Someone to Watch Over Me (11 page)

‘Weren’t there a lot of people wanting to move into the residence? Why was so much pressure put on his mother to admit him?’

Glódís ran her hand through her two-toned hair. ‘I don’t see what difference that makes. Are you trying to say we’re responsible? That this would never have happened if he’d been allowed to continue living at home?’

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ Thóra kept her composure, telling herself not to rise to any provocation. ‘My intention is to demonstrate that he had nothing to do with the fire. If this turns out to be the case, it certainly matters where he was living.’ She allowed Glódís a moment to consider this and saw her tense shoulders relax slightly. ‘From the little interaction that you say you had with Jakob, do you think it’s possible that he took this desperate measure to get what he wanted? That he perhaps considered it the only way for him to return to his own home, by burning the place to the ground?’

‘I don’t know.’ Glódís was clearly being cautious. By far the best response, of course, was to say as little as possible. ‘My dealings with him were limited and I decided not to burden myself by going through the case any more than my job dictated was necessary. The whole thing hit me very hard; as director of the centre it caused me enormous professional shock.’ She hurriedly added: ‘As well as emotional shock, of course. I’d known many of those young people for a long time. The most disabled ones had been regular visitors at a short-term community residence for children where I worked for many years. You form relationships with your clients, even though you’re paid to supervise them.’

Thóra nodded, her expression sympathetic. ‘Naturally.’ She smiled warmly at the woman. ‘Then you’d probably agree with me that it’s important for us to remove all doubt as to who the guilty party is? I’m sure you wouldn’t want the criminal to be walking free while an innocent man is locked up.’

‘Of course not.’ Once again the woman clamped her lips shut, this time until they nearly disappeared.

‘If we let ourselves believe for a moment that Jakob is innocent, could you imagine who else might have done it? I’m not thinking exclusively about the residents; what about an outsider or a disgruntled employee who felt he had a score to settle?’

Thóra had to give Glódís her due: she did appear to think this over before she replied. As she opened her mouth, her lips turned from white to pink again as circulation was restored. ‘I must insist that I believe Jakob started the fire. Just so we’re clear on that.’ She hesitated before continuing: ‘The young men and women who died that night weren’t like ordinary people, who might have someone who wished them harm for whatever reason. They hurt no one and offended no one, except perhaps the kind of bigots who can’t tolerate anyone different from themselves. In other words, they had no enemies; there’s no list of people who bore grudges against them.’

Thóra decided to wait a little before dragging the pregnancy into the conversation, although she greatly longed to throw it in the face of this rather rude woman. She feared it would be difficult to pursue the subject, and that the conversation might end there and then. ‘Fine. What about their families, though? It’s not unheard-of for a relative to resort to drastic measures when things get tough, and might it not be conceivable that one of them started the fire so as not to have to witness his or her child suffering? Perhaps someone who might even have been breaking down under the strain and not had the strength to care for their loved one any longer? Unemployment and uncertainty sap some people of all their strength; maybe this was an act of desperation on the part of someone who had lost all hope and wasn’t in his or her right mind?’

‘It sounds as if you’re describing Jakob.’ The woman smiled for the first time, but it was a smile completely devoid of joy, and full of spite and sarcasm. ‘He meets both criteria. Dashed hopes, not in his right mind.’

Thóra ignored this remark. ‘So all of your employees were happy at work and had no complaints?’ She paused to allow Glódís to digest this. ‘That must be rather unusual.’

‘I will neither discuss individual employees with you, nor the group as a whole. None of them has anything to do with this; they chose to do a selfless job on low wages because they wanted to do good. They would never have hurt those whom they had under their dedicated care.’

‘It wouldn’t be without precedent,’ said Thóra cautiously. ‘But you mustn’t take it the wrong way when I ask. I’m not just fishing for information, and I’m not accusing your employees or anyone else. I’m simply trying to exclude as many people as possible so that I can use my time on what matters.’ Then Thóra let the bomb drop. ‘For instance, finding the person who made Lísa Finnbjörnsdóttir pregnant. It must have been important for someone to cover that up.’

