‘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.’