‘I see.’ Lena stopped fiddling with the glass and placed her hands on the table. ‘So if I tell you something, you’re not bound to confidentiality.’ Matthew decided not to explain that lawyer–client privilege was intended for clients, not potential witnesses or other parties to a case. That would just complicate things, and besides, he wasn’t entirely clear on all the details. ‘Not professionally, no. But I’ll treat whatever information passes between us as confidential – though I would have to tell Thóra, who’d treat the information with the same discretion. However, if something emerges in our conversation that could prove Jakob’s innocence, she would almost certainly use it in one way or another. The most important thing is that an innocent person doesn’t shoulder the blame for someone else.’
‘Okay. Of course that’s fair.’ She took a slow, calm sip. ‘But you’re not sure that Jakob is innocent, are you?’
‘No, but the investigation is still ongoing, so that doesn’t mean much.’
‘But has something come out suggesting that Tryggvi had something to do with the fire?’ She blushed slightly and looked away from Matthew. ‘It would just be good if I had a little bit of advance warning. That’s why I called you. I’m worried about Mum and Dad and maybe I could start preparing them if there’s a chance of bad news.’
Matthew felt for her; her pain was obvious and he was convinced that she felt she had reason to be concerned, rightly or wrongly. ‘This must be hard for your parents. Do they have the same concerns as you; do they think Tryggvi might have been involved?’
‘No… yes… I don’t know. It’s impossible to talk to them. It always has been, actually, but now the situation is a hundred times worse. After Tryggvi died, they wouldn’t let me out of their sight and wanted to know everything I was doing, and they’re still really grumpy. It’s like they think something just as bad will happen to me and they want to prevent it but don’t think they could, and because of that they’re pushing me away, almost. As a result, I feel a bit neurotic too. I just want them to let me run my own life and have some time to myself – when I can.’
This was typical of young people who still lived with their parents and Matthew was fairly certain that he would have said precisely the same thing in his day, without needing to have experienced a family tragedy. ‘They just want the best for you.’ This was the answer that he absolutely would not have wanted to hear himself. ‘It’s our understanding that Tryggvi made significant progress at the centre, after undergoing special therapy that helped him to start expressing himself, or at least to modify his behaviour. Is that right?’
Lena shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t say he started expressing himself openly, but he’d grown more aware of his surroundings, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d finally have started talking to us, who knows? It’s not like he was making conversation or anything like that, though. Far from it.’
‘But he was starting to express himself in new ways, which was a huge improvement, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, compared to how he’d been before. He drew more, and his pictures were more focused.’
‘Is that how he conveyed messages? Through his drawings?’
‘No, not directly. I’m not sure he really thought of the drawings as messages to us. His mind didn’t work like ours and it wasn’t easy to understand what he was on about.’ Lena took another sip of her drink and was careful to place the glass precisely on the wet ring that it had left behind on the table. ‘There was nothing in them that suggested Tryggvi wanted to burn down the residence, if that’s what you were thinking. Tryggvi would never have planned anything; even if he was involved, it would just have been something that happened. He wouldn’t have thought about it beforehand. I’m quite certain of that.’
‘Do any of his pictures still exist? Besides the one in your living room?’ Matthew found the way Lena was talking about her brother’s pictures rather peculiar. It was as if she were trying to get him and Thóra to stop nosing around after them. If that was the case, her plan had completely misfired.
‘Uh…’ Lena hesitated. ‘No. Not any more, anyway.’ She paused before continuing. ‘We had some from the time when Tryggvi still lived at home but we threw them out when we were going through his room; they only rubbed salt in the wound. I can assure you they weren’t connected to the fire at all. At least as far as I could see.’
‘Were you ever present when Tryggvi was in therapy? I’m trying to find out whether he might have expressed himself in a different, clearer way to the person treating him. Perhaps even without pictures.’
Lena scowled. ‘It was a horrible thing to have to watch, and Tryggvi hated it. It might have worked, but for fuck’s sake, what was the point, really? It’s not like Tryggvi could enjoy the results, and it’s awful to think he suffered like that for nothing before he died.’
‘So you witnessed it?’
‘Once, twice. That was enough.’ Her beautiful face became severe. ‘The man repeated the same thing over and over: Look at me, look at me… He held Tryggvi’s chin and forced him to look into his eyes. He said he was getting Tryggvi to form a relationship or a connection with him, something like that. I don’t remember which, and anyway it doesn’t matter. My brother would writhe and twist his head trying to escape, but he couldn’t.’ The anger in her voice was gone when she continued. ‘Tryggvi couldn’t look people in the eye. He found it uncomfortable. I don’t understand how Mum could bear to be there.’
‘Was she always present during the sessions?’ Matthew knew that Fanndís had often hung around at the care home, but he was surprised to hear that she’d been involved in the therapy.
‘No, not always, but often. She didn’t pre-arrange it or anything, but if the man was there when we arrived, she used to go in and watch. I don’t know what she did when she went alone or with my dad, but presumably the same.’
‘And what did you do while the therapy was going on? Did the residence even have a waiting room?’ Matthew couldn’t remember seeing such a thing during his and Thóra’s visit to the burned-out building.
‘I just hung around in the lobby. That was all right, because I got to know some of the staff members and could chat with them. Several of them were my age.’
‘Did you know the night watchman who died in the fire?’ Matthew couldn’t remember what the man was called and cursed himself for not having memorized the names of the main people involved before coming to this meeting. It would have been better if Thóra had accompanied him, but he hadn’t had much choice.
‘Friðleifur? Yes, I knew him.’
‘It’s our understanding that he was suspected of having been drunk at work. Were you aware of anything like that?’
‘No.’ Lena frowned. ‘He was certainly never drunk when I was there, but he actually worked mainly at night, so I don’t know what he got up to then. I met him mostly on weekend mornings before he went home from his shift. I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t drunk on those occasions.’ She stared at the melting ice cube floating in her glass and corrected herself. ‘No, I’m absolutely sure.’
‘It’s also our understanding that he received visitors, in the mornings on the weekends and maybe during the night. Do you know anything about that?’
Lena continued to stare at the ice for a moment but then shrugged apathetically. ‘I only know that he was told off about some beer cans; maybe he had visitors who were drinking beer or something. It wasn’t long before the fire, but I have no idea whether it was him, the other night watchman, someone they let in, or what.’ She looked up briefly from her glass at Matthew. ‘Do you think maybe they let in some visitors who started the fire?’