Sveinn turned to her. ‘Well, I don’t remember exactly. I got my material from a variety of places, since the documentary was supposed to give an overview of the situation, and just one centre would never have been enough. It definitely wasn’t the weirdest place I saw, even though the residents’ circumstances were affecting. There are so many levels of disability, and the people at this place were among the most severely afflicted. Most of the people I met were just like you and me; completely capable of getting by in normal society, given the right tools.’ He had moved the cursor into place to start the video, but the mouse appeared to be sticky, since he was holding the button down for a long time. ‘Mental disability is so different from physical that I feel the two groups have little in common. It’s one of the things I think will change over time; the boundaries between them will become clearer.’
Thóra was beginning to think he’d never start the film, but she didn’t want to press him. ‘So you didn’t notice anything unusual there, compared to what you saw elsewhere?’
‘Well, it was new, of course, and meant to be a kind of flagship, despite the way things turned out. Nothing was spared in the design of the centre, but as I understood it the finances ran out and construction standards slipped. I felt as if the residents hadn’t quite come to terms with being moved there and the staff hadn’t settled in either. There was an almost amateurish feeling about the place, compared to the older units I visited.’
‘Could you elaborate?’
‘Oh, I just felt the staff were too young and sometimes kind of clumsy in the way they dealt with the residents.’ Sveinn saw from Thóra’s expression that she’d read more into his words than he’d intended and hurriedly added: ‘Not that they bullied them or anything. They simply hadn’t had time to learn how to deal with them. For example, I saw staff members standing right next to residents and discussing them as if they weren’t there, which is extremely unprofessional.’ He started the film, slightly embarrassed about it, or so it seemed. ‘That might be in one of the clips, actually.’
The quality of the image that appeared on the three screens could have been better, though the cables on the floor in the opening shot suggested that it had been properly lit and sound-recorded. ‘I’ll fast-forward over the parts that aren’t so important. Let me know if I should slow down or rewind.’ They watched closely and Thóra pointed out Glódís to Matthew when she appeared. The director stood with crossed arms and watched from a distance as one of her staff attended to a young woman who sat in a chair, seemingly ignoring the transparent ball in her lap. The care assistant pressed one of the young woman’s hands to her lips and placed the other one on the ball. ‘Ball.’ The woman squeezed the girl’s hand, forcing her to tighten her grip on the ball. She then loosened her grip and folded her own fingers, then got the girl to feel them before moving the girl’s fingers into the same position. ‘Sign language?’ asked Matthew.
Sveinn nodded. ‘The girl was blind and deaf and had some sort of developmental disability to boot. The woman sitting with her is an occupational therapist or developmental therapist or something, but I can’t remember her or the girl’s names.’
‘Sigríður Herdís Logadóttir.’ Thóra had pretty much memorised the names of everyone at the centre and Sigríður Herdís had been the only deaf-blind one. She watched the girl handle the ball and various other things as the therapist handed them to her. Every time the woman handed her something new they repeated the exercise: one hand on the object, the other on the woman’s lips while she told her what the object was called; then they practised making the sign with their hands. From time to time the girl realized what she was holding and was the first to make the sign, at which she received cheerful praise from her therapist. Glódís stood there motionless the whole time, watching. ‘Is this the first video that you shot?’
‘Yes, they run in sequence. Why do you ask?’
‘I was wondering about the centre’s director. She was obviously there to ensure that everything proceeded properly at the start, but surely she couldn’t have followed everyone’s treatment, all the time?’
‘No, I agree, she couldn’t. She was quite suspicious of me at first, but then she got used to my presence and I started seeing less of her. I would’ve expected the residents to find it difficult having me around, but not her.’
Over the course of the videos the stony-faced Glódís stopped appearing in every shot. At first they watched every clip to the end, but when there was little to see beyond the daily lives of the residents, they started asking Sveinn to go through them more quickly. There wasn’t much to be gained from endless mealtimes and therapy sessions, and they found it uncomfortable to spy like peeping toms on the lives of these unfortunate people, now dead. In one of the scenes they spotted the young night watchman who had been on duty on the fateful night, and Sveinn paused the tape. ‘This one died in the fire. It was sheer luck that his co-worker didn’t die as well. He was off sick, or at least that’s what I was told.’
‘Is that significant?’ Matthew looked at Thóra.
‘I don’t know.’ She turned to Sveinn. ‘Were there watchmen on duty at the residence during the daytime? Or was it just evenings and weekends?’
‘It was staffed full-time on weekdays, so there was no need for a watchman except for the night shifts; but at weekends there were two of them working alone until noon, and then more people turned up to take care of lunch and receive visitors. I filmed there on several Sunday mornings because it was so quiet. That’s how I know the arrangement. The one who died was a nice guy, very good with the residents and really laid-back, like all the night watchmen. Once his sister and friend came to visit and helped out, although the smell coming off them rather suggested they were just finishing off a long night on the tiles.’
Matthew couldn’t hide his shock. ‘Was that allowed?’
‘Yeah, sure. They were fine really, and they weren’t there that long. There was no ban on visitors to the centre, except of course at night, although I was never there then. I expect the same went for the staff as for the residents – that friends and relatives could pop in as long as they didn’t get in the way. It wasn’t that common, I don’t think, but I probably have some footage of someone dropping in, somewhere amongst all this.’
In the event they didn’t find a relevant clip, despite going through what felt like hundreds of them. It would complicate the case endlessly if they had to factor in unscheduled visits by friends and family of employees, and it made Thóra wonder whether the only way to find the person who impregnated Lísa would be to take a DNA sample from every man in Iceland. She tried to push aside this idea and focus on the screen. One resident after another appeared and she was able to identify them all, since they were so few and their disabilities so different. Jakob appeared several times and in one shot he looked very upset, muttering constantly that he wanted to go home and being told again and again that this was his new home and that he should stop complaining and find something interesting to do. The video stopped suddenly when he pushed the lamp off his bedside table as he stomped furiously around the room. In other segments he just looked bored, and when he did join in any group activity it was with his head hanging sullenly. Tryggvi featured the least often, which Thóra imagined was due to the antisocial aspects of his autism. He only appeared twice, sitting in his room, in one instance drawing something that appeared to be a face without eyes, but with a mask over its nose and mouth, and in the other staring into space and rocking slowly back and forth. The wall of his room was more or less covered with his pictures, which all had a similar subject: an eyeless figure, prostrate and with a gaping mouth, and another person in the distance holding up a ring divided into three. The same peculiar sequence, O8INN, appeared in all of them. However, the pictures weren’t identical; when the camera panned slowly across the wall, prominent flames were visible in some of them. ‘Do you know what the pictures are meant to show?’ asked Thóra. ‘For example, this figure lying down.’ She had started to suspect that it might be Lísa. She must have always been in bed, and her eyes must have always been closed. Why the figure’s mouth was gaping like that was another story; maybe it was one of those artist’s secrets that would never be revealed.