‘I’m looking for someone,’ Norah said. ‘Dorotea Lechner.’

The woman frowned.

‘Friend of yours?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly.’

‘Colleague?’

Norah decided to take pot luck and nodded—it couldn’t hurt. The landlady’s face instantly brightened.

‘From the theatre,’ she said. ‘Thought so, as soon as I saw you.’

Norah managed to conceal her surprise by downing half her beer—which got her a satisfied smile.

‘Dorotea will be pleased. You’ve only just missed her, by the way.’

‘She was here this evening?’

The woman nodded.

‘You don’t happen to know where I might find her, do you? Or where she lives?’

‘Well, I don’t know that she’d want that.’

Norah said nothing and tried to look harmless.

‘I can give you her mobile number,’ said the landlady.

‘Really? That would be great.’

The woman leant over the counter towards Norah.

‘Is it about a part?’ she asked.

‘Have to see about that,’ Norah said and smiled.

The landlady wrote the number on a beermat and Norah thanked her, finished her beer and paid, leaving a generous tip. As soon as she was out of the bar, she dialled the number. She let it ring for a long time while the cold took hold of her again, attacking her earlobes, the tips of her fingers, her feet through the thin leather of her shoes. Nobody picked up and there was no voicemail, so Norah couldn’t leave a message. She walked along the canal, thinking hard. Dorotea Lechner worked at a theatre. This new piece of information needed processing. She tried the number again. A cyclist whizzed past her; between the houses, bare trees stretched their limbs imploringly to the sky. All was quiet. And then suddenly Norah heard something. A little way down the embankment, not far from where she was walking, she thought she heard a phone ring. She stopped and listened. She heard a train in the distance and a car a few streets away, but that was all. Norah tried Dorotea’s number a third time, and almost as soon as a connection had been established, the ringing sounded again, only a few metres away. Norah felt as if she’d been plunged into the icy canal; she was suddenly wide awake. She wished she was at home in her flat. Why had she come here? Couldn’t she have waited until the next day to search out the creepy fortune teller? Norah’s heart hammered in her chest and she knew she was afraid. But she got a grip on herself and followed the sound.