Villanelle is about to head southwards towards the French Concession when a thought occurs to her. Within minutes, the scooter is puttering to a halt at the foot of a building adjacent to the Sea Bird Hotel. The hotel is unlit except for a small blue neon sign over the entrance. Villanelle knows which room is Eve’s; Konstantin’s surveillance people have watched her come and go since the night she and Simon arrived.
Silently, Villanelle climbs up the side of the hotel, the antique pipework and ironwork balconies offering easy hand- and footholds even in the near-darkness, and slips feet-first through the open, third-floor window.
For almost two minutes she crouches there, unmoving. Then she steps soundlessly towards the bed.
Eve’s clothes have been hung over a chair, and Villanelle gently runs the back of her hand over the black silk cocktail dress before lifting it to her face. It smells, very faintly, of scent, perspiration and traffic-fumes.
Eve’s lying with her mouth slightly open and one arm flung across the pillow. She’s wearing a flesh-coloured camisole, and without make-up looks unexpectedly vulnerable. Kneeling beside her, Villanelle listens to the whisper of her breath, and inhales her warm smell. Noting the faint tremor of Eve’s mouth, she touches her tongue to her own upper lip which has begun, very faintly, to throb.
“My enemy,” she murmurs in Russian, touching Eve’s hair. “Moy vrag.”
Almost as an afterthought, she searches the room. There’s a combination-locked briefcase chained to the bed she decides to leave alone. But on the bedside table, there’s a pretty, gilt-clasped eternity bracelet, and this Villanelle takes.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and with a last look at Eve slips silently out of the window. As she goes she hears the distant siren of an ambulance and the whooping of police cars. But Eve, for now, does not stir.
It’s five weeks later, and at midday the grey sky over the Dever Research Station promises rain. Set in sixty acres outside the village of Bullington in Hampshire, the former Logistics Corps barracks appears from the outside to comprise little more than a cluster of dilapidated red-brick blocks and prefabricated huts. Chain-link fencing topped with razor wire and signs prohibiting photography lend the place a grimly uninviting aspect.
Despite its neglected air Dever is an active station, classified as a top-secret government asset. Among other functions, it acts as a base for E Squadron, a Special Forces unit whose role is to conduct deniable operations in support of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Identifying himself at the gatehouse, Richard Edwards parks his thirty-year-old S-class Mercedes on an area of cracked tarmac. With the exception of a couple of security personnel who are making an unhurried circuit of the perimeter, the place appears deserted. Making his way past the main administration block, Richard enters a low, windowless building. Descending to the underground firing range, he finds Eve field-stripping a Glock 19 pistol under the watchful eye of Calum Dennis, the station armourer.
“So how are we doing?” he enquires, when the slide, spring, barrel, frame and magazine have been neatly lined up on the gun-mat.
“Getting there,” says Calum.
Eve stares fixedly down the range. “Can I try that last drill again?”
“Sure,” says Calum, handing Richard a pair of ear-defenders.
“Ready when you are,” says Eve, putting on her own ear-defenders.
Calum types a series of instructions into a laptop, and as he hits Enter, the range is plunged into darkness. Fifteen seconds pass, during which the only sound is the sigh of the ventilators and a metallic clicking as Eve assembles the Glock. Then a target, a human torso, is briefly illuminated at the far end of the range and she snaps off two shots, the muzzle flash bright in the darkness. Four more static targets appear, and Eve fires paired shots at each. The final target moves from side to side, and she discharges the last five rounds in her magazine in fast succession.
“Well…” Calum says and smiles faintly, lowering a pair of binoculars. “His afternoon’s fucked.”
Outside, an hour later, Eve’s walking Richard back to his car. Rain’s falling in a thin mist, darkening her hair.
“You don’t have to do any of this,” he tells her. “By rights, I should take you off this investigation. Sort you out with an official position in the Service.”
“It’s too late, Richard. That woman killed Simon, and I want her for it.”
“You don’t know that. The police report said it was almost certainly a Triad hit, and we know that Janie Chou person he hooked up with had links to organised crime.”
“Richard, please, don’t treat me like an idiot, the Triads don’t chop up tourists. That bitch killed Simon just as surely as she killed Kedrin and the others. I saw his body, she almost beheaded him.”
He unlocks the Mercedes. Stands there for a moment, head bowed. “Promise me one thing, Eve. That if you find her, you won’t go anywhere near her. And I mean anywhere.”
She looks away, expressionless.
“That weapon you insist on carrying. Don’t go thinking that a couple of decent groupings on the range gives you any kind of licence to take chances. It doesn’t.”
“Richard, the reason that I’ve spent the last ten days here at Dever is that she knows who I am. Killing Simon was a message, addressed to me. She was saying: I can take you, and the people you care about, any fucking time I want…” Eve pats the Glock, now holstered at her side. “I’ve seen what she can do, and I need to be ready, it’s that simple.”
He shakes his head. “I should never have got you involved. It was a grave mistake.”
“Well, I am involved. And the only way that this thing is
