Richard House: The Kills

Rike sits back and folds her arms.

‘Do you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘But you don’t like me much right now?’ Isa shifts her weight awkwardly in the bed. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that nobody wants you to be happy. That everything is working against you. I just want you to have a fresh start.’ Isa pauses and purses her lips. ‘He’s sick. I don’t think you can blame him either. He’s a clever man who is also very sick. He’s a fantasist who thinks he’s more powerful than he is. This is all about power. He finds stuff in the real world and insinuates himself into it. Telling stories to make himself into something that he isn’t. We all do it. We all tell stories to make ourselves look better.’

Rike looks at the books and papers spread out across the bed.

‘Let it go.’

* * *

She finds her brother, or thinks this is her brother, online, in a video posted by MFP, a short piece, ‘Hotel, Hotel’, in which different couples repeatedly check in under the same name. The quality is poor, the pixels vibrate so that the image shudders, drops colour. Light fuzzes unevenly across the faces, stretches them into blades, and behind there’s one man at a table — right beside the reception. It’s the hunch, the way he leans on a table, the whole forearm flat to the table top so he’s leaning in, that makes her think Mattaus even before she properly reads the image: a reception, a receptionist, a couple, a table behind. First — a man whose face, whose body language, might or might not be her brother’s. The scene changes, flickers to another foyer, and again, the same scene replaying, the same four couples, with a title in the right-hand corner which names the hotel and place. Hotel Mons, Troodos. The Ziggurat, Limassol. Hotel 5, Ayia Napa. Hotel Montparnasse, Nicosia. Four couples check in, one after another, under the same name.

Henning and Isa haven’t spoken to her about Mattaus. While they talk about Lexi’s accident and the associated dangers of ‘a certain kind of lifestyle’, Mattaus, as a subject of discussion, is studiously avoided. Officially, Mattaus Falsen remains a person of interest. His flight, they assume, is one of panic. Rike senses that she has always misread her brother. Always looked for trouble, and regarded him with mistrust.

How could it happen? One minute someone is right there, the next, they’ve tipped over a low balcony. No one heard it. To Rike the suddenness, in how she imagines this, is profoundly saddening. Poor Mattaus. Poor, poor Mattaus. This will haunt him. This will eat him alive.

Rike replays the clip from the beginning. It seems more degraded the second time, holds just enough information to show a hunched figure at a table. Those shoulders, the outline of the head. He would wear a jacket, it’s exactly what he would do, even though the brightness of the images shows how hot it must be. He’s in Troodos, she thinks. She hopes. He’s up in the mountains, and when he’s ready, he’ll do what he always does. He’ll show up and face whatever is coming to him.

Henning brings Rike a glass of wine to her bedroom. She closes the computer. Isn’t ready to talk about this.

‘Stay as long as you like.’ Henning bows down as he sets the glass beside her. There’s no hurry. Once Henning is gone Rike returns to the computer, looks again at the clip and finds herself frustrated at how long it takes to reboot. She watches again, then again, this man who might be her brother. The figure is no clearer, and she is sometimes certain, at other times she cringes away from certainty.

The fact is she sees him frequently. Elements of him. Out in the street these small sightings, familiar as a scent.

12.1

Rike calls her sister on her mobile. Isa has news. It was an accident, she says, a slip where the nurse said she. ‘We have to be careful,’ it started, ‘if she is in distress…’

‘It’s a girl,’ she says, ‘I knew it. I’m going to have a daughter.’

While the issue doesn’t matter to Rike she’s moved to hear the news, because the event is now inevitable, impending.

Isa asks if she’s still there.

‘I’m here.’

‘It’s happening.’ She’s at that point where they need to make a decision. Her blood pressure hasn’t levelled, the child is in distress. They want to induce, and if this fails to draw on labour there will be a caesarean. The doctors have carefully explained the risks. ‘It’s because of last time,’ she says. Everything otherwise is in good shape. Ordinarily they wouldn’t worry. Except for last time.

Isa isn’t frightened over what might go wrong. ‘I could never say this to Henning, but what frightens me is what happens when everything works out? What if she is fine? What happens then? What if she hates me? What if we don’t get along? What if she is hateful? Wicked?’

‘You love her.’ Rike answers. Her phone beeps, the power is low. She promises to visit Isa in an hour. Nothing will happen before then.

‘We have a name.’

‘Tell me when I’m there.’

* * *

Rike returns to Tomas’s building in the early afternoon. The decision, she knows, is foolish, but she wants to see the building, perhaps even the apartment.

The balcony doors are open, but there’s no sign otherwise that anyone is inside.

The name Christos on the brass tag, scratched through because he doesn’t live there, and hasn’t lived there for two years. Tomas picked the name up, dressed it with someone else’s story, and delivered it to her, almost verbatim. His notebooks show word for word preparation.

The door is open and she walks in, cautious. The room is different. Busier, unkempt. One suitcase, open, clothes strewn across the floor, still no furniture. She’s surprised not to find a bed, just a thin rubber mat, a sheet, a pillow and a blanket. The kitchen door stands open to show a similar chaos. What once appeared simple and well kept now appears squalid.

Back in the stairwell she hurries down the stairs, at the entrance she notices that the door to the basement is open. Tomas had spoken about the basement, this was the most absurd story of all, more bizarre than the story about his assault. Two brothers. A bloody room. And hadn’t he said that he was helping Christos, the man who hasn’t lived here for two years?

She comes down the stairs and into a corridor with a low ceiling. To her right, just ahead, she can see an open door. She regrets the decision to look as soon as she acts on it. Looking sets her on a certain path.

Inside the room, Tomas Berens lies on a cot. A strip of light falls from the corridor over his forehead. His hair is dyed dark, freshly cut. His face appears rounder, less distinguished — it could be someone else, and she thinks to apologize for her interruption before realizing that this is Tomas.

He doesn’t appear surprised. He sits up, as if tired, and asks if she is with anyone else.

Rike says no, and can’t understand why she’s being polite.

‘I can imagine that you’re confused.’ His voice has a transatlantic undertone. His body also, in its basic movements, appears confident, he’s lost that tight Scandinavian reserve. At least this is how she reads it.

Rike can’t help but step into the room. ‘What are you doing?’

Tomas has cleared the stored promotion and advertising material — a heap of plastic penguins, stuffed plastic bags — to the back wall. The room is unbearably hot and smells of sweat, spiced and sour. ‘What is this?’