The Stranglers Honeymoon

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.

Which had not just brought them into contact with each other, but had guided her here. To share his home and his bed and his life. Nothing — he was quite certain of it — nothing he had achieved during his erratic journey on this earth had made him worthy of her; but he had slowly begun to accept it as a fact, and just as slowly to adopt a sort of humility, which no doubt did not always reveal itself in his day-to-day activities but was present nevertheless, rooted ever more deeply inside him, like. . like a slowly growing benign tumour of gratitude and peace of mind.

Or how the hell could he describe it on a morning like this one? In his darkest moments — when he succumbed to his old weakness of regarding life as an equation and not much more — he sometimes saw Ulrike as a sort of substitute for Erich, his son, who had passed away two years ago, and naturally left a wound inside him which would continue to bleed for the rest of his life.

But such equivalences did not exist. A dead son could never be compensated for, he knew that now — had always known it of course — just as little as good deeds, no matter what they were, could balance out evil ones. It was no coincidence that Schopenhauer had been his household god for a while in his youth, and over thirty years in the police force had hardly served to contradict those basic pessimistic maxims about the facts of life. On the contrary.

And in recent years he had begun to think that Good also has a right to exist on its own account in this world. A much greater right than what he used to regard as a mere pawn in the struggle with Evil. The powers of darkness. How else could one allocate the true value of a child’s laughter or the eyes of a woman who loves you?

If these things have to be weighed up and compared. Balanced.

He closed the bedroom door and returned to the kitchen. Put the kettle on and flopped down at the table with the heap of newspapers in front of him. Copies of the Allgemejne for the last twenty days.

I might as well start working my way through them, he thought. They ought to be able to keep him occupied until his tiredness hit him once again, if nothing else. He adjusted the pile and started chronologically from the back. It was now eleven minutes to six. There was a scratching at the door, but he was damned if he was going to make it up with that confounded cat already.

An hour and three cups of tea later the lack of sleep had caught up with him. He had also given way and allowed Stravinsky back in: the cat had miaowed reproachfully and gone back to the same window ledge, presumably hoping against hope for the arrival of the next delicacy on this day of miracles when grilled swallows were flying around all over the place.

Or perhaps he’s forgotten all about it already, Van Veeteren thought. Cats’ memories are short. Enviably short. What he had done with the bird — or the remains of it — seemed to be written in the stars.

The newspapers were nothing special. He read at most two or three articles to the end, but leafed dutifully through every copy and glanced at every single page. He cut out the chess columns and put them in a pile, and by the time he had dealt with the fifteenth copy of the Allgemejne he could tell by the gravelly feeling behind his eyes that he wouldn’t be able to keep going for much longer. And there wasn’t much point anyway. He folded the newspaper up, placed it on top of the bundle of those he had read already and glanced at the first page of the one on top of the pile of unread copies.

Then his heart missed a beat.

The priest was glaring at him.

Glaring. There was no other word for it. His eyes were prominent under the long quiff of hair carefully combed to one side. His expression had something reproachful and at the same time aggressive in it. His dark beard was slightly better trimmed than Van Veeteren recalled it from the visit to the antiquarian bookshop. Presumably a little shorter as well, because his dog collar could be seen quite clearly.

He shook his head and stared at the headline.

PRIEST FELL UNDER A TRAIN

The text was only about ten lines long, and there was no continuation on an inside page.

The 29-year-old priest Tomas Gassel was killed late yesterday evening when for some unknown reason he fell down onto the lines just as a local train was pulling into Maardam Central Station. There were no witnesses, the platform where the accident happened was empty at the time and it has not yet been possible to interrogate the driver as he was in severe shock and was taken immediately to the New Rumford hospital. The police say there is no reason to suspect foul play. Tomas Gassel was a curate in Leimaar parish, and a special mass in his memory will take place next Sunday.

Van Veeteren stared at the photograph once more. His tiredness had disintegrated.

Bloody hell, he thought. This is a black Sunday if ever there was one.

It was not easy to wake Ulrike up, but he managed to do so.

‘What time is it?’ she muttered, without opening her eyes.

‘Er,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Just turned seven. . Getting on for half past, in fact. Quite a lot has been happening.’

‘Been happening? We haven’t slept for more than four hours.’

‘I know. You have an amazing ability to avoid waking up, no matter what’s happening in the world. Stravinsky killed a swallow.’

‘Oh dear. But these things happen.’

She rolled over and placed a pillow over her head.

‘In here,’ said Van Veeteren.

Time passed without her saying anything, and he began to wonder if she had fallen asleep again.

‘There aren’t any swallows in here,’ she maintained in the end.

‘It came in.’

‘Came in?’

‘Through the window. Stravinsky grabbed it. I must say it’s odd that they have to torture their prey so horribly. There’s a degree of cruelty in that old lazy-bones that is beyond comprehension. It makes you think. .’

‘What did you do about it?’ asked Ulrike, without removing the pillow.

‘I managed to get him outside in the end. There was a right shemozzle — he lay first under the sofa and then up on the bookcase.’

‘Ugh,’ said Ulrike. ‘But the poor bird is out of the flat now, I hope?’

‘Yes,’ said Van Veeteren. ‘Then there was that business with the priest.’

There was silence for three seconds.

‘The priest?’

‘Yes, I think I told you about him. He called in at the bookshop the day before we went on holiday, and wanted me to help him with something. And now he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘As dead as the swallow, although it went a bit more quickly in his case. He fell under a train. I reckon we could do with quieter mornings when we get home in the middle of the night. Cats and priests and the devil and his grandmother. I wonder what he wanted.’

Ulrike removed the pillow and looked at him.

‘Who?’

‘The priest, of course. Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that he should fall under a train only a week after he came to see me?’

Ulrike continued looking at him, with a furrow between her prettily arched eyebrows. Stretched, and pulled the covers up under her chin. Five more silent seconds passed.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked.

‘To be honest,’ she said.

‘To be honest what?’

She diverted her gaze to Stravinsky, who was curled up fast asleep on the window ledge.

‘Just a thought. Can it be that you’ve been dreaming all this? It sounds a bit on the bizarre side, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.’

‘What the hell?’ exclaimed Van Veeteren. ‘It’s in the newspaper — do you want me to go and fetch it?’

She hesitated a moment.

‘Not just now. I think we ought to get a bit more sleep, no matter what. . Then we can talk it over when we wake up again. Come back to bed and give me a hug.’

Van Veeteren had several valid objections on the tip of his tongue, but after a brief internal struggle he gave up and did as he was bidden.