"'One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place'," he says, quoting Mick Travis. "I'm not sure I can face that conference. All those academics."

I remain silent, thinking. He has a secret he can't live with. I am it.

"So," he says. "Stalemate."

Slowly, I bend at the knee and place the gun carefully on the floor. I straighten up and place the toe of my shoe against the mouth of the barrel and give the gun a gentle kick so that it slides several yards along the corridor to a position roughly halfway between us.

"Indeed," I say.

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

Alexander McCall Smith.

1.

MICHAEL MOVED EMPTY-HANDED into the house in Belfast. Most people have at least the contents of a small van to move in; he had nothing, just a suitcase, and not a large one at that.

It was not that he was poor. His bank account, although not over-full, was solvent, and he had a reasonable amount stashed away. The lack of possessions was a temporary state brought about by an entirely amiable divorce.

"You can have the lot," he said to his wife. "I really don't need to take anything."

She had tried to persuade him otherwise. "But you can't give me everything," she said. "You need to take something. What about some pictures?"

But he had grown tired of the pictures, and if he removed them, he pointed out, there would be squares of discolouration on the walls and she would need to call in the decorators.

Such generosity, she said, was typical of him. "You're such a kind man," she said. "It breaks my heart to see you go. It really does."

And he replied. "It breaks mine too. But there we are. We're different, aren't we? And I want you to be happy." To which she replied that she wanted him to be happy too.

She took his hand in hers. She should not have fallen in love with that other man, but she had, and she realized that she loved him more than she loved Michael. And he was unhappy in London; he would do far better to return to Belfast.

"You never really liked London, " she said. "You never settled, did you?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing to do with Londoners." (She was one.) "It's just so large and the . . . and the very air is sixth-hand. Or that's what it feels like."

She had sniffed, without really thinking; air was air. "The smell of home," she said to him.

"I want to go back to Belfast," he said. "I miss it. Everything about it, I miss. Black Mountain. The lough. The red brick. The pubs. Everything."

2.

By good fortune, and co-incidence which sometimes come together neatly an aunt had died and left him the house off the Malone Road, a well-heeled part of the Northern Irish city. She was an archetypical Malone Road aunt slightly disapproving and of firm convictions but he had been fond of her and she of him. There were other nephews and nieces who might have benefited from a share in the house, but she favoured him. "I'm leaving this place to you," she said. "I see no point in leaving it to the whole lot of you. One room each. Absurd."

That conversation took place a couple of years before she died. He returned to look over the place and to make arrangements for it to be looked after by a postgraduate student from the university down the road, who made desultory efforts at keeping the garden in order, but who at least was a.s.siduous in maintaining the interior. Michael preferred a short-term arrangement of this nature, as he already sensed that he and his wife were drifting apart and that he would leave London. Now he had a place to come back to.

3.

He thought that he might remarry he was forty-five and there was still plenty of time, even to start a family, if he was lucky. But he did not want to hurry things. He found it easy to adjust to being on his own, but it did occur to him that he might get a cat. A dog would tie him down too much; a cat could be left to fend for itself for the occasional weekend. A cat gave a house a more lived-in feel. A cat would become a familiar spirit, like a benign ghost.

"Try and get hold of an intelligent cat," advised a friend. "Burmese, preferably. They're very intelligent."

He agreed that this was a good idea; one would not want to live with a cat that found life too much of a challenge. A breeder was located in Fermanagh and Michael made the trip out to collect his allocated kitten.

"These are very clever creatures," said the breeder. "You won't be able to teach this wee fellow any tricks. He'll know them all already."

Michael looked at the diminutive cat, at its green eyes, which were already fixed on him. There was certainly a marked intelligence there; he was being a.s.sessed, he felt; weighed up in some obscure feline calculation. He felt slightly uneasy.

4.

Michael worked from home, preparing complicated tax returns for clients whose faces he never saw. He did this from a study where he had a view of the stretch of garden that lay behind the house. The cat loved this miniature jungle, and spent hours stalking creatures real and imaginary amongst the shrubs. Michael went out from time to time and watched the cat in its hunting, but this would usually stop the cat from doing what it was doing. It would sit down, and direct its disconcerting gaze in his direction. Only when he had gone back in would the game resume.

Burmese cats, he had been told, were affectionate, but this one was not. It appeared for meals, glaring at him if its food was late or if it in some way failed to meet its expectations. Then it would saunter off. If he tried to pick it up and stroke it, it would freeze and look at him with undisguised hostility.

"The cat doesn't like me," he remarked to the friend who had recommended the breed.

"Give it time," said the friend.

"I have, and it makes no difference. He seems to be getting increasingly hostile. It's almost as if he resents the fact that I live in the house with him."

The friend laughed. "He wants you out?"

"Don't joke about it," said Michael.

5.

Some months after the cat's arrival, when it was almost fully-grown, it made its first attempt to trip Michael up. He saved himself from falling, but only just.

"You stupid creature," he muttered.

