Stalnacke lapses into a bad mood. For no obvious reason. He says, “It’s a good job I can do something right, I suppose.”
He tries not to think about how he trampled all over the evidence in Hjorleifur Arnarson’s house and pontificated about the cause of death without knowing what he was talking about.
He wants Airi to say something along the lines of “You always do the right thing, bless you”, but she does not say a word.
Stalnacke is overcome by the feeling that he is not good enough for anybody. He becomes downhearted and surly and silent.
Airi does not say anything either.
And it certainly is not the sort of silence to make the most of. Usually it is uplifting for the two of them to share silence. Silence full of glances and smiles and sheer joy at having found one another. Silence occasionally broken by Airi chatting to the cats or the flowers, to herself or to Stalnacke.
But this particular silence is filled with the echo of Stalnacke’s thought: She’s going to leave me. There’s no point any more.
He can sense how fed up she has become with his dissatisfaction with his job. She thinks he goes on and on about Mella, about the shooting at Regla, about goodness only knows what else. But Airi was not there. She cannot possibly understand.
They arrive at their destination. Getting out of the car, she says, “I’ll make some coffee. Would you like some?”
All Stalnacke can manage to say is: “Yes, alright, if you’re making some anyway…”
She goes inside and he stands outside, at a loss, not knowing what to do next.
He trudges round the house. At the back Airi has made a cat cemetery. All the cats she has ever owned are buried there, and also some that belonged to her friends. Hidden under the snow are small wooden crosses and beautiful stones. Last summer when he was off sick, he helped her to plant a Siberian rose. He wonders if it has survived the winter. He likes to sit on the veranda with Airi and listen to her stories about all the cats lying there in her garden.
As he stands there thinking, Airi turns up at his side. She hands him a mug of coffee.
He does not want her to go back inside, so he says, “Tell me about Tigge-Tiger again.”
Like a little child, he wants to hear his favourite fairy story.
“What can I say?” Airi begins. “He was my very first cat. I wasn’t a cat person in those days. Mattias was fifteen, and he kept going on about how we ought to get ourselves a cat. Or at the very least a canary. Anything at all. But I said, Certainly not! But then that grey-striped cat started visiting us. We lived in Bangatan at the time. I didn’t let him in, obviously; but every day when I came home from work he was sitting on the gatepost. Miaowing. Enough to break your heart. It was late autumn, and he was as thin as a year of famine.”
“Some people are awful,” Stalnacke growled. “They acquire a cat, then abandon it.”
“I went round the neighbours, knocking on doors, but nobody admitted to knowing anything about it. And it kept on following me wherever I went. If I was in the laundry room, it would sit on the window ledge outside, staring at me. If I was in the kitchen, it would sit on a decorative pedestal we had in the garden, glaring at me. It would jump up onto the front door, clinging on to the ledge over the window, miaowing. It was driving me mad. The house was under siege. Every day when I came home from work I would think to myself: I hope to God it’s not there again.
“Mattias came home late one evening. The cat was sitting outside,miaowing, really crying its eyes out. ‘Can’t we let him in, Mother?’ Mattias said. I gave in. ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘But he’ll have to live downstairs with you. He’ll be your cat.’ Some hopes! That cat followed me wherever I went. He always sat on my knee. Only very rarely on Mattias’s. But then Mattias moved out, and I sometimes went away on holiday. Then the cat would sit the whole evening, staring at Orjan. After three or four days he would eventually sit on Orjan’s knee. But then when I came back home, like that time I’d been in Morocco – I’ll never forget it – he slapped me with his paw, gave me a really solid smack, to show how angry he was.”
“You had abandoned him, after all,” Stalnacke says.
“Yes. Then all was forgiven. But before we got to that stage, he kept on smacking me. I remember when Orjan was depressed and in no fit state to do anything. Between us Tigge-Tiger and I built the May Day bonfire. He spent all day with me in the garden, working away. Then we sat together, gazing into the flames. And he was a terrific acrobat. When he wanted to come indoors in the evening he would cling on to the gutter with his front paws and swing towards the window, sort of knocking on it. So we’d open the window, and he would jump down onto the top of the frame and then into the house. I had lots of potted plants and cut flowers in vases on the window ledges, but he never knocked over a single one. Never ever.”
They sit in silence for a while, looking at the birch tree under which Tigge-Tiger is buried.
“And then he grew old and died,” Airi says. “He turned me into a cat person.”
“You grow attached to them,” Stalnacke says.
Then Airi takes hold of his hand. As if to demonstrate that she is attached to him.
“Life is too short for arguing and falling out,” she says.
Stalnacke squeezes her hand. He knows she is right. But what is he going to do about that lump of anger lodged permanently in his chest?
20.32: “You have reached Mans Wenngren at Meijer & Ditzinger. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Martinsson: “Hi, it’s me. Just wanted to say I’m thinking about you and love you to bits. Ring me when you can.”
She looks at Vera, who is having a pee outside the front door. It is still light, a bright spring evening. She can hear the chuckling call of a curlew. She is not the only one pining for love.
“Why does life have to be so complicated?” she asks the dog.
21.05: Text from Rebecka Martinsson to Mans Wenngren:
She puts her mobile on the lavatory lid and turns on the shower. Gives Vera a thorough rinse to follow up her shampoo.
“So, stop all this rolling around in muck,” she scolds her. “Is that clear?”
Vera licks her hands. It is clear enough.
23.16: “You have reached Mans Wenngren at Meijer & Ditzinger. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Martinsson hangs up without leaving a message. She gives Vera some food.
“I don’t deserve to be punished,” she says.
Vera comes over to her and dries her mouth on Martinsson’s trouser leg.
04.36: Martinsson wakes up and reaches for her mobile. No message from Mans. No missed call. Documents concerning the murder investigation are scattered all around her on the bed. Vera is lying at the foot, snoring.
It’s O.K., she says to herself and makes a hushing noise into the darkness. You can go to sleep now.
