But that isn’t everything.
‘What else?’ I ask sharply.
Theresa stares at the floor.
‘The first time I was in your flat I took some stuff with me and left a few things behind.’
My phone, I think. That fucking pen.
‘Other times, Balder’s assistant was in your flat. Whenever you went out or came to see me.’
‘Breaking and entering.’
She doesn’t look at me.
‘Before you changed the lock, it was all quite easy. We had a spare key to your flat. From the previous tenant.’
‘What was it all for?’ I ask. ‘I understand the phone. But the rest? What good was my toothbrush to you? And why did you leave a fucking bunny rabbit in my flat?’
‘To unnerve you,’ Theresa says. ‘Confuse you, disorientate you. Classic gaslighting. To make you feel you were losing your grip on reality, couldn’t trust your senses—that anything was possible.’
‘How could you agree to all that, Theresa?’ I ask tonelessly.
She opens her mouth, shuts it again.
‘At first I was proud to be part of it. And then things got kind of… out of hand. It all started to run away with itself. It was harmless to begin with; it was only later that things got more and more extreme, and…’
She interrupts herself, starts over.
‘I never thought anyone would get seriously hurt.’
I let this sink in for a moment.
‘But what’s the idea?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What’s the idea behind the whole operation? What does Balder stand to gain? He can’t have droves of spectators in the Prater if I’m not supposed to notice anything.’
‘He’s going to document everything,’ says Theresa. ‘For his exhibition. Image, sound, video art—he didn’t go into the details.’
I feel sick. I imagine an exhibition about a perfectly normal woman becoming a murderer. A perfectly normal woman who just happens to be me.
‘That’s absurd,’ I say. ‘That’s sick. Even he can’t get away with that.’
Theresa only tilts her head to one side.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Tell me how he plans to proceed tonight. How’s he going to document everything?’
‘We’ve set up various cameras at the big wheel in the Prater, and I’ll also be videoing it, on my phone.’
‘Who is this we?’ I ask.
‘The team?’ Theresa says. ‘It’s just me and Kim 5 on the permanent team. There were other people involved, too, of course—the actor, extras, technicians, research assistants. But they weren’t told about the project.’
‘Kim 5?’ I say.
She rolls her eyes.
‘He calls all his assistants Kim—men and women. Don’t ask why. Probably can’t be arsed to remember our names. Or just thinks it’s cool. I’m Kim 4.’
My God.
‘And Kim 5? What’s her real name?’
‘Kim 5’s a he. Bela.’
‘Describe him to me,’ I say.
‘You saw him. In my flat.’
Things are beginning to fall into place.
‘Your so-called ex,’ I say, and Theresa nods. ‘The one you couldn’t decide whether to call Rico or Maurice.’
She says nothing.
‘Was the fight real?’ I ask and she shakes her head, shamefacedly.
‘Just a way of getting closer to you.’
She can count herself lucky that I don’t have the time right now to think about the extent of her betrayal.
‘He was in my flat. And once I saw him through the spyhole. That was him, wasn’t it?’
Theresa nods.
‘We made a mistake—thought you were out. You’d promised to join me in Starcode Red, remember? Bela got the fright of his life when you started to chase him. No one had expected you to go after him.’
She gave a short laugh, but her smile fades when she sees my face.
‘What was Bela planning to do in my flat when I surprised him?’
‘He was supposed to bring you flowers.’
‘What kind of flowers?’
‘Balder had prepared a bouquet for you—an enormous bunch of dead, withered flowers. Rather beautiful in a morbid way. Bela dropped them when he was running away from you.’
I am beginning to understand.
Flowers wither. Clocks stop. Birds fall dead from the sky.
Dorotea Lechner’s words. All part of the plan. I give Theresa a long, hard stare.
‘Was it you who hacked my accounts?’
She shakes her head.
‘I can’t do that kind of thing. Balder has other people for that. At home in Berlin.’
