But Howard is too busy lavishing compliments on Mikki to concern himself with such minutiae. “Fuchsia!” he breathes, standing back to admire her Hervé Léger cocktail dress. “The perfect colour for you.”
Privately, Villanelle thinks the colour a disaster. Against her pale ivory complexion it makes Mikki look like Howard’s mother. But perhaps that’s what Howard likes.
“So what do you do?” Villanelle asks. “Are you in the fashion business?”
“Not as such. I have a concept spa in Xintiandi.”
“It’s heaven,” Mikki breathes. “There’s a rock garden and an Evian ice fountain and Buddhist monks to align your chakras and do your hair.”
“Sounds fabulous. I’m sure my chakras are all shot to fuck.”
“Well then.” Howard smiles. “You must come visit.”
As soon as she can decently extract herself, Villanelle leaves them alone. Circulating, Martini glass in hand, she soon finds herself face to face with the sharks again. And, moments later, with Janie Chou.
“Come with me,” Janie says, her features soft in the lunar glow of the tank. “Someone wanna meet you.”
“Who?”
“Come.” Her slim hand takes Villanelle’s.
In a dim-lit alcove, a woman is sitting alone, scrolling through the messages on her phone. She’s Eurasian, and when she looks up to dismiss Janie with a casual sweep of one hand, Villanelle sees that she has eyes of the palest glass-green.
“Janie’s right,” says the woman. “You’re beautiful. Won’t you sit down?”
Villanelle inclines her head in acceptance. From the woman’s proprietorial manner she guesses that this is Alice Mao.
“So. Do you like my club?”
“It’s… fun. Things could happen here.”
“Trust me, things do.” Amusement touches the glass-green eyes. “Will you have some tea? One of those Martinis is quite enough, in my experience.”
“That would be nice. My name is Astrid, by the way.”
“It suits you. Mine, as you know, is Alice. What is your occupation, Astrid?”
“Financial forecasting. I write for an investors’ newsletter.”
Alice Mao frowns. “Do you now?”
“Yes.” Villanelle holds her gaze. “I do.”
“I’ve met a lot of finance people in my time, Astrid, and none of them is remotely like you.”
“So what am I like?”
“On the basis of our brief acquaintance, I’d say you’re rather like me.”
Villanelle smiles, allowing Alice’s cool regard to flood her veins. Something in the other woman’s features, the way the taut line of her cheekbone softens into the curve of her chin, stirs her. She knows that such feelings are dangerous, but there are times when the secrecy and the almost feral caution with which she has to conduct her life become unbearable.
Alice glances at her phone. She stands, her midnight-blue dress rippling with the same underwater gleam as the sharks. “Follow me.”
She leads Villanelle to a door, and a lift. The noise and the music die, there’s a dizzying ascent, and Villanelle follows Alice into a rooftop apartment as dimly lit as the club. There’s a folding gold-leaf screen, and shadowy contemporary paintings on the walls, but the room is dominated by a dramatic expanse of plate-glass window. Far below them is the city, its sprawling glitter made vague by a shroud of smog.
“The whore of Asia. That’s what they used to call Shanghai. And it’s still true. This apartment, the club, this building… All paid for by sex. Tea?” She indicates a spotlit side table. “It’s Silver Needle from Fuding Province. I think you’ll like it.”
Villanelle sips the pale infusion. It tastes of fragrant, rainswept hillsides.
“I could make you very rich,” says Alice. “I have clients who would pay a great deal of money for a night with you.”
Villanelle looks out into the night. She can smell the other woman’s scent, and her hair. “And you, Alice. What would you pay for me? Right here and now?”
Alice looks at her, her smile unwavering. “Fifty thousand kuai.”
“A hundred thousand,” says Villanelle.
Alice tilts her head thoughtfully, then steps round to face Villanelle. Green eyes meet grey. “For a hundred thousand kuai,” she says, undoing the silk-covered button at Villanelle’s collar, “I would expect a lot.”
Villanelle nods, and stands there, unmoving, as Alice’s fingers move down her qipao dress. She closes her eyes, feels the silk lifted from her shoulders, and her underwear removed. Naked, she feels the floor tilt beneath her feet. She tries to speak Alice’s name but it comes out as Anna, and when she tries to whisper “fuck me,” what she actually says is “kill me.”
Four days later Eve Polastri and Simon Mortimer step from the air-conditioned cool of the Pudong airport arrivals building into the 30-degree heat of the taxi rank. It’s midnight. Exhaust-tainted humidity rolls over them like a wave. Eve feels her scalp moisten and her H&M cotton twinset wilt on her shoulders.
Freckled and scrappy-haired, her features free of make-up, Eve knows that she’s not the sort of woman who gets noticed. Since landing an hour earlier the only person who’s given her a second glance is the Chinese customs officer who checked her passport, perhaps struck by the quiet intensity of her gaze. Both she and Simon look older than their years. Their fellow British Airways travellers, if they’ve given the matter any thought at all, have assumed that they are a married couple.
Simon glances at her affectionately. She reminds him of a starling or a thrush, one of those birds that patrol the lawn with sharp eyes and stabbing beaks. The hunter-killers of the intelligence world, like those of the animal kingdom, often have drab plumage.
Eve finds her own appearance mystifying. “Do you think I could be pretty?” she asked her mother, shortly before going up to Cambridge to read Criminology and Forensic Psychology.
“I think you’re very clever,” her mother replied.
It took her husband, Niko, a Polish-born maths teacher, to tell Eve that she was beautiful. “Your eyes are like the Baltic Sea,” he said, drawing a finger down her transparently pale cheek. “The colour of petrol.”
“You’re such a bullshitter.”
“Only when I want sex.”
“A bullshitter and a pervert.”
He shrugged. “I
