The Prater, in an hour’s time. He’ll be there. Please come. For Valerie’s sake.

Norah almost laughed. Did the anonymous texter really think she needed reminding?

She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She put on red lipstick, applying it like war paint. Then she took her bag with the gun in it and left the flat. The taxi she had ordered that afternoon was waiting for her outside.

From the back of the cab she saw more of the garish posters; they seemed to have spread through the city like metastases. The background was painfully pink and the big black letters asked Norah the same question, over and over.

ARE YOU SURE?

Norah thought of all the stories that had kept her from sleeping over the course of the years. She recited them to herself, conjuring the faces of war criminals, murderers, thugs. She thought of Leonie’s rapist. She thought of the man who had tied his allegedly unfaithful girlfriend to his car in front of the children and dragged her to her death. She thought of all those ordinary bastards who were beating up their wives right now, as she crossed Vienna in a taxi. She thought of the man who had ruined Coco’s life—of all the men who had got off scot-free and would continue to do so. She thought of Arthur Grimm.

‘Yes,’ Norah said softly, ignoring the look the taxi driver gave her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

She touched the gun in her bag.

She was ready.

55

There was garbled waltz music coming from somewhere, but Norah couldn’t work out where. The rides were all shut for the night. Was it one of the fruit machines?

Just before she got out at the Prater, Norah had received an email. More compromising material about Grimm who, if the emailer was to be believed, had twice been reported for GBH and once for attempted rape, but had got off on all counts. The attachments contained photos. Norah clicked on a jpg entitled ‘AngelikaReiter1’ and saw a woman with short blonde hair, a bruised face and a bloody, swollen nose, who looked as if she’d been photographed for police records. Her eyes were closed and there was a look of shame on her face. Norah felt the blood shoot to her cheeks, she felt her heart begin to thud, her breath quicken. God, she was furious. And God, it felt great. She mustn’t give up.

Norah had asked the taxi driver to drop her at the back of the Prater, not at the main entrance. The big wheel rose high in the sky and she couldn’t work out whether it was turning extremely slowly or whether she was so overwrought that she was seeing things. She left the road behind her and headed for the fairground. The further she went, the fainter the sounds from the street and the fewer people she saw. At first, she glimpsed the occasional person scurrying along beneath the dark bare trees, but a few minutes from the road she met hardly anyone.