‘Your wish is my command,’ she said with a smile. ‘Where would you like to start? In the bath, perhaps? I think I’d like that. I must just make that phone call first.’
‘The bath’s a good idea,’ Ruth decided. ‘Yes, I’d like to have you with me in the bath. Write down what’s on the cards and then make that call. I’ll get in the bath first, and be waiting for you.’
Once in the bathroom she stood and contemplated her sizeable body in the mirror. Lifted up her heavy breasts and sucked at each nipple for a few seconds. Stroked herself carefully between her legs with a finger in order to get confirmation of her desire.
Then her brother cropped up in her thoughts again, and she moved her hands to more neutral regions.
Poor Mauritz, she thought. Silly bugger! She sighed and wrapped a bath towel round her. Continued thinking while she somewhat mechanically and absent-mindedly rearranged the perfume bottles on the shelf under the mirror, and selected her favourite foam bath scents.
What is the point of confessing to something you haven’t done?
The question had been buzzing around in her mind for some days now. Nagging at her, making her worry. Why couldn’t Mauritz simply have admitted to being a weakling instead? A cowardly and confused person who would never have been able to carry off anything like that? Not in any circumstances.
Twenty-eight stabs! Mauritz?
It was ridiculous. Anybody who knew anything at all about him could have explained that it was absolutely impossible.
But of course there wasn’t anybody who knew anything about him. Apart from her.
So perhaps it wasn’t all that odd after all. She had begun to understand that was the case after a few days. That he wanted to take the blame, and that people believed him. There was a sort of logic. A twisted and back-to-front logic, but it made sense even so.
But why had he gone to the trouble of buying an identical knife when they had already disposed of the real one? That was a genuine mystery. When she thought about it, she realized that this was the only thing she didn’t understand. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. He could never have planned to use it. To stab that police officer? The fact that he actually did so could hardly be explained in any other way than his being possessed for a sudden second of an ability to act. Sudden and unexpected. Like a will o’ the wisp. Nothing else.
That was presumably how things were. The knife was an idée fixe. The stabbing of the police officer a coincidence: an act on the spur of the moment. Something to show her – or Irene, in some obscure way – that he did have it inside him… But no, it was too far-fetched. Too logical. Mauritz could never plan and carry out anything like that. He could work something similar out with hindsight, perhaps, but he could never decide it in advance and then do it. He had never been able to think and act like that. That was the root of his weakness.
When he came to visit her in a state of near nervous collapse that Saturday in October, he had declared that he was going to do it – he had just discovered all the horrors that had happened in the past, and was on his way to Maardam to give his father what he deserved. To take horrific revenge for their ruined youth and kill him without mercy. She had asked him why on earth he had come to her first, and then it was only a few minutes before he had collapsed in a heap on her sofa. Lay there, sniffling and shaking.
It was when she saw that pitiable performance that she made up her own mind. Decided to carry out the deed herself. He didn’t even try to protest. Simply gaped at her with eyes shining in gratitude. Gratitude and desperate, desperate weakness.
That was also the image she had in her mind’s eye when she did the deed. That damp-eyed, naked helplessness on the face of her brother. That pent-up hatred of their father.
And now he was in prison. For a number of crimes. It was remarkable, no doubt about it. When she spoke to him a few hours ago, he had seemed just as calm and collected as he had been for the past few days.
Reconciled, perhaps. Ready to take his punishment for the crime it had been his duty to commit, but which he hadn’t dared do. And for what he had done on the spur of the moment when in a confused state. Come to think of it, she couldn’t recall ever having heard him sounding as secure and harmonious as he did now. Not as a child, or as a youth, or as an adult. That was the fact of the matter.
Perhaps there was a sort of meaning after all, Ruth thought. A point to it all. If her mother hadn’t managed to protect her daughter as she had intended – simply because Mauritz hadn’t been able to go through with the pretence – then perhaps there was no reason to prevent him from doing it. To take the blame as the vicarious murderer. If that’s what he wanted to do.
Poor little Mauritz. Poor little brother.
She shook her head. That was the fact of the matter. And there was quite a lot in what Elaine had said. All the cards were the wrong way round.
Now she appeared in the doorway. Ruth observed her slim, naked body in the mirror. Her hot, slightly intoxicated gaze. Her black, almost bluish hair.
I love her, she thought. Love, love, love. At least there is one member of the family left who is capable of doing that.
In her own way.
She smiled. Let the bath towel fall to the floor.
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