Norah was amazed at the number of people still about at this time of night; more than once, someone bumped into her before she had time to get out of their way. The atmosphere, though, had changed since the afternoon, almost as if the mood in the station had shifted with the music. The pop song that had accompanied the afternoon’s buzz of activity had given way to a lugubrious tune for late-night commuters, tired night owls, defeated football fans and a homeless man, rolled up asleep near the left-luggage lockers. Norah approached him cautiously, wary of waking him, and stuffed a crumpled five-euro note in his paper cup. Then she went on her way, advancing slowly, one step at a time, as if battling through a snowstorm. The lingering sounds of the piano drifted over to her, faded and died, and for a moment there was silence. Then a new piece began, sedate and solemn, the ‘Moonlight Sonata’. It was a piece she had always associated with death.

The feeling of being watched didn’t leave her. When she reached the exit, she stopped and looked about her. Nothing. But then she smelt it—barely perceptible, and yet unmistakable. That smell. All at once, Norah knew what it was she associated with pipe tobacco. Not the scent of pipe smoke as such, but a particular old-fashioned aftershave. She had just caught a whiff of it—sweet and bitter at the same time. Nauseating. And then it came to her. She knew who it reminded her of.

The station concourse before her was suddenly red with blood. It dripped from the roof, streaked the ground, covered people’s skin, soaked into their clothes, matted their hair. Norah could smell the sweet, metallic smell. She could taste it on her tongue.

It lasted only a moment, then Norah blinked and the station was just a station again.

But that smell. She turned away, the taste of blood on her lips, and hurried off.

52

Strange, Norah thought. It’s worse than anything I’d expected, and yet I am suddenly completely calm.

Heading home in a taxi, she tried to get the sickly-sweet smell out of her nose. The theme of the sonata she had heard in the station washed over her, seeping bleak and solemn into her pores, as faces and snatches of words flashed into her mind and vanished again.

The sudden grim intuition she’d had as she left the station had cleared her head; she saw everything plainly now. Her doubts were gone; she knew all there was to know.

When her phone rang, over and over, relentlessly, she ignored it. She must act alone now.

Norah went into the bistro on the corner of her street and saw that there was only one customer left, a man at the bar, nursing what looked like a last beer. The barman glared at her as if to say: Did you have to come now, just as I was about to put the chairs on the tables?