Are you sure it was suicide?

She almost dropped her phone. She closed her eyes and waited until she felt a little calmer. Then she opened them again.

What do you mean? she asked.

But staring at her phone brought no reply. Thinking hard, she sat down at her desk and got out the file with the printouts of all the information that Werner had compiled on Arthur Grimm. The moment she held it in her hand, she knew that it was the contents of this file that had given her subconscious no peace; over and over, even in her sleep, her brain had opened this file and read it through and pondered it, until at last it had found what it was looking for.

Norah studied everything again, making an effort to read with an open mind—not to skim the names and dates and places or the bits she knew by heart, but to focus on every word.

Arthur Grimm. Born in Frankfurt on 19 December 1974, the only child of Christa and Jochen Grimm. Primary school. Secondary school. Leaving examinations. Applied to various acting schools but was rejected. Military service. Began a degree in mechanical engineering. Switched to pure engineering. Graduation. A series of internships during and after university and eventually a first permanent position in Munich.

Hang on. There was something there. Like a little barb that she snagged on. What had she just read? The list of some of the essays Grimm had written at university…the names of the firms where he’d worked as an intern…his dissertation at Wilkau Engineering…

That was it. Grimm had written his dissertation in cooperation with Wilkau Engineering. Where had she heard that name before? Norah sat quite still, as if afraid that a sudden movement might frighten off the thought that was taking shape in her mind.

Yes, something was stirring. The name rang a bell. Had she read it in the papers? Had the firm been involved in a scandal? Or had she known someone who worked there? No, she’d remember that. Norah closed her eyes and decided to call up her own thoughts on the subject before resorting to Google and drowning all the information in her head with a flood of search results. But she got nowhere and eventually gave up.

Wilkau Engineering. The only Google entry of any relevance was the company’s homepage. No scandal, no flotation, no mass layoff. Nothing like that.

Norah clicked on the link to the website. Wilkau. Your Engineering Service Provider. Tedium in blue, grey and white. Competent-looking men and women bending over plans, pencils in hand, or smiling inanely into the camera. Dozens of clickable keywords, providing information about the services offered by the company, about completed and ongoing projects. Not knowing where to start, Norah clicked on Contact, leant back in her chair and ran her hand over her face. As she lowered it onto the desk, she felt it tremble.

Wilkau Engineering. Of course. Angélique Wilkau. Little Angie from their year, who always got travelsick on school trips and was once too slow with the sick bag, earning herself an unflattering nickname and the privilege of being excused from all further outings. Angélique Wilkau who played golf as a child, but later developed into a teenager so rebellious that she would have been kicked out of school if her father’s company hadn’t donated a large sum of money for a new sports hall. (Or so rumour had it.) Angie Wilkau, whose mum had hair like a shampoo model and whose dad sometimes embarrassed her by picking her up from school in a station wagon emblazoned with the company logo.