Then the footsteps continued upwards.
She didn’t make a decision now either — there was no time.
She simply acted.
Took hold of the door handle. Pressed it down.
It was unlocked. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
10
On Sunday, 8 October, a stray swallow flew in through Van Veeteren’s bedroom window.
It had just turned half past five in the morning, and the unfortunate bird was probably one of the very few phenomena in the whole world that could have woken him up. The flight from Rome had been over four hours late, and they hadn’t got to bed until about three o’clock.
Two-and-a-half hours’ sleep, then, and how Ulrike managed to stay asleep despite all the persistent fluttering of wings was beyond him. . A mystery that on reflection he assigned to the inherent feeling of security in her warm, feminine being.
Or something biological along those lines.
But someone definitely not affected by symptoms of weariness in connection with the unexpected visitor was Stravinsky.
Stravinsky was a cat, and in a way Ulrike Femdli’s most noticeable contribution to their shared home. This state of affairs had been in existence for no more than five months: it ought to have happened much sooner, but Van Veeteren’s idiotic dithering had delayed the project and, indeed, almost wrecked it altogether — but thank goodness her persistence had eventually won him over. Thank God, he frequently thought.
They had known each other for five years. Van Veeteren knew that for the rest of his life he would not want any other woman. The weeks in Rome had brought him much satisfaction, including an awareness of this fact.
For his part, Stravinsky was eight years old, almost nine. He had been given his name because of a partiality unusual in cats for The Rite of Spring: he couldn’t care less about any other music, classical or modern, but whenever he heard this work he would always lie there as if petrified, on tenterhooks from the first note to the last, brooding over some esoteric mystery that presumably existed only in his own (and perhaps the composer’s?) imagination.
In outward appearance Stravinsky was black and white, in a pattern rather similar to that on a Gruyderfelder cow. He had been neutered at the age of two, and was normally quite gentle and quiet. On the whole. But as he lay on the window ledge as usual this early morning in autumn — and to his surprise saw a meal fluttering into the room — it mattered little that he was both sterile and fairly full already.
With all due deference to Whiskas and Kitteners, a living booty was not to be sniffed at. It took him no more than three or four leaps, no more than five or six seconds, before he was able to get his teeth into it.
By the time Van Veeteren heaved himself up onto his feet, his heart pounding like a piston in his chest, it was too late. Stravinsky had already dropped the swallow, which was slithering around on the floor, flapping away with its two broken wings. The cat sat there, watching intently as the bird tried in vain to escape, while Van Veeteren wondered for one confused second (a) what the hell had happened, and (b) what the hell he could do about it.
When that second was over, he hissed at the cat — with the immediate result that he hyperventilated and almost collapsed in a heap. Stravinsky grabbed his prey in his mouth once again, rushed off into the living room with it and took cover under the sofa.
Van Veeteren closed his eyes, recovered and rushed after it. Swore loudly and pointlessly, and hammered several times on the cushions, but the only response was a muted growl and a few heartbreaking peeps. He staggered into the kitchen, took a carpet-beater out of the broom cupboard and tried in vain to poke it under the sofa. Stravinsky stayed put for a while, then sprinted out with the bird in his mouth and sprang up onto the top of a bookcase.
Van Veeteren stood up, and paused to think. Contemplated the cat up there just under the ceiling. It had dropped its prey once again, and was examining it with what seemed to be almost scientific interest. Studied it in all seriousness, with the same neutral expression on its triangular cat-face as usual. Van Veeteren couldn’t help but wonder what on earth was going on inside the animal’s head. In Stravinsky’s head, that is: nothing at all was going on any more in the swallow’s head, it seemed.
He stood there, carpet-beater in hand, wondering what to do, and allowed his train of thought to continue.
Just what was it in the cat’s programmed instincts that made it drop its booty and study it in this way?
It was impossible not to reflect and be surprised by it. To keep letting its victim go free like this — a highly illusory freedom, of course — simply so that he could sit in peace and quiet at a convenient distance and observe its death throes. What was the point when the fate of the bird was already sealed? What forces lay behind this wicked game? Why did he do it? The beast of prey and its victim.
Were they biological or culinary? Perhaps it didn’t matter, although he recalled that human beings prefer to eat meat that has been killed in conditions as unstressful as possible. He had read somewhere that pork and ham tasted best if the slaughterer was able to lull the pig into a false sense of security before its death. A shot through the back of the head while it was asleep, perhaps?
Did cats — cat-like creatures in general — prefer meat that was filled with the bitter fluids caused by the fear of death? Could that be the explanation?
Yes, probably. So infernally banal. And from the point of view of the victim, what pointless cruelty! A long-drawn-out death struggle simply to please the executioner’s taste-buds?
My God, he thought. You must be a wicked devil.
He shook his head at all these questionable speculations, raised the carpet-beater and hammered away at the bookcase. Stravinsky picked the swallow up again in his mouth and jumped down. Dashed out into the hall with Van Veeteren on his heels, then paused for a moment in front of the shoe shelf. He seemed to be wondering where next to retreat to, in order to escape being hounded by this madman with the carpet-beater — he had been living with him for quite a while now, and he’d seemed to be a reasonable and balanced person. Well, not all that barmy: but you could never tell with humans.
Van Veeteren made use of the brief pause for thought to open the door out onto the landing, and Stravinsky took advantage of this opportunity to escape. He raced down the stairs like a flash, with the swallow — now no doubt as dead as a doornail — looking like a bushy but well-trimmed moustache.
Van Veeteren had no doubt that the confounded little beast must go out into the courtyard, and chased after him — stark naked, hoping that none of the neighbours were up and about at this unholy hour (especially old fru Grambowska: a naked confrontation on the stairs would have ruined their good relationship once and for all, that was obvious, and she had looked after both Stravinsky and the potted plants while he and Ulrike were away in Rome). With a little difficulty he eventually managed to shoo the cat out through the back door, and left it ajar with the aid of the sweeping brush that was usually kept there. When he went back to the flat he felt as wide awake as if he had just taken a plunge into eight-degree seawater and survived.
He checked the clock in the kitchen: seventeen minutes to six in the morning. He pinched his arm. It hurt, so he hadn’t been dreaming.
Expecting some kind of tiredness to kick in after his surreal morning exertions, he went first to check if Ulrike had really managed to sleep through all the hullabaloo.
She certainly had. She lay there on her side, sniffling peacefully, the obligatory pillow between her knees and a faint, slightly mysterious smile on her lips. He stood by the bed for a few moments, watching her. It had been an exceptional morning, but even now he simply couldn’t understand what benevolent higher power had brought her into contact with him. Or him with her. If there was anything for which he had to thank the God in whom he didn’t believe, it was Ulrike Fremdli. No doubt at all about that.