She briefly considers dragging the body out of view, but it will take more time than it will save. Then the phone in the room starts ringing, and she knows she has to get out. Making for the stairs she passes Skull-Head’s colleague and Ponytail, hears them running to Kedrin’s room. One look inside the door and they’re after her, pounding along the corridor.
Villanelle races up the stairs to the sixth floor, continues upwards, and bursts out into the night. The roof is virgin white, and a blizzard of snow swirls around her as she bolts the stairwell door. Visibility is no more than a few feet. She has perhaps fifteen seconds start.
The door splinters and the lock flies outwards. The two men come out fast, breaking left and right respectively, leaving the door swinging in the icy wind. The roof is deserted. Footsteps lead from the stairwell to a balustrade, beyond which is whirling darkness.
Suspecting a trap, the two men duck behind a chimney stack. Then, very slowly, the younger man leopard-crawls across the snowy roof to the balustrade, peers over, and beckons cautiously to Ponytail. There, just visible, is Villanelle, with her back to them, the parka whipping around her body in the wind. She appears to be watching the chimney stack.
Both men discharge their weapons, and seven suppressed headshots tear through the parka hood. When the slight figure doesn’t fall they freeze; there’s an instant of terrible comprehension, and then their heads twitch in near unison as Villanelle squeezes off two shots from the fire escape behind them.
Like lovers, the two men fold into each other. And stepping up from the fire-escape ladder, unknotting the sleeves of her parka from the flue-pipe, Villanelle watches them die. As always, it’s fascinating. There can’t be much brain-function left after a Black Rose round has bloomed inside your cerebellum, clawing its way through your memory, instincts and emotions, but somehow, some spark lingers on. And then, inevitably, dims.
Standing there on the rooftop, in her cage of snow, Villanelle feels the longed-for power-surge. The feeling of invincibility that sex promises, but only a successful killing truly confers. The knowledge that she stands alone at the whirling heart of events. And looking around her, with the dead men at her feet, she sees the city resolved into its essential colours. Black, white and red. Darkness, snow and blood. Perhaps it takes a Russian to understand the world in those terms.
That Saturday is, without exception, the worst day of Eve Polastri’s life. Four men shot dead on her watch, an A-grade assassin on the loose in London, her MI5 superiors incandescent, the Kremlin no less so, a COBRA group convened, and—it goes without saying—her Thames House career fucked.
When the office ring to tell her that Viktor Kedrin has been found shot dead in his hotel room, she’s still in bed. At first she thinks that she’s going to faint, and then, staggering to the bathroom, and finding the corridor blocked by Niko’s bicycle, she vomits all over her bare feet. By the time Niko reaches her, she’s crouched on the floor in her nightdress, ash-grey and shaking. Simon rings while Niko is sitting with her in the kitchen. They agree to meet at the Vernon Hotel. Somehow, she manages to get dressed and drive there.
There’s quite a crowd in Red Lion Street, held at bay by a barrier of crime-scene tape and two police constables. The senior investigating officer at the scene is DCI Gary Hurst. He knows Eve, and hurries her into the hotel, away from the probing camera lenses. In the reception area, he directs her to a banquette, pours her a cup of sugary tea from a Thermos flask, and watches as she drinks it.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Gary.” She closes her eyes. “God, what a shit-storm.”
“Well, it’s a colourful one. I’ll say that.”
“So what have we got?”
“Four dead. Shot at close range, all headshots, definitely a pro job. Victim one, Viktor Kedrin, Russian, university professor, found dead in his room. With him, victim two, late twenties, looks like hired muscle. On the roof, victims three and four. We think three is Vitaly Chuvarov, supposedly a political associate of Kedrin’s, but almost certainly with organised crime connections. Four is more muscle. All armed with Glock 19s except for Kedrin. The pair on the roof discharged seven shots between them.”
“Must have picked up the weapons here.”
The DCI shrugs. “Easily done.”
“Suggests they were expecting trouble.”
“Maybe. Maybe they just feel happier if they’re carrying. Do you want to get suited up and go upstairs? The other Thames House guy’s waiting for you up there.”
“Simon?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Where do I change?”
“Staging area that way.” He points. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
In the staging area Eve is handed a white Tyvek coverall, a mask, gloves and bootees. When she is finally suited up, dread floods through her. She’s seen plenty of photographs of gunshot victims, but never any actual corpses.
She copes, though, and with Simon standing businesslike and imperturbable beside her, makes herself remember the details. The raised, greyish rims of the entry wounds, the thin trails of blackened blood, the faraway expressions. Kedrin, his sightless eyes directed at the ceiling, has a slight frown on his face, as if he’s trying to remember something.
“You did your best,” says Simon.
She shakes her head. “I should have insisted. I should have made the right decision in the first place.”
He shrugs. “You made your concerns known. And you were overruled.”
She’s about to answer when DCI Hurst calls her name and beckons to her from the top of the stairs.
“Thought you’d like to know. Julia Fanin, twenty-six. Left the hotel in the early hours of the morning. Bed not slept in, but an empty overnight bag left in her fourth-floor room. Forensics in there now.”
“What do the front desk say?”
