The Shadow

by Melanie Raabe

  When Norah didn’t reply, another message arrived.

  Do you still doubt his guilt?

  I’m not sure, Norah lied.

  For a time nothing happened. Then, just as she was thinking that the somebody had called it a day, three dancing dots appeared on her screen again.

  Why don’t you just ask him? Ask him about Valerie. Look him in the eyes.

  Norah was still staring at this message when another arrived.

  He’s usually in Cafe Horvath at this time.

  With its simple vintage furniture and stylish new ceiling lamps, the coffee house was a welcome distraction from Vienna’s usual showy pomp. Norah hadn’t hesitated for a second. She’d said goodbye to Aylin, thrown on her coat and set off.

  Arthur Grimm was reading a newspaper in the far corner with a cup of coffee in front of him. She had forgotten how terrifying he was in the flesh. The coffee house was more or less empty: the afternoon customers had gone home and the evening customers were yet to arrive.

  Grimm glanced up when Norah went over to his table. She still hadn’t worked out what it was about his face that so terrified her. On the surface of it, he was good looking, but when you studied his face for a long time, it was impossible not to feel that something wasn’t right. His eyes, Norah thought. They were set at a strange angle. Was that it?

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked tonelessly.

  ‘Valerie Fischer,’ Norah said.

  The effect of the name on Grimm was remarkable. His eyes widened, his lips parted—for a split second, he looked genuinely stunned. Then he recovered himself.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ he asked coldly.

  ‘You know that as well as I do. It’s written all over your face.’

  Grimm stared at her, then looked around the cafe, but nobody had noticed them. He shook his head and Norah could see a thought taking shape in him; something in his face shifted almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, suddenly and unconvincingly well-meaning. ‘I didn’t do anything to your little friend. And now please leave me in peace or I’ll call the police.’

  Grimm rose, slapped a few euros on the table, took his coat and left the coffee house. Norah saw no point in running after him; he’d told her everything she needed to know.

  The bang of the car door, the taxi driver’s greeting, the traffic, the rain that had just set in—Norah heard everything as if through cotton wool and her hands were trembling so much that she had to press her palms against her thighs to still them. Grimm’s words echoed in her head as if in an empty ballroom.

  I didn’t do anything to your little friend.

  All Norah had done was say Valerie’s name.

  If he was innocent, why did he react the way he did?

  If he was innocent, how did he know that Valerie was her friend? Or that anyone had done anything to her? Norah had told him nothing.

  She had suspected it for some time, but knowing for sure was different; it did something to her. It was her call now.

  She walked the last block to her flat. A few metres from her front door, she raised her eyes from the pavement and saw a poster pasted onto a wall—big black letters on a bright pink background.

  THERE IS MORE THAN ONE DEATH. THE ONE THAT CARRIES US OFF IS ONLY THE LAST.

  Back in her flat, Norah looked about her, bewildered. She hadn’t been gone an hour, but everything looked different, as if someone had taken her world and shifted all the things in it by a millimetre or two.

  She sat down at her desk, looked at her notes and resumed the train of thoughts that she had previously forbidden herself to follow through to the end.

  She put her slips of paper in order and went through all the facts, one by one.

  Grimm lived alone. She was sure of that now. He was alone. No wife, no children.

  Norah noticed how quiet it was in her flat. Only the hum of the fridge and the occasional creaking floorboard. She, too, was alone. Nobody rang at her door, nobody called her, she had no one. The only person who had ever understood her had been taken away from her by Grimm. She had nothing to lose. The thought gave her sudden strength. Norah took a piece of paper and began to write.

  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.

  I am not saying that I am more intelligent. I just take more care. That is why I know exactly what she is going to do. She will toy with the thought of running away—maybe think of going travelling. But then she will tell herself that she is not the kind to run away and she will stay after all. She will tell herself she is too intelligent to go to the Prater. She will resolve to stay at home. But she will come—as inevitable as the tide.

  44

  The spirits of the night had crawled back into their hidey-holes, sighing and whispering. The pressure that had been weighing on Norah’s chest hadn’t exactly gone, but it had lifted a little. How different things looked by daylight. All right, so there was still something menacing about the situation. But even if she was right and someone was trying to get her to kill Arthur Grimm (and it was a pretty wild hunch), what did she have to be afraid of? She was not a murderer, and nothing and nobody could make her kill anyone.

