Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

found to replace him. In his statement he said that Friðleifur had called him at home an hour before the time the fire was estimated to have started. At that point there had been nothing much to report; the other man was only calling to ask about a key he couldn’t find. The files also mentioned another phone call, but this one to the centre, not from it. This call, which was brief, had occurred just before Friðleifur called his sick colleague. The caller, a young man not named in the files, claimed to have been drunk at the time and to only vaguely remember making the call; it must have been a wrong number, as he did not know anyone at the residence. His explanation was not questioned, since the other staff testified that drunk people often seemed to accidentally call the centre on weekend nights. They had always assumed the home’s telephone number must be one digit off the number of a club or bar, although they hadn’t looked into it as it hadn’t seemed that important.
    The care home had been located in a new estate right next to Reynisvatn Lake, where the fully paved and tarmaced streets wound around plots that still stood empty. No one could afford to build houses any more. The building was some way away from its nearest neighbour so the fire burned unnoticed for quite a while. Eventually some of the neighbours were woken by the stench of smoke, called emergency services and had four fire engines despatched. It was immediately obvious to the fire-fighters that there was no point entering the blazing building, so all their efforts were directed at controlling the spread of the fire.
    Once they had the fire more or less under control, they began searching in what was left of the building and found the bodies of four residents, as well as that of Friðleifur. Contact was made with the facility’s director, Glódís Tumadóttir, who was roused from a peaceful sleep into a living nightmare. She managed to stammer out that there ought to have been six people in the building, five residents and the watchman, and a hunt for the missing resident was initiated immediately. It was impossible at that stage to identify any of the bodies, which hindered the search. Still, the police managed to find Jakob within an hour; he was wandering the streets of the Grafarholt neighbourhood, reeking of petrol and scared out of his wits. He fled when the two policemen who had spotted him got out of their car, but the physical restrictions of his extra chromosome stopped him outrunning them. His attempt to flee the scene was what swung the court’s ruling against him, along with his fingerprints on a twenty-litre petrol can found at the scene and his inability to explain what had happened. There was nothing in the ruling or court records to suggest that his disability hadn’t been taken into consideration. His unwillingness to move to the centre was described at length as a possible explanation for his actions. It was concluded that he had set fire to the home, thereby killing those inside. However, the ruling went on to say that it accepted the expert witnesses’ assessment of Jakob as not being criminally liable due to his functional disability. Therefore he was acquitted of criminal charges. The doctors who had assessed him also advised the court that he should be considered a risk to others, so measures should be taken to prevent him from doing further damage by housing him in an appropriate institution. Hence his current confinement in the Secure Psychiatric Unit at Sogn.
    There should have been six residents at the community residence. Only four had died in the fire; Jakob was the fifth. Thóra was unable to find anything in the long document regarding the fate of the missing resident. There must be an explanation elsewhere in the stack, and she made a note to look out for it. She also scribbled down that she needed the names of everyone who’d testified and given statements; in the court documents almost everyone was identified