The dentist’s practice was in a lovely big old house with a cream stucco facade. Norah rang the bell, told the voice on the intercom her name and entered the building, then stopped when she realised that the voice hadn’t told her what floor to go to. She looked about, trying to get her bearings. Next to the letterboxes were four plaques.

First Floor—Huber Architects

Second Floor—Goldberg Solicitors

Third Floor—Dr Bernhard Schlick—Dentist

Norah was on her way to the lift when she realised what she’d just read. Impossible—she must have made a mistake. She turned back and read the fourth plaque again. Her short, sharp laugh echoed in the hallway. Something she’d read somewhere popped into her mind: Chance is the only legitimate king in the world. Wasn’t it Napoleon said that?

Fuck you, Napoleon, she thought. This is too much to be mere chance.

The dentist was a nice man of about fifty with short, pepper-and-salt hair, elegant glasses and slender hands. Norah usually hated going to the dentist, but this time she was far too distracted to feel distressed. All she could think about as Dr Schlick replaced the filling was the person in the rooms above.

When she left the practice half an hour later, she ran up to the fourth floor. The door revealed nothing; there was no name anywhere, and if Norah hadn’t known better, she’d have thought she was standing outside a private flat. She rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened. She rang again, longer this time, then gave up, disappointed.

Strange—but maybe it was for the best. She didn’t know what she’d have said if someone had come to the door. Her thoughts were racing as she walked down the stairs. Back in the hall, she stopped again in front of the plaques.

There it was, in dark, elegant letters on a brass background:

First Floor—Huber Architects

Second Floor—Goldberg Solicitors

Third Floor—Dr Bernhard Schlick—Dentist

Fourth Floor—Dr Arthur Grimm—Engineering

10

Norah didn’t believe in fate or predestination; she believed people created their own luck, by their own efforts. She believed in chance, but not to this extent. Who was this Arthur fucking Grimm? Why was she confronted with his name at every turn? It was too much for her.

Norah emailed her old friend Werner, the best investigative journalist she knew, and asked him to dig up as much as he could on any Arthur Grimms living in Vienna. She, meanwhile, would try to catch Anita on her own sometime and see if she could get something out of her. She was determined to get to the bottom of all this—though it was important not to let anyone notice her unease. It seemed unlikely that anyone was playing a joke on her, trying to provoke her into reacting—but if they were, she was going to make them wait.

Norah spent the rest of the morning looking into the various forms of help for the homeless on offer in Vienna. When she went into the office kitchen for a glass of water, she found her colleague Luisa there with Tom, one of the freelance photographers who sometimes worked for the magazine. Norah immediately realised that she’d interrupted some kind of tryst; there was clearly something going on between them, although Luisa was married. Tom was standing at the window, fumbling cigarettes out of his pocket; Luisa was taking a smoothie out of the fridge, trying hard to act natural. Norah thought of healthy-living Alex who had weaned her off her diet of coffee, cigarettes and fast food—then felt a pang of guilt as she remembered the man she’d taken home last night. She helped herself to coffee (fuck the water) and went and stood at the window next to Tom. Thinking of Alex had left a lump in her throat and she took a big gulp of coffee to wash it down.