  She had dreamt of him again. She was lying on the ground beneath him, gasping for breath, his hands at her
throat, and however much she thrashed around, she couldn’t free herself. Then the gun appeared. She hadn’t known she had a gun, but suddenly it was there, in her hand. Dream logic. Norah shot and Grimm’s face exploded in hers. She could still feel the blood and gore on her skin, warm and sticky.

  Norah took a deep breath. All right, so February 11 was fast approaching, she had a reason to wish Grimm dead, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be easy to bring him to justice through official channels. But that was no reason to kill him.

  Still, it’s what you want.

  No. There was no reason to be scared. No one could thrust a gun into her hand and force her to shoot a man. And she wasn’t going to do it of her own free will—she had enough trust in herself to know that.

  Are you sure?

  ‘Norah?’

  She jumped like a schoolgirl caught sleeping in a lesson. Everyone looked at her. She hadn’t expected to be addressed. Most editorial meetings simply went on until the boss had come to the end of his monologue.

  She looked at him.

  ‘If you could stay behind a moment,’ Berger said.

  Norah nodded, bewildered.

  ‘I wish the rest of you a productive week,’ Berger said and everyone went off, talking in low voices, until only he and Norah were left in the cold conference room.

  He turned to her, an inscrutable look on his soft face.

  ‘How are you liking it with us?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said dully. ‘I’m happy here.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Berger replied. ‘You’re doing a great job. I liked your last interview. And I’m to send you warm regards from Mira.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Norah. ‘Thank you.’

  And then, when Berger said nothing, ‘I love interviews.’

  ‘In that case, you’re going to be pleased when you hear the news.’

  Norah tried to look interested, but she could feel her thoughts wandering and was pretty sure that Berger sensed her abstraction.

  ‘Our cover story for the next issue,’ Berger said.

  ‘The interview with the new Burg Theatre director?’ Norah asked—even she had picked up that much.

  Her boss nodded.

  ‘A whole hour. Quite a coup—he usually refuses to give interviews because he believes, as he puts it, that his work speaks for him. He’s making an exception for us. Or rather: for you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’d like you to conduct the interview.’

  ‘Please don’t get me wrong,’ said Norah. ‘I’d be delighted to. But why me? Why not Eva?’

  It was a fair question. Norah knew a lot about the theatre and had often written reviews of premieres in Berlin, but Eva was the magazine’s official theatre expert. Norah didn’t want her to think she was encroaching on her territory.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t my decision.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Preller seems to be a fan of yours. He specifically asked to speak to you.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Norah asked.

  Berger shrugged.

  ‘Okay,’ Norah said. ‘Good. I’d love to interview him. Maybe I could take Eva along with me?’

  Berger shook his head.

  ‘He wants you on your own. No idea why. Shouldn’t think it has anything to do with you; probably just another of his little power games. He has a reputation for that kind of thing.’

  Great, Norah thought.

  Out loud, she asked, ‘Is there a date?’

  ‘There is,’ said Berger, rifling through his papers. ‘February 11, 10 p.m. At the entrance to the Prater.’

  Out in the corridor, Norah almost crashed into David.

  ‘You’re white as a sheet,’ he said. ‘Is everything okay?’

  Norah gave a brief nod and headed for her office.

  ‘Why are you always so aloof?’ David asked.

  Norah wheeled round to him.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I don’t understand. We’re all so nice to you, but you seem determined to keep yourself to yourself. Have we done something to offend you?’

  ‘I don’t keep myself to myself,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Norah. We all have lunch together every day. You’re the only one who doesn’t sit with us.’

  Norah didn’t reply.

  ‘Oh well, suit yourself,’ David said, looking at her again for a moment before turning to leave.

  Norah felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. What did he mean, she kept herself to herself? Wasn’t it them? Hadn’t they shut her out right from the start? Then reality shifted. For a second she saw the world through their eyes and realised that he was right. Suddenly she heard Alex’s voice in her ear. People aren’t as bad as you think. You’d know that if you gave them a chance now and then.

  45

  Norah was sitting on her bed with her legs tucked under her, a pillow at her back. She’d been sitting there, staring at the wall, for a very long time. Reinhold Preller wanted to see her in the Prater on the evening of February 11. Could it be a coincidence? No, she decided, it could not. But how the hell did a prestigious theatre director fit into all this?

