27

Rilkeplatz was deserted—no trams, no passers-by. The taxi hadn’t arrived yet. While she waited for it at the front door, Norah took her phone out of her coat pocket and peeled off her leather gloves to enter Grimm’s address in Google Maps, cursing herself for not having done it earlier.

The cold knew no mercy; her fingertips immediately began to ache. Norah waited impatiently for the website to load, then almost jumped when she saw the location. Arthur Grimm lived very close indeed.

Hearing the taxi approach, she looked up and raised her arm to get the driver’s attention. He stopped and she got in.

‘Good evening.’

The driver, a walrus-like man in his late fifties with a droopy moustache and a leather jacket, didn’t return her greeting and Norah almost smiled. Unfriendly taxi drivers always reminded her of Berlin. She gave him the address, adding that she didn’t want to get out there, but one street further on.

‘You do know it’s basically round the corner,’ the driver said in a thick Viennese accent.

Norah didn’t bother to reply and waited for him to drive off. She looked out the window, thinking she might see Theresa at the brightly lit window of her living room, but the flat lay in darkness. And the taxi driver showed no sign of going anywhere. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘Is anything wrong?’ Norah asked.

‘All you need to do,’ he said, ‘is walk to the end of the road and take two lefts. I’m not driving you three fucking metres.’

‘You’re not serious,’ Norah said.

The man muttered something incomprehensible.

‘Arsehole,’ Norah mumbled, getting out of the cab.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said: Have a nice one,’ said Norah, slamming the door.

She’d just have to walk. There were still a few cars on the road and the occasional cyclist, hooded and swaddled as if for urban combat, but no one else on foot. It was too cold. When she got to the street where Grimm lived, she stopped. That would be it—the big building with the lovely pale facade and the crane towering behind. And the chances were, she was being silly; Arthur Grimm was probably a perfectly ordinary man, a harmless and respectable engineer who lived a peaceful life, got up in the mornings, went to bed at night, and in between times worked and ate and drank, met friends and minded his own business. But, call it a journalist’s hunch or call it paranoia—Norah had to see him; she had to know. Slowly and calmly, she walked towards number eighteen, the building where Dr Arthur Grimm lived.

Not far from the cream stucco house, she stopped and lit a cigarette without taking her eyes off the street in front of her or the door of number eighteen. As soon as the smoke reached her lungs, she began to relax. A car drove past. Norah watched it go—only another taxi.

Maybe the passing car distracted her for a split second, or maybe the soothing feeling produced by the nicotine in her bloodstream caused her attention to slacken for a moment. Either way, she didn’t realise there was anything wrong until it was too late.