Someone to Watch Over Me Read Free Page A

possible.
    Thóra was sure that if they’d had more work at the law firm right then, she might have turned down the case that had brought her here. Of course, it was possible that her curiosity about the vaguely worded assignment would have made her take it on even if she were busy – it wasn’t every day that an inmate of the Secure Psychiatric Unit at Sogn requested her assistance.
    Actually, the history of the SPU was short; until 1992 prisoners with mental health problems had either been placed in institutions abroad or simply kept among the general population at Litla-Hraun prison. Neither option was ideal. In the first eventuality the language barrier must have caused patients untold hardships, not to mention the distance from their family and friends; and in the second, the prison was not an adequate healthcare facility. Thóra didn’t know how well the prisoners considered to be of sound mind would interact with those suffering from mental illness, and she couldn’t imagine how the harsh conditions of prison life could possibly be conducive to the treatment of the criminally insane. All seven places at Sogn were always occupied.
    The turn was sharp and her car’s wheels skidded on the slippery gravel. Thóra gripped the steering wheel more tightly and concentrated on getting up the short driveway. She didn’t want to start her visit by driving off the road and having to be towed up out of the shallow ditch – today was going to be weird enough without that. The woman she’d phoned to put in her request to see the inmate had been quite pleasant, but it was clear from her tone that such enquiries were anything but commonplace. Thóra thought the woman had also sounded nervous, as if she was worried about the purpose of Thóra’s visit. Not that that was surprising, given the background of the man she was there to meet. This was no run-of-the-mill inmate, no nervous breakdown, drug addict or alcoholic. Jósteinn Karlsson had been firmly on the road to perdition since his youth, despite numerous interventions by the system.
    Thóra had acquainted herself with his record after deciding to assist him, and it hadn’t made for pleasant reading. She had only had access to two of his cases – the details of the crimes he’d committed as a juvenile were off-limits – and in one of them, from twenty years ago, Jósteinn had been charged with false imprisonment, actual bodily harm and sexual offences against children. He was alleged to have lured a nearly six-year-old boy into his home from the street, for a purpose that thankfully never became clear because the man in the flat next door called the police. The vigilant neighbour had long distrusted Jósteinn and insisted that he was responsible for the disappearance of his two cats, after the animals had been found in poor condition directly below Jósteinn’s balcony. But although Jósteinn had been caught red-handed in his home with a child unknown to him, and in spite of the existence of a character witness without a good word to say about him, Jósteinn escaped from the affair relatively unscathed. The child couldn’t be persuaded to testify, either in court or elsewhere. A psychologist had attempted to speak to him, but to no avail. The child clammed up as soon as the topic was broached. It was the opinion of the psychologist that Jósteinn had scared the boy into silence by threatening him. This, he said, was a common technique of abusers, to buy the child’s silence with threats before violating their innocence, and nobody was easier to frighten than a young child. It was impossible to get the boy to tell him how Jósteinn had threatened him, or anything about what had occurred before the police arrived, which made it impossible to prove beyond doubt that Jósteinn had abused the child in the apartment. The prosecution’s allegation of sexual assault and bodily harm did not get far, since the boy had no injuries. Yet no one in the courtroom could have