‘But there’s somebody else involved, isn’t there?’ I say. ‘Here in Vienna.’
Theresa looks at me with a frown, trying to sit up straight, but almost swallowed by the soft cushions.
‘Just me and Kim 5,’ she says.
‘Why are you lying?’ I ask. ‘What’s the point in lying now?’
‘I’m not lying!’
‘Red-haired guy,’ I say. ‘Plump, pale—skulked around the place.’
I can almost hear the penny drop.
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Of course. That’s Simon. He lives here.’
I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath. Of course, I think. Of course this isn’t really her flat. It’s all a front. God, it probably isn’t even her cat.
‘He sublet the flat to us for a month,’ Theresa goes on, ‘but you weren’t meant to meet him, of course.’
My eye falls on the bookcase.
‘What about them?’
‘The books?’ Theresa asks. ‘Props. Selected by Balder, with a lot of your favourites mixed in. Same goes for the records. I don’t really like Arcade Fire.’
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Why don’t I like Arcade Fire?’
‘Why did you lie to me about everything?’ I yell at her. ‘Even books and music.’
She flinches.
‘Balder wanted you to like me. He says we like people who resemble us and I think he’s right. You saw the books on my shelves and immediately felt comfortable with me.’
I raise a hand and Theresa falls silent. I don’t have time to get bogged down in details.
‘How did he know I’d be at the station?’
‘What?’
‘He was sitting at the piano in the station when I got back from Salzburg. How did he know I’d be there?’
‘Did you buy your ticket online?’ Theresa asks.
I nod.
‘Well then. We saw all your emails. All of them.’
I’ll have to digest this later. Right now I’ve other things on my mind.
‘Who texted me?’ I ask.
‘Balder. He’d never have left that kind of work to an assistant. But he let me advise him. He wanted the messages to sound as if they’d come from a woman; he thought you’d be more likely to trust him then.’
I close my eyes for a moment. The bastard’s good.
‘And the woman? The one I spoke to on the phone?’
‘Grimm’s ex?’
‘Yes. Was she real?’
‘Norah,’ Theresa says, looking me in the eyes, ‘we can spare ourselves some time here. Nothing was real. It was all us.’
I drop onto a chair. Theresa goes on, unmoved.
‘Later today you’ll get more emails and calls trying to persuade you to go to the Prater. They won’t be real either.’
‘Who’ll be there?’
‘From the team? Only me and him.’
‘Sure?’
She nods.
I can’t think straight.
‘Norah, we should call the police,’ Theresa says.
But I hardly hear her. My mind is working frantically. That colleague of mine who suddenly happened to mention a man called Arthur Grimm. The way I found myself at the door of his office, as if led there by fate. How had they done it? I’d chosen the dentist mys
elf; no one had sent me there…
I force myself to abandon these thoughts. I need to work out what to do next.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Theresa says.
I look at her.
‘How did he betray himself?’ she asks.
I think about it for a second.
‘Vanity,’ I say.
Theresa nods as if to say she’d thought as much. Her gaze falls on the gun in my hand.
‘We must call the police,’ she says, getting up cautiously. ‘I’ll tell them everything.’
I wonder whether I can trust her. Balder’s deception seems to have cut pretty deep. But who knows—she might be pretending, the way she’s been pretending for weeks.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘Call the police.’
Theresa gets up, takes her phone from her bag, unlocks it and dials. She takes a deep breath. I grab the phone off her, hang up and put it in my pocket.
‘Sit down,’ I say. ‘We’re not going to call the police. If we take this to the police, it won’t be Balder who’s brought to justice but you. He knows why he left certain jobs to others. Breaking and entering, for example. Depositing loaded firearms in a person’s flat.’
Aggrieved silence. Then she says, ‘God, I was stupid.’
‘You can say that again,’ I say coldly.
She falls back on the sofa and buries her face in her hands for a moment before looking at me again.
‘What are you planning to do?’