The woman paled. ‘What do you mean?’ There was no doubt that she knew precisely what Thóra meant.

‘Surely it must have been obvious to you that this young woman in your care was expecting a baby?’ Thóra pressed on, striking while the iron was hot. ‘The only thing I need to know is who the father was, and whether the child was conceived with her consent.’

After a short silence Glódís spoke up again. Clearly she wasn’t about to be intimidated. ‘I don’t know who he was.’ Instead of spinning a story about not having known, she seemed to want to address the issue openly. This was shrewd of her, since it must have been clear that Thóra wasn’t going to give up, but would keep returning until she was able to speak to someone who could provide her with answers. It would be much better if this person was Glódís and not her immediate superior, or even the person one rung further up. She’d be wise to tie up this unpleasant discussion while she could. ‘That was another terrible shock; it caught me completely by surprise when I was informed of the autopsy results. I swear that I thought it must be some kind of mistake.’

‘But then?’ pressed Thóra. ‘You must have carried out some sort of internal investigation of the matter. Her parents at least must have demanded that much.’

‘Obviously, they were distraught when it came to light. And although they were too upset by her death to pursue it very rigorously, of course they asked a lot of questions about it. We did everything we possibly could to get to the bottom of it, but without success. None of the employees we spoke to had any idea how it could have happened on their watch, and it’s hard to understand how such a thing could have taken place without them noticing. In the daytime there are at least three staff members on duty and the rooms are always open. Apart from the permanent employees, there are also nurses’ assistants and developmental therapists who aren’t there all the time but still spend hours on the premises. I just don’t see how it could have happened.’

‘Did she ever go home or leave the centre at all? Did she go to the hospital, or visit friends or relatives?’

‘No; why would she? She was comatose, which meant there was no reason to disturb her apart from in exceptional circumstances. She was fed intravenously and needed oxygen, and you don’t get that kind of equipment in ordinary homes. She was actually sent to hospital twice during the course of her time with us, but neither occasion was around the time that she would have conceived. She was four months into her pregnancy when she died, and all our investigations into who the father might have been were based on that timescale.’ Glódís rubbed one of her temples, looking pained. ‘Lísa wasn’t actually a permanent resident at the home, but we were asked to take care of her while another solution was sought. The department she’d been in for many years had closed and we weren’t full, so it made sense. She was actually due to have been moved soon after the time of the fire, but of course that never happened.’

‘Which could indicate that the culprit wanted to take the opportunity to do it before she was moved.’

‘As I said, we have no idea who the father was, so any theories are nothing more than that – theories. The care home was full of people and it’s impossible to imagine how Lísa’s pregnancy could have happened.’

‘You say that there were always a lot of people around in the daytime, but what about at night? There was only one person on duty the night of the fire, and perhaps not only that one time. The night shift must have been under suspicion.’

‘There were always two staff members on duty at night, with two exceptions. On the night of the fire, and once during the first week after we opened. The timing of that particular occasion doesn’t fit with Lísa’s pregnancy, and in any case, it’s clear that the night watchmen had nothing to do with it. There were four of them in total, two different shifts, two on each shift. They worked every other week and were off in between. It’s difficult to invert your body clock like that at regular intervals, and it’s certainly true that only a particular type of person chooses to do such work. But none of them was the perpetrator in this dreadful case.’

‘Why not? Because they said so?’

‘No.’ Glódís looked slightly annoyed. ‘The coroner demanded that their DNA be compared to that of the foetus, and the analysis cleared all four of them – including the one who died.’ She shut her eyes. ‘I’d give a lot to know who did it, and how. It makes me furious to think something like that could happen somewhere where I am responsible.’

‘Were others tested? What about the male residents?’