The cat looked up at him, with all the coldness of a psychopath, and then sauntered off. A dog, Michael reflected, always looks apologetic if it gets in its owners way; not so cats. Or not so this cat.

There were several more incidents of this nature, and each time it occurred Michael became more irritated. It seemed to him that the cat's behaviour was intentional, that it wanted him to fall and injure himself. In self-defence he tried to stand on its tail when it got between his feet that, he thought, would teach it a lesson. But the cat spun round and dug its claws into his trouser leg, scratching him slightly. Then it looked at him with a murderous look in its eye, held his gaze for a few moments, and wandered away.

6.

Michael spent long hours on the telephone to his ex-wife in London.

"I'm missing you terribly," she said. "Do you think we've done the right thing?"

"Ask your boyfriend," he said, and then changed the subject to the cat. "That cat."

"It looks so sweet," she said. "That photograph you sent me. Really sweet."

"Appearances can be deceptive," he retorted. "It is definitely not a sweet cat. Not at all."

"Are you being kind enough to it? You have to win their affection you know."

He explained about the tripping up. "Do you think it possible that a cat might decide to . . . to harm its owner?"

There was silence at the other end of the line. "Are you all right, Michael?"

He sighed. "I know it sounds absurd, but I have the distinct impression that this cat is trying to . . . Well, I don't know. Trying to get me, I suppose."

She laughed. "Impossible. Cats don't do that. No matter how intelligent. Cats know which side their bread's b.u.t.tered on."

He agreed that this was generally the case, but then he posed the question: what if an intelligent cat, a really intelligent one, thought that it might inherit a house, once the human owners were disposed of?

7.

Some days after this conversation, Michael returned to the house one night after being at a dinner party out of town. It had been a good evening and his hosts, although tactful about it, had clearly attempted a bit of match-making. He found that he liked the woman invited to sit beside him. She was also divorced and had a seven-year-old son. The father was in Dubai, working for an engineering firm. She and Michael got on well and telephone numbers were exchanged. He saw the hostess watching this with approval; why, he wondered, do people get pleasure in bringing others together? Was it because we feared loneliness, not only for ourselves, but for others?

He came back to the house in a state of elation. He was on top of his work; he was not short of money; he had the prospect of a date with that nice woman. But then there was the cat.

He retired to bed and turned off his light. He dozed off quickly, but was suddenly awakened by a noise downstairs, a yowling sound. He got up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It would be hungry, he supposed. That was the way it yowled when it wanted him to feed it.

It was a stair-rod that tripped him up. It was near the top of the stairs, and it had come out at such an angle that anybody would be bound to fall over it in the dark. He shouted out as he fell and reached out wildly for something to clutch. His hand found no purchase on the wall, but brushed against the light switch and inadvertently turned it on. As he fell, he saw the cat at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him with its intense green eyes.

He was not injured; bruised, perhaps, but nothing more than that. The cat, after surveying the scene, walked calmly away, and out of its cat door. He sat there for several minutes, rubbing his left knee and thinking. He was positive that the stair-rod had not been out of place when he had gone up to bed; he would have noticed it if it had. He was sure. He was quite convinced.

There was only one explanation: the cat had moved the stair-rod deliberately.

8.

He had n.o.body to speak to. If he tried to tell any of his friends about what had happened they would have concluded that he had lost his reason. Cats did not try to murder their owners, even if they had a motive. The idea was absurd. Cats had few intentions in this life; and as for motives, the very concept was inappropriate and misleading when applied to the animal world.

But Michael was sure, and the next morning he rehea.r.s.ed his alternatives. He could give the cat away there would be plenty of people who would willingly provide a home to such an elegant, exotic creature. Yet if he did that, he would be pa.s.sing on to somebody a creature who might do to a new owner exactly what it had tried to do to him. So he could not do that.

He could take it to the vet, he supposed, and ask for it to be put down that would be self-defence surely. But no vet would put down a perfectly healthy young animal just because the owner had taken a dislike to it. And that is what the vet would conclude; he would think that it was a matter of personal dislike.

He decided that he would have to do something to bring the cat under control. Even if he could not reform it, he could let it know that he was aware of what it was up to. And that is the line of reasoning which produced his brilliant idea.

He looked out of his window. The cat was in the garden, sitting on a patch of gra.s.s, looking back at him in its superior manner. He pointed a finger at the animal and mouthed the words: "I'm on to you, kitty!"

9.

He timed his arrival back at the house very carefully. He wanted the cat to be in when he returned, so that he could witness the impact of his plan. So he made sure that he came back at a point in the day when he knew that the cat would be hungry and would be waiting indignantly to be fed.

And his new dog was chosen carefully too. He was a recently-retired police dog, still in good shape, who had been living with his former handler in Dunmurry. The handler and his wife were moving into a flat and wanted somewhere more suitable for the dog.

"He's a great chap," said the handler. "When I was in the force he solved a lot of crimes, so he did."