Villanelle glances at him, swallows a mouthful of vintage Moët et Chandon, and turns her attention to the woman. Seated beside her husband, she has dark eyes and hair the colour of summer wheat. She is, at a guess, in her late thirties. Villanelle places her champagne flute on a side table, beside an arrangement of white roses, then takes the woman’s slender wrists and draws her to her feet. For a few moments they dance together, the only sound the murmur of the evening traffic in the Place de la Concorde.
Softly, Villanelle’s lips brush those of the other woman, and her husband shifts appreciatively in his chair. One by one, Villanelle undoes the half-dozen buttons of the woman’s pleated shift dress, which falls soundlessly to the floor. The woman’s hands move towards Villanelle’s face, but Villanelle gently forces them down: she wants total control here.
Soon the woman is naked, and stands there tremulous and expectant. Closing her eyes, Villanelle runs her hand over the woman’s hair, inhales her scent, explores the soft curves of her body. As her fingers move downwards she hears herself breathing a long-unspoken name, murmuring half-remembered endearments in Russian. The years and her surroundings fall away, and once again she is in the flat on Komsomolsky Prospekt, and Anna is there, smiling her sad smile.
‘Tell her she’s a dirty bitch,’ says the man. ‘Une vraie salope.’
Villanelle opens her eyes. Catches sight of herself in the overmantel mirror. The slicked-back hair, the raking cheekbones, the permafrost gaze. She frowns. This isn’t working for her. The woman whose legs she’s parting is a stranger, and her husband’s pleasure is repulsive. Abruptly, Villanelle disengages, and wipes her fingers on the roses, scattering the floor with petals. Then she walks out of the suite.
From the taxi, she watches as the illuminated shopfronts of the rue de Rivoli glide past. It’s as if she’s in a silent film, detached from her surroundings, disconnected from experience and sensation. She’s felt like this for a couple of weeks now, since coming back from England, and it worries her, although the worry itself is something vague, something she can’t quite bring into focus.
Perhaps it’s a delayed reaction to the killing of Konstantin. Villanelle is not given to self-pity, but when you’re ordered to kill your handler, who not only discovered and trained you but is also your friend, insofar as such things are possible, it’s disconcerting. She’s only human, after all. Now that Konstantin is gone, Villanelle misses him. His judgements could be brutal, he castigated her again and again for her recklessness, but at least he cared enough to make them. And he valued her. He appreciated just how rare a creature she was, with her unblinking savagery and her incapacity for guilt.
As an assassin for the Twelve, Villanelle has always accepted that she will never see the organisation’s grand plan, never be told more of the story than she needs to know. But she’s also aware, because Konstantin repeatedly told her so, that her role is vital. That she’s more than just a trained killer, she’s an instrument of destiny.
Anton, Konstantin’s replacement, has so far failed to give Villanelle the impression that he thinks of her as more than an employee. He dispatched the kill orders for Yevtukh and Cradle in the usual way, via innocuous-looking steganographically encrypted emails, but he didn’t thank her afterwards, as Konstantin always did, which Villanelle considers just plain rude. Not even the fun she’s having with Eve makes up for the fact that Anton is shaping up to be a thoroughly unsatisfactory handler.
The taxi draws up to the kerb in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Villanelle’s scooter is parked opposite the club where she met the couple. The club’s still open, and the lamps flanking the entrance still dimly glowing, but she doesn’t give the place a second glance. Rocking the scooter off its stand, she kick-starts the engine and glides unhurriedly into the traffic.
Villanelle doesn’t go straight back to her apartment, but heads for La Muette. For ten minutes she threads the narrow streets, her gaze flickering between her wing mirror and the vehicles ahead of her, all senses alert. She varies her speed, pretends to stall at a green traffic light, and at one point, deliberately drives in the wrong direction down the tiny, one-way Impasse de Labiche. Finally, satisfied that she is not being followed, she turns westwards to the Porte de Passy, and the building where she lives.
After parking the Vespa in the underground car park beside her silver-grey Audi, she takes the lift to the sixth floor, and climbs a short flight of stairs to the entrance of her rooftop apartment. She’s about to disarm the electronic locking system when she hears a faint, distressed mewing from the stairs behind her. It’s a kitten, one of several belonging to the building’s housekeeper, Marta, who lives on the fifth floor. Carefully scooping up the tiny creature, Villanelle strokes and calms it before ringing Marta’s bell.
The housekeeper is effusive in her thanks. She’s always liked the quiet young woman from the sixième étage. She’s clearly extremely busy, judging by how often she’s away, but she always finds a smile for Marta. She’s a caring person, unlike so many of her generation.
When all the niceties have been observed, and the other kittens and their mother admired and cooed over, Villanelle returns to the sixth floor. Locking the door of the apartment behind her, she is finally enfolded in silence. The apartment, with its walls of faded sea-green and French blue, is spacious and restful. The furniture is mid-twentieth century, worn but stylish, with several pieces by the designer Eileen Gray. There’s a scattering of minor post-Impressionist paintings which Villanelle has never examined,
