‘I’m not lying!’

‘Red-haired guy,’ I say. ‘Plump, pale—skulked around the place.’

I can almost hear the penny drop.

‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Of course. That’s Simon. He lives here.’

I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath. Of course, I think. Of course this isn’t really her flat. It’s all a front. God, it probably isn’t even her cat.

‘He sublet the flat to us for a month,’ Theresa goes on, ‘but you weren’t meant to meet him, of course.’

My eye falls on the bookcase.

‘What about them?’

‘The books?’ Theresa asks. ‘Props. Selected by Balder, with a lot of your favourites mixed in. Same goes for the records. I don’t really like Arcade Fire.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Why don’t I like Arcade Fire?’

‘Why did you lie to me about everything?’ I yell at her. ‘Even books and music.’

She flinches.

‘Balder wanted you to like me. He says we like people who resemble us and I think he’s right. You saw the books on my shelves and immediately felt comfortable with me.’

I raise a hand and Theresa falls silent. I don’t have time to get bogged down in details.

‘How did he know I’d be at the station?’

‘What?’

‘He was sitting at the piano in the station when I got back from Salzburg. How did he know I’d be there?’

‘Did you buy your ticket online?’ Theresa asks.

I nod.

‘Well then. We saw all your emails. All of them.’

I’ll have to digest this later. Right now I’ve other things on my mind.

‘Who texted me?’ I ask.

‘Balder. He’d never have left that kind of work to an assistant. But he let me advise him. He wanted the messages to sound as if they’d come from a woman; he thought you’d be more likely to trust him then.’

I close my eyes for a moment. The bastard’s good.

‘And the woman? The one I spoke to on the phone?’

‘Grimm’s ex?’

‘Yes. Was she real?’

‘Norah,’ Theresa says, looking me in the eyes, ‘we can spare ourselves some time here. Nothing was real. It was all us.’

I drop onto a chair. Theresa goes on, unmoved.

‘Later today you’ll get more emails and calls trying to persuade you to go to the Prater. They won’t be real either.’

‘Who’ll be there?’

‘From the team? Only me and him.’

‘Sure?’

She nods.

I can’t think straight.

‘Norah, we should call the police,’ Theresa says.

But I hardly hear her. My mind is working frantically. That colleague of mine who suddenly happened to mention a man called Arthur Grimm. The way I found myself at the door of his office, as if led there by fate. How had they done it? I’d chosen the dentist myself; no one had sent me there…

I force myself to abandon these thoughts. I need to work out what to do next.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Theresa says.

I look at her.

‘How did he betray himself?’ she asks.