Why does everyone always think I have a plan?
‘Stop him,’ I say.
‘How?’
I don’t immediately reply.
‘I need to get Arthur Grimm on board somehow,’ I say. ‘But there’s not much chance he’ll listen to me.’
Suddenly Theresa is smiling again.
‘I think I can help,’ she says. ‘Dr Grimm and I are good friends.’
61
Grimm takes a little persuading, but it turns out to be easier than I’d thought—I suppose he’s come to trust Theresa. I am beginning to realise that Kim 4 is Balder’s all-purpose weapon. For me she was the nice neighbour. For Grimm she was an ally.
Some weeks ago she turned up on his doorstep and warned him about a psychotic stalker called Norah Richter who went around (she said) suspecting people of having murdered a certain Valerie. Whenever this woman got it into her sick head that somebody was the culprit, she did all she could to make their life hell. There were indications, Theresa told Grimm, that Norah Richter had fixed on him as her latest target. Nobody knew how she chose her victims. But Theresa, who had herself been stalked for months by this lunatic, saw it as her duty to warn him.
After her visit, Grimm had googled me. Finding a recent photo was as easy for him as it had been for me, and he was even curious enough to wander down my street on one occasion—although, thanks to Theresa’s input and my undiplomatic manner, he was soon living in fear and trembling of me, reacting with understandable aggression when I pestered him with calls and turned up outside his house. Eventually an email came from Theresa: there was clearly no point in waiting for the police to do anything about me, and she’d had an idea. If Grimm wanted to know more, all he had to do was come to the entrance to the Prater at 10 p.m. sharp on February 11. By the big wheel.
Not surprisingly, Grimm can’t believe his eyes when Theresa and I turn up together at his flat. It’s amazing that he doesn’t shut the door in our faces, but luckily his curiosity gets the better of him. I like him for that; I know all about giving in to curiosity.
When Theresa has confessed all and Grimm has bombarded her with questions, he asks us in, apparently persuaded by her story.
‘Thank you,’ I say, as he shows us into his minimalist sitting room. ‘It was nice of you to listen.’
At first Grimm says nothing. I find it hard to look at him; my repugnance is tenacious. I’ve got so used to seeing him as my enemy that I am having trouble readjusting. I can sense that he’s experiencing similar difficulties.
‘Where do we go from here?’ he asks eventually.
‘We have two possibilities,’ I say. ‘Option number one: the three of us go to the police together and tell them everything. I just have a feeling that if we do that, Balder will worm his way out of things while Theresa and Bela get into serious trouble. Because, if you think about it, what’s Balder actually done? With a bit of luck we might be able to wangle a fine for him. But it’s equally possible that he gets off scot-free.’
‘He tried to kill me,’ Grimm cries. ‘And she helped him. She told me to go to the Prater on the evening of the eleventh. Why are we trusting her when she lied to us both?’
I nod.
‘We don’t have much reason to, it’s true. But I think Theresa knows she made a mistake.’
Theresa stares at the floor.
‘The problem is we can’t pin anything on Balder,’ I say.
‘What’s option number two?’ Grimm asks.
I smile.
‘We get our own back,’ I say. ‘Scare the hell out of him. The way he did with us.’
Grimm’s eyes narrow.
‘That’s too mild a punishment,’ he says and I think he’s damn right. But I let Theresa do the talking.
‘You have to know,’ she says, ‘that Balder is incredibly vain. He spends hours googling himself and reading articles about himself, and if anyone dares criticise him or even just makes fun of him, he completely freaks out. I once saw him throw a computer at the wall because an art blogger said he was overrated. No ordinary person can have any idea how over-inflated that man’s ego is.’
‘So, what do we do?’ Grimm asks.
‘Let the air out of him,’ I say.
