Norah picked up her phone and reread the texts from the unknown number. She remembered feeling troubled when one of her friends had talked of him wanting to do her in, and now she knew why. Without really thinking about it, she had simply assumed that she was dealing with a woman. Yes, it was a woman. She could feel it.

‘Who are you?’ Norah whispered, biting her lower lip, but her mind was a blank.

She put her phone down and ran through the names in her head again, then discarded the pen and tore the paper into shreds. Yes, she’d rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way and caused a lot of trouble. An awful lot. But it was no good rummaging around in the past; all this had started when she moved to Vienna. It had all begun in this beautiful, morbid city. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

48

The next morning, the normality of office life seemed almost unreal to Norah. How could two such different worlds exist in parallel? One of them ordered and subject to clearly defined routines—emails and coffee breaks, editorial meetings and deadlines—the other as chaotic as a work of abstract expressionism. Norah buried her face in her hands, ignoring pitying glances from Aylin who, as usual, looked as fresh as a daisy and probably assumed that Norah had boozed her way through the night again.

The day after tomorrow. February 11 was only the day after tomorrow. Maybe the others were right—maybe if Norah lay low, it would all be over after that. But could she lie low? Could she face the prospect of never getting to the bottom of this story? Of course she couldn’t. Stories were her life. Or what was left of it. There was no way she could sit around waiting; she had to do something.

There was one more thing she could try. One last-ditch hope. Norah grabbed her phone and wrote:

We have to talk. 10 p.m. tonight in Cafe Jonathan. I’ll come alone. Promise.

Norah still hadn’t received a reply when she set off through the dark streets that evening, but since that meant no rejection as well as no acceptance, she decided to keep the appointment, just in case. Aren’t the days supposed to be getting longer? she thought. It didn’t feel like it. She had the impression it was always night.

She walked without hurrying in an effort to calm her nerves and slow her racing pulse. She’d be there in five minutes anyway; she was ridiculously early. But she wanted to be the first to arrive; she wanted a table from which she could see everyone who came into the cafe. She wasn’t at all sure this was a good idea. It was probably an appalling idea. But she couldn’t sit at home and wait. Her friends should have known that.

All the way from her flat, the streets were plastered with the same posters she’d seen in town. They were everywhere—deep black letters on a garish background.