Theresa smiled.

‘Like me,’ she said.

Norah laughed.

‘No, seriously,’ she said, ‘if I’m on a train and some psycho gets on, you can be sure he’ll come and sit next to me, even if the carriage is half empty. In Berlin I was once followed for I don’t know how long by a young woman who thought I was the High Priestess of Evil.’

‘Christ,’ Theresa said.

‘No kidding,’ said Norah. ‘Those were her words: You are the High Priestess of Evil. She followed me everywhere, shouting at me. The scary thing was, she looked completely normal. Jeans, Converse, designer top, messy hair in a bun, hipster glasses. Pushed her bike along next to me and yelled at me.’

‘Creepy,’ said Theresa, stubbing out her joint.

Norah nodded.

‘I felt sorry for her,’ she said.

Theresa was silent for a moment.

‘And what do you think now?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said that for a long time you thought you attracted nutcases. It sounded as if you didn’t think that anymore. So what do you think now? What do you attract?’

Women I can do nothing to save, Norah thought.

Leonie, the girl I found on the bathroom floor at that party. Coco. Dorotea Lechner. And…

‘No idea,’ Norah said with a laugh, hoping it sounded natural. ‘I’m just rambling on.’

‘You’re lying,’ Theresa said gravely. ‘Something’s bugging you and you don’t want to tell me about it.’

Norah said nothing.

‘Do you know what I do when something’s bugging me or scaring me?’

‘No,’ said Norah. ‘What?’

‘I confront it head-on—straight away, before I can think better of it.’

Silence.

‘What’s the latest with this Anton Grimm, by the way?’ Theresa suddenly said.

‘Arthur Grimm,’ said Norah. ‘What made you think of him?’

‘No idea,’ Theresa said, starting to roll another joint. ‘But the old fortune teller mentions him to you and a few days later she’s dead. I call that freaky.’

Yes, thought Norah, so do I.

The red wine hadn’t done its job; Norah’s mind was still buzzing when she got back to her flat. If she went straight to bed, she’d toss and turn for hours. So she sat at her desk and did what she always did when she wanted to put her thoughts in order: she wrote. Dorotea Lechner was dead. Arthur Grimm kept popping up in her life unexpectedly and seemed in some creepy way to be getting closer to her. She didn’t think she knew anyone by that name, but she couldn’t get him out of her head; it was like a snatch of tune that kept eluding her. And for some reason—though she couldn’t have said what—she associated him with Valerie.

She opened her laptop and found the email from Werner containing all the information about this mysterious man. On the first page, right at the top, was his private address. Norah called a taxi. It was time to get a closer look at Arthur Grimm.