‘I’ve been working closely with him for months,’ Theresa says. ‘The great Wolfgang Balder. The powerful, the sophisticated, the admired Wolfgang Balder. Larger than life, invulnerable, always in control. The man who baulks at nothing. That’s how he wants to be seen. It matters to him more than anything. If there’s one thing he can’t bear, it’s the thought of losing face.’
For a moment Grimm says nothing. Then he nods.
‘All right then. We unmask him. But how?’
‘We turn his own weapons on him,’ I reply.
‘A performance,’ Grimm says and I nod.
He’s quick on the uptake.
‘How do we get to him?’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Theresa says. ‘He always scripts himself into his own artworks. He’s not planning to miss the show. He’ll be in the Prater, you can be sure of that.’
Grimm gives me a long, hard look. Then he nods and we begin to script and rehearse our own little act. At first, all we can come up with are lines from films we’ve seen, but after a while we start to develop a feel for the situation.
And when I shoot at Grimm with an outstretched index finger and see how convincingly he falls to the ground, I begin to think we might pull it off.
When I get home, I run through everything in my head. It might work. It really might fucking work. Balder will come—that much we do know.
I get ready—make sure that Max and Paul and Sandra are out of the way. I don’t want them getting mixed up in this.
I think of Balder. Big B, as the hipsters at the private view called him.
I think of what he said to Coco when she sued him. This is my world, sweetheart. You only live in it.
God, am I going to get that Big B talking. I’m going to make him show everyone what a bastard he is.
But that’s not all, I think. Grimm and Theresa only know half the truth. Balder ruined Coco’s life, he ruined the lives of at least three women before her, and he’s been doing his best to ruin mine by trying to get me to do the thing I’m most afraid of. He’s trying to make a murderer of me, just because he’d like to know whether I’m capable of it. I feel my heart thumping in my chest, black and bitter.
Yes, Grimm and Theresa and I will put on a little act. No, I won’t really shoot Grimm. But I won’t be firin
g blanks either, whatever I’ve promised Grimm and Theresa.
Oh yes, I think. Balder’s plan will come off. Tonight I am going to kill someone. In the Prater. Under a clear, starry sky. With good reason and of my own free will. But the man I kill will not be called Arthur Grimm. He will be called Wolfgang Balder.
62
The waltz music was back. The icy wind smelt of snow, and the metal gun in Norah’s hand was so cold it made her fingers ache. She heard a strange noise and opened her eyes. Balder was kneeling in front of her and Norah saw with a mixture of astonishment and disgust that he’d begun to cry.
‘Please, don’t,’ he sobbed.
‘What is this?’ Norah asked. ‘You ought to like this. I mean: Isn’t death the greatest work of art?’
Balder was whimpering.
‘Please… please…’
‘Be quiet.’
Balder pressed his fist against his mouth, but the whimpering didn’t stop.
‘Be. Quiet.’
This time he managed. She saw him swallow his tears.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.
Norah put her head on one side.
‘Listen. Listen to me for a moment. You don’t have to do this. Call the police. I’ll confess to everything.’
Norah didn’t react. Then she shook her head.
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that people like you get away with everything. You’d even get away with this. Because this is your world. Coco, Theresa, me—we just live here, right? I can only think of one way to change that.’
Norah cocked the gun.
‘Don’t,’ Balder cried in panic. ‘You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’
‘He’s right,’ someone said behind Norah and at first she thought it was Theresa. Then she realised it was Sandra’s voice. What on earth was she doing in Vienna? Norah glanced over her shoulder and saw that Sandra wasn’t alone; Max and Paul were with her. All three out of breath and drenched in sweat.
‘We heard a shot,’ Sandra said. ‘We thought we were too late.’
Norah turned back to Balder and her friends closed in on her, entering her field of vision.
‘What are you doing here?’ Norah asked them.
‘Looking after you,’ Max said. ‘Put the gun down, Norah.’
Norah was silent.
‘You know you’re not going to shoot him while we’re looking on,’ Sandra said. She sounded quite calm.
The Shadow Page 24
