“Yeah, well, cheeky or not, that woman shot four foreign nationals dead on our turf. Can we go back and see that CCTV footage again?”
“Absolutely.”
It’s been edited into a single, silent loop. Lucy Drake walking into the hotel foyer in her parka, carrying the valise, and checking in, the suggestiveness of her body language apparent. Lucy exiting the lift on the fourth floor and walking to Room 416. Lucy leaving the hotel without the valise, raising the hood of her parka as she goes.
“OK stop,” Eve says. “That’s the last of her, agreed? From now on the woman in the parka is our killer.”
“Agreed,” says Hurst.
He runs the footage in x16 slow-motion. Infinitely slowly, as if moving through treacle, the hooded figure enters the hotel, lifts a blurry hand in the direction of the front desk, and vanishes out of shot. Her face is invisible, as it is throughout the footage in the hotel corridors.
“Look at her planting that bug outside Kedrin’s room,” says Hurst. “She knows she’s on camera, but she doesn’t care, she knows we can’t make her. You have to admit, Eve, she’s good.”
“You weren’t able to pull any prints off the bug, or anywhere else?”
“Look closely. Surgical gloves.”
“Motherfucker,” Eve breathes.
Hurst raises an eyebrow.
“She’s a murdering bitch, Gary, and she’s cost me my job. I want her, dead or alive.”
“Good luck with that,” says Hurst.
At their Avenue Kléber apartment, Gilles Mercier and his wife Anne-Laure are entertaining. Among those at dinner are a junior minister from the Department of External Trade, the director of one of France’s major hedge funds, and the executive vice president of Paris’s most important fine art auction house. Given the company, Gilles has gone to considerable trouble to ensure that everything is just so. The food has been catered by Fouquet’s on the Champs-Élysées, the wine (2005 Puligny-Montrachet, 1998 Haut-Brion) is from Gilles’s own carefully curated cellar, and precisely dimmed spotlights pick out the cabinet of ormolu clocks and the two Boudin oils of the beach at Trouville, which the executive vice president has recognised as fakes, and indeed has whispered as much to his younger male companion.
The conversation among the men has covered predictable ground. Immigration, the fiscal naivety of the socialists, the Russian billionaires forcing up the price of holiday homes in Val-d’Isère and the Ile de Ré, and the upcoming season at the Opéra. Their wives and the executive vice president’s friend, meanwhile, have covered the new Phoebe Philo collection, the fabulousness of Primark pyjamas, the latest Ryan Gosling film, and a charity ball that the hedge-fund director’s wife is organising.
Invited by Anne-Laure to balance the numbers, Villanelle is bored senseless. The junior minister, whose knee has nudged hers more than once under the table, is questioning her about her activities as a day-trader, and she is answering in evasive generalities.
“So how was London?” he enquires. “I was there in November. Were you very busy?”
“Yes, work’s always murder. But it was lovely to be there. Hyde Park in the snow. The Christmas lights, the pretty shop windows…”
“And in the evenings?” He allows the question to hang suggestively in the air.
“In the evenings, I read and went to bed early.”
“Alone? In your Primark pyjamas?” This time it’s his hand that finds her knee.
“Precisely. I’m afraid I’m a rather dull girl. Married to my work. But can I ask you, who does your wife’s hair? That layered style looks lovely on her.”
The junior minister’s smile grows fainter, and his hand moves away. The minutes tick by, glasses and plates are filled and refilled, Élysée Palace rumours and fifty-year-old Armagnac circulate. Finally the evening winds down and the guests are brought their coats.
“Come on,” says Anne-Laure, grabbing Villanelle by the arm. “Let’s go, too.”
“Are you sure?” murmurs Villanelle, eyeing Gilles, who is corking bottles and issuing instructions to the caterers.
“I’m sure,” hisses Anne-Laure. “If I don’t get out of this flat right now I’m going to scream. And look at you, all dressed up. If ever I saw a girl who needed an adventure…”
Five minutes later, the two of them are rounding the Arc de Triomphe at speed in Villanelle’s silver Audi Roadster. It’s a cold, clear night with tiny flecks of snow silvering the air. The Roadster’s roof is lowered and Héloïse Letissier is blasting from the sound system.
“Where are we going?” Villanelle shouts, the icy wind whipping at her hair as they swing onto the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
“Doesn’t matter,” Anne-Laure mouths back. “Just drive.”
Villanelle puts her foot down, and whooping and laughing, the two women race into the glittering darkness of the Paris night.
On the penultimate day of her enforced leave, an envelope bearing Eve’s name falls through the letterbox of the flat. The writing paper is headed with the imprint of the Travellers Club, in Pall Mall. The unsigned message, handwritten in slanting italics, is short and to the point:
Please come to the office of BQ Optics Ltd. Second floor, above Goodge Street Underground station tomorrow (Sunday) at 10.30 a.m. Bring this letter with you. Confidential.
Eve reads the note several times. The Travellers Club writing paper suggests that the correspondent has Security Services or Foreign Office connections, the fact that it is handwritten and hand-delivered suggests an entirely sensible distrust of email. It could of course be a hoax, but who would bother?
At 9.30 the next day she leaves Niko sitting at the kitchen table amid a sea of pamphlets. He’s assessing the costs and benefits of converting the attic into a miniature hydroponic farm, sustained by low-energy LED lighting, and producing pak choi and broccoli.
The entrance to the BQ Optics office is on Tottenham Court Road. Noting it as she exits Goodge Street tube station, she crosses the road and watches the place for five minutes from outside Heal’s, the furniture store. The tube station and the first-floor offices are faced
