‘We turn his own weapons on him,’ I reply.

‘A performance,’ Grimm says and I nod.

He’s quick on the uptake.

‘How do we get to him?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Theresa says. ‘He always scripts himself into his own artworks. He’s not planning to miss the show. He’ll be in the Prater, you can be sure of that.’

Grimm gives me a long, hard look. Then he nods and we begin to script and rehearse our own little act. At first, all we can come up with are lines from films we’ve seen, but after a while we start to develop a feel for the situation.

And when I shoot at Grimm with an outstretched index finger and see how convincingly he falls to the ground, I begin to think we might pull it off.

When I get home, I run through everything in my head. It might work. It really might fucking work. Balder will come—that much we do know.

I get ready—make sure that Max and Paul and Sandra are out of the way. I don’t want them getting mixed up in this.

I think of Balder. Big B, as the hipsters at the private view called him.

I think of what he said to Coco when she sued him. This is my world, sweetheart. You only live in it.

God, am I going to get that Big B talking. I’m going to make him show everyone what a bastard he is.

But that’s not all, I think. Grimm and Theresa only know half the truth. Balder ruined Coco’s life, he ruined the lives of at least three women before her, and he’s been doing his best to ruin mine by trying to get me to do the thing I’m most afraid of. He’s trying to make a murderer of me, just because he’d like to know whether I’m capable of it. I feel my heart thumping in my chest, black and bitter.

Yes, Grimm and Theresa and I will put on a little act. No, I won’t really shoot Grimm. But I won’t be firing blanks either, whatever I’ve promised Grimm and Theresa.

Oh yes, I think. Balder’s plan will come off. Tonight I am going to kill someone. In the Prater. Under a clear, starry sky. With good reason and of my own free will. But the man I kill will not be called Arthur Grimm. He will be called Wolfgang Balder.

62

The waltz music was back. The icy wind smelt of snow, and the metal gun in Norah’s hand was so cold it made her fingers ache. She heard a strange noise and opened her eyes. Balder was kneeling in front of her and Norah saw with a mixture of astonishment and disgust that he’d begun to cry.

‘Please, don’t,’ he sobbed.

‘What is this?’ Norah asked. ‘You ought to like this. I mean: Isn’t death the greatest work of art?’

Balder was whimpering.

‘Please… please…’

‘Be quiet.’

Balder pressed his fist against his mouth, but the whimpering didn’t stop.