He works as an engineer.

He drives to the office.

He’s a regular at Cafe Horvath.

He likes going to football matches (Rapid Vienna).

He often goes to the cinema (mostly on his own).

He’s strong and looks as if he works out (amateur boxer!).

She considered. Just say I did it, she thought. How would I go about it?

The days were supposedly getting longer, but it still got dark early. In theory it wouldn’t be hard to wait for Grimm. Maybe one evening when he came out of the cinema. In fact, it would probably be no trouble to get into the building where he lived. No. The risk of being seen was too high. She’d have to catch him on his own, far from neighbours or passers-by. She must find out where he went jogging. A wood would be perfect, or a remote park. Some deserted place. Just supposing.

But how was she going to get hold of a weapon in Vienna? In Berlin she knew people; she had once spoken to all kinds of gun freaks for a magazine feature and even got on quite well with one of them. Maybe he could put her in touch with someone in Vi—

Norah stopped. Her thoughts jarred to a halt. She felt the blood drain from her face and stared at the paper in front of her, her hand clapped to her mouth. She sat there like that for a long time, stunned at the thought of what she was doing.

She had begun to plan a murder.

DECISIONS AND INATTENTIVENESS

The Aztecs had more than 1600 gods. Whenever they subjugated a people, they adopted its gods, and so the number grew and grew. Isn’t that staggering? 1600 gods. We don’t even have one.

Religion has never interested me, but I have always been intrigued by religiosity. It is a source of endless fascination to me to observe the many things people believe in—whether gods or horoscopes or simply fate.

Me, I believe in decisions. In free will, if you like. Each of us has the choice, but so few of us use it. Most people are trapped in routines and since these tend to be an unsophisticated mixture of habit, herd instinct and self-interest, human behaviour is almost disappointingly easy to predict.

The science of decision theory is highly complex and there are, of course, decisions that defy expectation. But they are exceptions. As a general rule, people do not make decisions on a rational level; they depend on their emotions. Even if they do manage to factor complex information into their considerations, most of them make the same mistakes over and over again. They make things more complicated than they are. They are alarmingly easy to distract and see only what they want to see.

In this respect she is no different. She didn’t recognise me when our paths crossed the other day. She is inattentive. It isn’t her fault; it’s the way our brains function. Although we tend to know everything, we often understand nothing.