It’s an impression that’s confirmed as they cross the bridge. Below them, boats festooned with tiny lights ply the dark expanse of the river. To their right, in floodlit splendour, waits the Bund.
“How d’you feel?” Eve asks him.
He leans forward, his buff linen jacket folded on his lap. “I’m not sure. Things have got very strange recently.”
“She’s out there,” Eve murmurs. “Our Black Rose.”
“We don’t know for certain that it was her who killed the hacker.”
“Oh, it was her all right.”
“Assuming it was. Why would she stick around?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“No. To be honest with you, I can’t.”
“For me, Simon. She’s waiting for me.”
“Now you’re actually starting to sound mad. I’m putting it down to jet lag.”
“You wait.”
He closes his eyes. Five minutes later they’re at the hotel.
It’s only when she’s in her room, a functional space whose off-white walls are decorated with a single out-of-date calendar, that she allows herself to think about Niko. The phone call after Edwards left the office was horrible. It would have been easy enough to think up a cover story, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie, and told Niko simply that she had to go away for a few days. He listened, said “I see,” and hung up. He has no idea where she is, or when she will be coming home. Eve stares out of the window. There’s a road, and beyond it the dark gleam of water. A cluster of houseboats, showing dim lights.
She loves Niko, and she’s hurting him deeply, and this is especially agonising because, for all his wisdom and experience, she can’t help thinking of herself as his protector. She’s guarding him from the truth about herself. From the side of her that he knows exists, but that he chooses not to acknowledge. The side of her that is utterly absorbed by the woman she is hunting, and the dark, refracted world in which she exists.
“They’re staying at the Sea Bird Hotel on Suzhou Creek,” says Konstantin. “They got in last night.”
Villanelle nods. The two of them are sitting in the tenth-floor apartment in the French Concession. On the table between them is a bottle of Tibet Glacier mineral water, two glasses, and a packet of Kosmos cigarettes.
“Which means that they’re not here officially,” Konstantin continues. “The Sea Bird is dirt cheap, by Shanghai standards.”
Villanelle stares out at the pale glare of the sky. “So why do you think they’ve come?”
“We both know why they’ve come. The Polastri woman was asking questions in London after Kedrin’s death, as I told you at the time. If she’s here, it’s because she’s made the right connections.”
“Which means that she’s smart. Or lucky. And that I need to get a close look at her.”
“No. That would be reckless. I’m pretty sure Polastri’s got no real clue what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous. Leave her to me, and go back to Paris. We need to wind this operation up. The hacker’s dead, and you need to disappear.”
“I can’t do that.”
His expression hardens. “This is not how I want things to be between us, Villanelle. I don’t want to have to negotiate every decision.”
“I know you don’t. You want me to be your killer doll. Wind me up, point me at the target, bang bang and back in my box.” She looks him in the eye. “Sorry, but that’s not how I function these days.”
“I see. So how do you function, exactly?”
“Like a thinking, feeling human being.”
He looks away. “Please, Villanelle, don’t talk to me about feelings. You’re better than that. We’re better than that.”
“Are we?”
“Yes. We see the world for what it is. A place where there’s only one law: survival. You survive very comfortably, do you not?”
“Maybe.”
“And why’s that? Because give or take a couple of reckless incidents, you’ve obeyed the rules. What did I tell you in London?”
She looks away irritably. “That I’m never completely safe. And that I should never fully trust anyone.”
“Exactly. Remember that, and you’re fine. Forget it and you’re fucked.” He reaches for the cigarettes. “Forget it and we’re all fucked.”
Frowning, Villanelle walks to the plate-glass door to the balcony and pulls it open. Humid air fills the room.
“Worried about your health?” Konstantin asks, lighting a Kosmos. “I’d have thought a bullet in the back of the head was a more pressing concern.”
She looks at him. The acrid tobacco smell reminds her of their earliest days together. In Russia, he must have smoked at least a packet a day. “So who’s going to shoot me? Eve Polastri? I don’t think so.”
“Trust me, Villanelle, her people will kill you without a second thought. One word from Polastri to Edwards, and MI6 will send in an E Squadron action team. Which is why you have to get out, now. Shanghai’s a big place if you’re Han Chinese, but it’s a very small town if you’re not. You could run into her anywhere.”
“I won’t, don’t worry. But I do have a way of getting to her. And perhaps of finding out what she knows.”
“Really?” He exhales cigarette smoke, which drifts away on the warm breeze. “And would you kindly tell me how?”
She does so, and for a long time he’s silent. “It’s too dangerous,” he says eventually. “Too many variables. We could end up attracting exactly the wrong kind of attention.”
“You once told me that kind of operation was a speciality of yours.” She looks at him speculatively. “Fear, sex and money, you said. The three great persuaders.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he repeats.
She looks away. “We might never get this chance again. We can’t afford not to take it.”
He stands up. Walks out onto the balcony. Finishes his cigarette, taking his time, and flicks the end out into space. “If we do it,” he says. “You stay out of sight. I make the play. Agreed?”
She grins, her expression fierce.
“Shit,” says Eve, staring at her phone. “That’s a bad start.”
“Tell me,” says Simon.
She sits down on her unmade hotel bed. The