‘Yes, but it ended there. Each individual test costs around two hundred thousand krónur, I understand, so it was never going to be possible to test every male who had ever set foot through our door. But as far as my boys go, neither Natan nor Tryggvi nor Jakob turned out to be the father. I should mention, perhaps, that I haven’t seen their results myself, although I did get a copy of the test results on the night watchmen sent to me because I was their boss at the time. But I heard from someone in this office that the other results were negative, and I don’t see any reason to doubt that. In any case, the bastard who forced himself on Lísa has yet to be found.’

‘So you agree that it’s impossible for her to have given consent?’

Glódís looked up quickly. ‘Of course it’s impossible. She was comatose; she was never conscious. It’s out of the question that she consented to intercourse. This was a criminal act, however you look at it.’

‘Wasn’t the matter referred to the police, then? You can’t look past the fact that this was rape, and under the most appalling circumstances.’

‘No, it wasn’t reported.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wasn’t me who didn’t want to. But when it came down to it, her parents didn’t want the police to know about it and they got help to prevent them finding out. They said they didn’t want to see newspaper articles discussing their daughter in this context, and they knew the details would get splashed everywhere. It was too late for her, in any case, and sentences for sexual offences aren’t heavy enough to amount to any real justice. Even if the guilty party had been found, they thought it would be just as likely that he would receive a paltry sentence that they would have found hard to accept.’

‘But what about public institutions? The police or prosecutors? Didn’t they carry out a proper investigation? Rape is not a private matter, once it’s discovered.’

‘No.’

This all sounded most odd. ‘How can that be? It’s a serious violation of criminal law. Her parents shouldn’t actually have had any say in how the case was handled.’

‘They got help, as I told you. The father of Tryggvi, the autistic boy at the residence who died that same night, is high up in the Ministry of Justice and they turned to him. He prevented the matter from going any further.’

‘I see.’

Glódís nodded. ‘After that, our hands were tied.’

Thóra had an appointment with a client back at the office that afternoon. The man was divorcing his wife; the process had begun before the financial crash but had been delayed because the couple had had second thoughts in the middle of it. In the wake of the disaster, they had cosied up to each other in search of the good old days when everyone in the banking and business world had been honest and the authorities respectable. This sudden affection, however, turned out to be merely the death throes of youthful love, and after two months of renewed intimacy they came to the conclusion that nothing had changed – they weren’t made for each other after all. The divorce was put back on the agenda but now under entirely different conditions; their rather sizable assets had gone up in smoke, leaving only their debts to divide up. Their civility seemed to have evaporated along with their assets and the couple, who’d previously seemed to get along quite well, had changed into ravenous vultures in each other’s presence. Thóra and the woman’s lawyer had their hands full preventing them from coming to blows in their joint meetings. Fortunately the husband was meeting Thóra alone that afternoon.

The hot dog Thóra had bought for lunch was on the large side and the last bite went down with a bit of difficulty. She licked mayonnaise off her lower lip and took a gulp of the flat fizzy drink that came with the lunch special. She was feeling quite pleased with herself after her conversation with Glódís. She ran her eyes down a printout of the names of all those who had worked at the centre; the former director had given her the list after Thóra had informed her that she could just as easily find the staff members’ names in the court records. That was perhaps not entirely true, since such a list was unlikely to be exhaustive and there would be no easy way for Thóra to fill in the gaps. From Glódís’s list she saw that there had been fourteen full-time staff and a total of ten substitutes and specialists, which meant that, in truth, even finding all the names in the police reports would have proved a Herculean task. It would be impossible to speak to each and every one of these people, but with insight and a good measure of luck she could hopefully filter out those who she most needed to speak to. Glódís had also let her have the names of the residents’ parents, which would doubtless have proved simpler to find, but it spared Thóra the trouble of going through all the obituaries and death notices from the period following the fire. She was certain that some of these people, staff or family members, must know how Lísa’s child had been conceived, but the name of the father was probably not on either list.