With Anna’s reaction, Oxana’s world collapsed. She’d hoped for gratitude, admiration, profuse thanks. Instead the teacher had stared at her in icy, horrified silence. Only her knowledge of the conditions that Oxana would face in a women’s penitentiary, Anna said, prevented her from contacting the police immediately. She would remain silent, but she never wished to see or speak to Oxana again.
The injustice of it, and the lacerating sense of loss, brought Oxana to the brink of suicide. She considered taking her father’s Makarov pistol, going round to Anna’s place, and shooting herself. Showering the little flat on Komsomolsky Prospekt with her blood and brains. Perhaps she’d have sex with Anna first; a 9mm automatic was a pretty persuasive seduction accessory.
In the end, though, Oxana did nothing. And the part of her that had yearned so desperately to make Anna her own simply froze.
Lying in the scented water in the Shanghai apartment, Villanelle feels her earlier elation displaced by an undertow of melancholy. She turns her head towards the window, a sweep of plate glass framing the glimmering dusk and the rooftops of the French Concession, and bites pensively at her upper lip. In front of the window is a Lalique bowl of white peonies, their petals soft and enfolding.
She knows that she should lie low. That to go out on the prowl for sex, tonight of all nights, would be reckless. But she also recognises the hunger inside herself. A hunger whose grip will only tighten. Stepping from the bath, wreathed in steam, she stands naked in front of the plate glass, and considers the infinity of possibilities before her.
It’s after midnight when she walks into the Aquarium. The club is in the basement of a former private bank on the North Bund, and entrance is by personal introduction only. Villanelle was told about the Aquarium by the wife of a Japanese property developer whom she met at the Peninsula Spa in Huangpu. A stylish, gossipy woman, Mrs. Nakamura explained to Villanelle that she usually went there on Friday nights. “And alone, rather than in the company of my husband,” she added, with a meaningful sideways glance.
Certainly the name Mikki Nakamura is one the doorman knows. He shows Villanelle through an interior door to a spiral staircase winding down to a spacious, dim-lit subterranean chamber. The place is crowded, and an animated buzz of conversation overlays the muted pulse of the music.
For a moment Villanelle stands at the foot of the stairs, looking around her. The most striking feature is a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, perhaps ten metres long. A moving shadow darkens its luminous blue expanse, and then another, and Villanelle realises that she is looking into a shark tank. Hammerheads and reef sharks glide past, the underwater lights painting their skins with a satin sheen.
Mesmerised, Villanelle makes her way towards the tank. The smell of the club is that of wealth, a heady mix of frangipani blossom, incense and designer-scented bodies. In the tank a tiger shark drifts into view, and fixes Villanelle with its blank, indifferent gaze.
“Dead eyes,” says Mikki Nakamura, materialising beside her. “I know too many men who look like that.”
“We all do,” says Villanelle. “And women, too.”
Mikki smiles. “I’m glad you came,” she murmurs, running a finger down Villanelle’s black silk qipao dress. “This is Vivienne Tam, isn’t it? It’s lovely.”
Villanelle mirrors Mikki’s smile and compliments her on her own outfit. At the same time, she’s running a security check, scanning the club for anything or anyone out of place. For the nondescript figure in the shadows. The eyes that look away too quickly. The face that doesn’t fit.
Her attention is snagged by a willowy figure in a white halter-top and miniskirt. Mikki follows Villanelle’s gaze and sighs. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Who let the dogs out?”
“Pretty girl,” says Villanelle.
“Girl? Up to a point. That’s Janie Chou, one of Alice Mao’s ladyboys.”
“Who’s Alice Mao?”
“She owns this club. In fact she owns this building. She’s one of the richest women in Shanghai, thanks to the sex-trade.”
“Obviously quite a businesswoman.”
“That’s one way of putting it. She’s certainly not the sort of person you want to get on the wrong side of. But let me get you a drink. The watermelon Martinis are fabulous.”
“And fabulously strong, I bet.”
“Relax, sweetie,” says Mikki. “Have fun.”
As the other woman joins the crush at the small art deco bar, behind which an elegant young person is shaking cocktails, Villanelle allows herself to be swept along by a gesticulating crowd of young Chinese men, all designer-dressed to within an inch of their lives.
“I don’t think you have what they want,” says a soft voice at her side. “But I might have what you want.”
Villanelle looks into the pretty, upturned eyes of Janie Chou. “And what’s that?”
“Full girlfriend experience? Kissing on the mouth, lots of nice sucking and fucking, then afterwards I cook for you?”
“Perhaps not tonight. I’ve had a killing day.”
Janie leans in close, so that Villanelle can smell the jasmine flowers in her hair. “I got crabs,” she whispers.
Villanelle raises an eyebrow.
“No, silly! In my fridge, not my lady-garden! Hairy crabs. Very expensive.”
Mikki approaches with two brimming Martini glasses and hands one to Villanelle, pointedly ignoring Janie. “Someone I want you to meet,” she says, taking Villanelle’s arm and steering her away.
“What are hairy crabs?”
“A local delicacy,” says Mikki. “Unlike that little prostitute.”
She introduces Villanelle to a handsome young Malaysian man in a seersucker suit. “This is Howard,” she says, clearly anxious for Villanelle’s approval. “Howard, meet Astrid.”
They shake hands, and Villanelle summons the details of her cover story. Astrid Fécamp, twenty-seven-year-old columnist for Bilan21, a French-language investment newsletter. Like all her legends, this one has been very carefully constructed. Should anyone care to
