“Don’t tell me you’re leaving, Signorina Morel?”
Her heart slams in her chest. Walking towards her down the narrow corridor, with the sinister grace of a panther, is Leoluca Messina.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“That’s too bad. But how do you know my uncle?”
She stares at him.
“Don Salvatore. You’ve just come out of his box.”
“We met earlier. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Signor Messina…”
He looks at Villanelle for a moment, then steps firmly past her and opens the door of Greco’s box. When he comes out, a moment later, he is carrying a gun. A Beretta Storm 9mm, part of her registers as she levels the Ruger at his head.
For a moment they stand there unmoving, then he nods, his eyes narrowing, and lowers the Beretta. “Put that away,” he orders.
She doesn’t move. Aligns the fibre-optic foresight with the base of his nose. Prepares to sever a third Sicilian brainstem.
“Look, I’m glad the bastard’s dead, OK? And any minute now, the curtain’s going to come down and this whole place is going to be crowded with people. If you want to get out of here, put that gun away and follow me.”
Some instinct tells her to obey. They hurry through the doors at the end of the corridor, down a short flight of stairs, and into a crimson-upholstered passageway encircling the stalls. “Take my hand,” he orders, and Villanelle does so. Coming towards them is a uniformed usher. Messina greets him cheerily, and the usher grins. “Making a quick getaway, Signor?”
“Something like that.”
At the end of the passageway, directly below Greco’s box, is a door faced in the same crimson brocade as the walls. Opening it, Messina pulls Villanelle into a small vestibule. He parts a blanket-like curtain and suddenly they are backstage, in the heavy half-dark of the wings, with the music, relayed by tannoy from the orchestra pit, blaring about them. Men and women in nineteenth-century costume swim out of the shadows; stagehands move with regimented purpose. Placing an arm round Villanelle’s shoulder, Messina hurries her past racks of costumes and tables set with props, then directs her into the narrow space between the cyclorama and the brick back wall. As they cross the stage they hear a volley of musket-fire. Cavaradossi’s execution.
Then more corridors, discoloured walls hung with fire extinguishers and instructions for emergency evacuation of the house, and finally they are stepping from the stage door onto the Piazza Verdi, with the sound of traffic in their ears and the livid purple sky overhead. Fifty metres away, a silver and black MV Agusta motorcycle is standing at a bollard on the Via Volturno. Villanelle climbs up behind Messina, and with a low growl of exhaust they glide into the night.
It’s several minutes before they hear the first police sirens. Leoluca is heading eastwards, winding through side streets, the MV Agusta nervily responsive to the sharp twists and turns. At intervals, to her left, Villanelle catches a glimpse of the lights of the port and the inky shimmer of the sea. People glance at them as they pass—the man with the wolfish features, the woman in the scarlet dress—but this is Palermo; no one looks too closely. The streets narrow, with washing suspended above and the sounds and smells of family meals issuing through open windows. And then a dark square, a derelict cinema and the baroque facade of a church.
Rocking the bike onto its stand, Messina leads her down an alley beside the church, and unlocks a gate. They are in a walled cemetery, a city of the dead, with family tombs and mausoleums extending in dim rows into the night. “This is where they’ll bury Salvatore when they’ve dug your bullets out of him,” says Messina. “And sooner or later, where they’ll bury me.”
“You said you were happy to see him dead.”
“You’ve saved me the trouble of killing him myself. He was un animale. Out of control.”
“You’ll take his place?”
Messina shrugs. “Someone will.”
“Business as usual?”
“Something like that. But you? Who do you work for?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters if you’re going to come after me next.” He draws the squat little Beretta from his shoulder holster. “Perhaps I should kill you now.”
“You’re welcome to try,” she says, drawing the Ruger.
They stare at each other for a moment. Then, without lowering the weapon, she steps towards him, and reaches for his belt. “Truce?”
The sex is brief and savage. She holds the Ruger throughout. Afterwards, placing her gun hand on his shoulder for balance, she wipes herself with the tail of his shirt.
“And now?” he says, watching her with awed repulsion, and noting how, in the half-light, the asymmetrical tilt of her upper lip makes her look not sensual, as he’d previously imagined, but coldly rapacious.
“Now you go.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Pray that you don’t.”
He glances at her for a moment and walks away. The MV Agusta kicks into life with a snarl and fades into the night. Picking her way downhill between the tombs, Villanelle finds a small clearing in front of a pillared mausoleum. From the Fendi shoulder bag she takes a Briquet lighter, a crumpled blue cotton frock, a pair of wafer-thin sandals and a lingerie-fabric money belt. The money belt holds 500 in cash, an airline ticket, and a passport and credit card identifying her as Irina Skoryk, a French national born in Ukraine.
Quickly changing her clothes, Villanelle makes a pyre of the Valentino dress, all documents relating to Sylviane Morel, and the green contact lenses and brunette wig that she has been wearing. The fire burns briefly but intensely, and when there is nothing left she sweeps the ashes into the undergrowth with a cypress branch.
Continuing downhill, Villanelle finds a rusty exit gate, and a path leading down steps to a narrow lane. This gives onto a broader, busier road, which she follows westwards towards
