘I don’t understand why you’re taking on cases like this, anyway. There’s loads of work around for lawyers; masses of it, dealing with money – nice, harmless paper-based transactions, even if their origins might be ugly.’

  ‘That kind of work is all allocated through nepotism; and in any case, we can barely compete with the big firms, who have loads of specialized lawyers on their payrolls.’ She neglected to add the most important reason: that she found financial claims and business law indescribably boring, and even Bragi, who generally managed to find something interesting in all his cases, was unlikely to be persuaded away from the divorce cases he loved so much. ‘I’m continuing with this case, unless Jósteinn stops paying. It’s caught my attention, and it’s not as though we’re suddenly drowning in work. We could use the income, even though the case might turn out to be less weighty than it seems.’

  ‘The bank got in touch and offered me my job back.’ Matthew didn’t look away from the pitch as he said this. ‘Albeit at lower wages, since the scope of the role is only a fraction of what it used to be.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Thóra leaned into him. ‘Aren’t you happy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When did they ask you?’

  ‘The day before yesterday.’

  ‘And you waited to tell me because…?’ Thóra moved away from him again, glad she hadn’t yet made an appointment for that wax.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I needed time to think about it and I had to do that alone. On the surface it might look like a good offer, but I need to think it over carefully.’ He turned and looked her in the eye. ‘It would have confused me to discuss it with you. It’s nothing to do with you personally, it’s me. I’ve never found these sorts of things easy. I feel better when the answers are clear in my mind – yes or no – and when I don’t need to think about it any further.’

  Thóra nodded slowly. ‘I understand.’ She felt bad about how put out she sounded; it wasn’t as if he were confessing to an affair or telling her he’d squandered their money on slot machines or Icelandic stocks. ‘So what have you decided, since you’ve now told me about it?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m still thinking.’ Sóley and her team were still running around on the pitch, apparently entirely unconcerned that their opponents’ score made it look more like a volleyball match. They celebrated enthusiastically when they managed, coincidentally, to kick the ball in the direction of their opponents’ goal. The ball rolled slowly into the penalty area and the other team watched this unexpected development in amazement until the goalkeeper strolled out onto the pitch and grabbed it. The few spectators applauded as if a goal had actually been scored. Matthew clapped along loudly, and when the applause died out he added: ‘I probably will take the job, even though I really don’t want to go back to that office.’

  ‘That sounds sensible.’ Thóra smiled. Another salary wouldn’t hurt. ‘You can always change jobs later. It’s not like they’re hiring you for life.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’ He was obviously making an effort to be upbeat. ‘Which of course is all this job has going for it, apart from the fact that I’m finding it incredibly difficult just sitting about doing nothing.’

  ‘And it hasn’t exactly made things easier having Mum and Dad hanging around…’ There was no need for Matthew to respond to this. ‘Well, anyway, you’ll figure something out. It’s not as if we’re broke.’

  Matthew smiled at her. ‘Don’t you need an assistant?’

  She smiled back. ‘Get rid of Bella for me and you can apply to be our receptionist.’

  The match ended with Sóley’s team being thrashed as usual; in fact the winners even seemed a bit shamefaced, as if they’d been playing against a team of younger girls and had got too carried away by the game to keep their victory to a modest level. But Sóley and her teammates didn’t take the loss to heart and came off the pitch with their heads held high, in the true spirit of sportsmanship.

  Jakob wasn’t handcuffed to the bed or restrained in any other way. Nor were there any guards posted at his door. The hospital room was securely locked, though, so he couldn’t have got far if he had made a run for it – which seemed unlikely in any case, considering his injuries. The nurse who had opened the door for Thóra had called for authorisation to let her in, which didn’t appear to be a problem. Not knowing the full story behind the attack, Thóra had brought Matthew with her just to be safe; it was entirely possible that Jakob had started the fight and she knew she might be in for a thrashing similar to the one that Sóley’s team had suffered if he felt like turning his anger on her. Matthew’s presence didn’t seem to bother anyone, which reinforced the impression that people weren’t particularly worried about Jakob. Thóra didn’t quite know how to interpret this, but in the end she decided it probably wasn’t a good thing: they weren’t even considering that they might need to keep an eye on him. Of course there could be an entirely different, quite practical explanation; perhaps it was simply yet another manifestation of savings and cutbacks.

  Jakob was lying in a hospital bed with the blanket pulled up to his
chin. His right eye was covered with thick white bandages and he had made an attempt to put his glasses neatly over them. The large, clumsy frames were crooked, since one arm did not reach his ear, which had also been damaged – it too was covered with bandages, and taped to his head. The result was rather comical; even more so as Jakob turned his head quickly away from the television to see who had come, which meant the glasses dropped and ended up so crooked that they lay almost at right angles to his face. He hurried to straighten them with his chubby fingers. ‘Hello, Jakob,’ said Thóra. She held out the box she’d bought on the way. ‘We’ve brought you some chocolates. You remember Matthew, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jakob stared at the colourful box. ‘Can I have some now?’

  ‘Of course.’ Thóra immediately regretted saying this. He might well be nil by mouth. ‘Are you allowed to eat? Has anyone told you you shouldn’t?’

  ‘No. No one.’ Jakob shook his head to emphasize his words. ‘But I’m still hungry. I couldn’t finish my supper last night.’ He didn’t need to explain any further what had disturbed his supper. ‘I got food before but I should have had two meals because I’m owed one from yesterday.’

  ‘Of course.’ Thóra smiled. She opened the box and placed it on the table next to him as Matthew pulled two chairs up to the bed. ‘Watch out for the cracknel.’

  Jakob took Thóra at her word and chose carefully. With his mouth full of chocolate he muttered politely, ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Matthew took the empty wrappers from him and threw them in a rubbish bin by the sink, then sat back down. ‘How are you feeling, apart from hungry?’

  ‘Bad. I’m itchy but I can’t scratch because there are ban-dages in the way.’

  Thóra pointed to the television remote. ‘Would you mind turning down the volume or turning it off, just while we’re here? Then we can hear you better.’ The actors in the film had suddenly burst into song.