  Again, she thought of Alex—of the way he used to listen to her when she was pondering a problem out loud, the way he would wrinkle his forehead and rub his cheek and then come out with something that was—generally speaking—very clever. Her longing to hear his voice was suddenly so intense it was almost unbearable.

  She must have dropped off in the end, and when she woke up, she didn’t know where she was. She had fallen asleep in a twisted position on the phone book, her head on the crook of her right arm, which was now so numb that she had to massage it for a few minutes to bring it back to life. Her notes lay scattered on the floor by her bed. So many questions and no answers. They had whirled around her head and worked their way into a strangely realistic dream in which Norah had run hopelessly from one place to another, knocking on doors that remained locked. A glance at her watch told her that she hadn’t overslept. It wasn’t yet seven; she’d had a bare three hours’ sleep. Norah swung her legs out of bed, went into the kitchen and put on some coffee. When it was ready, she poured herself a cup and took it back to bed. With the coffee inside her, she felt vaguely able to face the day. She had a shower, dressed, poured muesli into a bowl, covered it with milk and ate without appetite.

  When she’d finished, she still had a good hour before she had to leave for work. She went back into the bedroom and opened the window to give the room an airing and drive out the stale air and cold smoke. She made her bed, plumping up the pillows and quilts, then bent down to gather up the papers on the floor. As she did so, she glanced under the bed. And froze.

  She was suddenly icy cold.

  Slowly Norah straightened up. She left the room, as stiff as a poorly oiled robot, and sat down on a box in the hall. Everything was spinning. She closed her eyes, but that only made it worse.

  It took her a moment to force herself to get up and go back into the bedroom. Norah crouched down, stretched out a purposeful arm and pulled the case out from under her bed.

  She might be untidy. She might be suffering from sleep deprivation. It was also possible that she ate too little and drank and smoked too much. But one thing she was sure of: this black case, a little smaller than a shoebox, was not hers. She put out a hand to open the lid, then stopped, mid-movement, as if something was holding her back. Then she screwed up her courage and lifted the lid.

  At first she only stared in disbelief, but a moment later she stood up and took a few steps back. She couldn’t calm down, though; her mind was racing.

  It was some time since she’d written the feature for a German news magazine; it had been one of her favourite projects. For weeks, Norah had hung out with ‘gun freaks’, visited shooting clubs, spoken to huntsmen (there weren’t many huntswomen), and interviewed gun collectors. She’d been to the police shooting range and learnt how to shoot. Norah ha
dn’t held a gun in her hand since, but in the course of her research she had learnt enough about firearms to know that the revolver in the small, black case under her bed was not a fake.

  The thought that somebody had come into her flat and up to her bed while she was asleep made her feel sick. She turned and walked down the passage to her front door, and pushed down the handle. Locked. What was going on? She tried to put her thoughts in order. Yes, she’d locked up behind her the night before, the way she always did since suspecting she’d had an intruder in the flat. Whoever had put the gun under her bed must have unlocked the door, deposited the gun and then locked the door behind them. They must have a key. A new key!

  Then she realised she wasn’t thinking straight. Who said the case had only been there since last night? When had she last looked under the bed? For all she knew, the gun could have been there for weeks. Perhaps it had been deposited in her flat at the time when all those little things had gone missing.

  Norah returned to the bedroom. The gun lay in the open case like a big black scorpion, shiny and lethal—the promise of an as-yet-unrealised, but inevitable, horror.

  46

  She knew what she had to do, but it was a huge struggle to make herself do it.

  If her mother was to be believed, she had always been fiercely independent, even as a child, and hated asking for help. Norah remembered the time she had climbed the tall chestnut in her neighbours’ garden when she was a little girl. It was only when she reached the top and looked down that she realised how high she was—and that it was far easier to climb a tree than to get down again. She was stuck there like a cat. Too embarrassed to call for help, she had sat out an entire hour alone in that tree, listening to the other children playing in the distance, until eventually the nice grandmotherly lady from next door had spotted her and got her rescued.

  That was how she felt now: a long way from everyone, unable to solve her problem on her own, but equally incapable of asking for help.

  In the end it was probably David’s remarks that persuaded Norah to climb down from her tree. She sat at her desk, going through the options. There were three people on the planet whom she would describe as real friends: Sandra, Max and Paul. And she needed them now. Any differences they may have had in the past no longer mattered; the situation was too serious to bother about such niceties. It was 8 February, she had fantasies of killing Arthur Grimm—and she had a gun.