But there she is ahead, and he drives himself after her. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Has he just fallen hook, line and sinker for the oldest scam in the book? If Eve and Richard Edwards discover any of this, any of it, he’s finished. Forget the sheer, gobsmacking unprofessionalism, the humiliation would be off the scale. Honey-trapped by a nightclub tranny. A chick with a dick. What a 24-carat twat he’s going to look.
There’s just one chance. If he can get to her, and somehow get his phone back… Perhaps, just perhaps, Janie’s exactly what she says she is. Perhaps she simply couldn’t resist the chance to make a few bucks by stealing a high-tech foreign phone. Please, he prays, as he dodges and weaves through the crowds, dragging the muggy night air into his lungs, please let that be the case. Let it be something forgivable. Let me get back with Janie. Because he knows that as long as he lives, he will never experience anything like the dreamy bliss of their intertwined limbs.
The streets are narrowing now, and the crowds thinning. Instead of street lights, there are loops of low-wattage bulbs strung between half-completed dwellings. Incurious faces look up from beneath sagging awnings and watch him as he passes. There are still a few food stalls operating, a few woks sizzling over charcoal fires, and Simon slows to avoid a rickety table supporting a plastic bowl of writhing, living creatures.
Janie’s still about forty yards ahead—Christ, she can move—and now they’re in some kind of new-build estate. Rendered-brick housing blocks intersected by a grid of unlit lanes. The area’s almost deserted, and if she turns now, she’ll see him.
Shrinking into the shadows Simon checks his watch. It’s almost 2 a.m. The temptation to call out to Janie is agonising, overwhelming. But he has to know the truth.
At the entrance to one of the buildings she presses a buzzer. After perhaps half a minute, a figure steps into the dim pool of light, and Simon knows immediately that the scenario is infinitely worse than any he’s imagined. The man’s not Chinese. He looks Russian or Eastern European, and he’s got hardcore intelligence operative written all over him. Even at a distance, he radiates a pitiless authority. I’m fucked, Simon tells himself, as Janie hands the man the MI6-issue phone. I’m totally and utterly fucked.
Too wretched to be afraid, he forces himself to note every detail of the man’s appearance. There’s a brief conversation, and then he and Janie vanish into the building together. After a minute, Simon warily approaches the entrance, looking for a name or a number. There doesn’t appear to be either, but he’s confident he will be able to find the place again.
Briefly, he considers simply telling Eve that he has lost his phone, that it’s been stolen, and not saying anything about Janie. But he knows that it’s not in him to lie. He’ll tell her everything and offer his resignation, effective immediately. Perhaps she’ll accept it and send him back to London for what will undoubtedly be a highly unpleasant debriefing by Richard Edwards. Perhaps—and his heart leaps sadly at the prospect—they’ll decide to keep him in play. Feed him back to Janie to find out who’s running her.
He’s fifty metres from the building when he hears his name called.
He stops, sure that he’s mistaken. But there it is again, low and clear on the warm, damp air. Is it Janie? How could it be? As far as she’s concerned, he’s asleep in her flat.
“Simon, over here.”
The voice is coming from the unlit lane on his left. Heart pounding, he takes half-a-dozen tentative steps, senses movement in the darkness, catches an incongruous hint of French perfume on the night air.
“Who’s there?” he asks, his voice unsteady.
He has a momentary impression of a figure exploding from the shadows, of the whirling arc of the chukabocho, and then the carbon steel blade chops through his throat with such force that his head is almost severed.
Rising on her toes like a matador, eyes demonic, Villanelle sidesteps the black swathe of blood thrown from the falling body. Simon’s limbs shudder, a bubbling sound issues from his neck, and as he dies Villanelle feels a rush of feeling so intense, so icily numbing, it almost brings her to her knees. She crouches there for a moment, waves of sensation coursing through her. Then, wrenching the chukabocho free of the corpse and dropping it into a plastic shopping bag, followed by her bloodied surgical gloves, she walks swiftly away.
Ten minutes later she spots a battered Kymco scooter parked at the foot of an apartment block. Disabling the ignition lock and kick-starting the engine, she heads northwards, keeping to the narrower roads, until she reaches Nan Suzhou Lu, where she drops the plastic bag into the dark swirl of the creek. It’s a beautiful night—the sky purple, the city dim gold—and Villanelle feels vibrantly, thrillingly alive. Killing the English spy has restored something in her. The Zhang Lei action had its professional satisfactions, but the moment itself lacked impact. Taking out Simon Mortimer was a return to first principles. A violent, artistic kill. The chukabocho, weighed in the hand, was not so very different from the Spetsnaz machete her father taught her to use when she was a teenager. Unwieldy to begin with, but a lethal thing when correctly deployed.
The beauty of it is, she had no choice. Konstantin had ordered Janie to make sure that she was never followed to a rendezvous, and to drug the Englishman if necessary. But the little hooker fucked up, and once Simon Mortimer saw Konstantin, he couldn’t be allowed to live. That’s the way she’s going to argue
