No one ever visits her here. Anne-Laure is under the impression that Villanelle lives in Versailles, and works as a currency trader. Her neighbours in the building know her as a courteous but distant figure, often absent. Her service charges and property taxes are paid from a corporate account in Geneva, and in the unlikely event that anyone were to investigate this, they would find themselves drawn into a web of front companies and cut-outs so complex as to be effectively impenetrable. But no one has ever done so.
In the kitchen Villanelle prepares a plate of yellowtail sashimi and buttered toast, then takes a bottle of Grey Goose vodka from the freezer and pours herself a double measure. Seating herself at a table in front of the long, east-facing plate-glass window, she gazes at the glittering city spread out below her, and thinks about the games she’d like to play with Eve. This is precisely the sort of reckless behaviour Konstantin was always warning her about. It leads to mistakes, and mistakes get you killed. But what’s the point of a game if the stakes aren’t high? Villanelle wants to shatter Eve’s protective shell and manipulate the vulnerable being inside. She wants her pursuer to know that she’s been out-thought and outplayed, and to witness her capitulation. She wants to own her.
Equally importantly, Villanelle wants a new assignment. Something more demanding than bread-and-butter kills like Yevtukh and Cradle. She wants a well-protected, high-status target. A really challenging set-up. It’s time to show Anton just how good she is.
Flipping open the laptop on the kitchen counter, she opens the homepage of an innocuous-looking social media account, and posts an image of a cat wearing sunglasses. Anton’s tradecraft, she’s discovered, often takes a surprisingly sentimental turn.
Three days after his abduction on the A303, Dennis Cradle is found dead by National Trust volunteers, who are removing a fallen tree from a weir pool on the River Wey. Brief notices appear in the local papers, and the finding of Weybridge Coroner’s Court is death by misadventure. The victim, it is reported, was a Home Office employee who may have been suffering from amnesia. He appeared to have fallen into the river, struck his head on a rock or other hard surface, lost consciousness, and drowned.
‘Obviously our killer didn’t make it look too much like murder,’ says Richard Edwards, when he visits the Goodge Street office on the evening of the inquest. ‘But I’m guessing Thames House had to call in a few favours to get that result.’
‘I knew she’d kill him,’ says Eve.
‘It did always look probable,’ Richard admits.
‘But didn’t Cradle tell you he was authorised to try and recruit you?’ asks Lance. ‘Wouldn’t the Twelve have let that play out?’
‘Whatever they told him, I doubt they believed he could pull it off,’ says Eve. ‘The speed with which they deployed V suggests that they decided to kill him the moment he signalled he’d been compromised.’
‘Poor bugger,’ says Billy, reaching for a half-eaten Cornish pasty.
‘Poor bugger nothing,’ says Eve. ‘I’m sure it was him who blocked me when I requested police protection for Viktor Kedrin. He personally enabled that murder.’
‘So let me just run through where we are now,’ says Richard, laying his coat over Eve’s desk, and pulling up a chair. ‘Stop me if I make any unfounded assumptions, or you want to add anything.’
The others make their own seating arrangements beneath the strip light’s sepulchral glow. Taking a bite from his pasty, Billy coughs crumbs over his knees.
‘Fuck’s sakes,’ murmurs Lance, wrinkling his nose. ‘What’s in that thing? Dogshit?’
Leaning forward, Richard steeples his fingers. ‘While at MI5, Eve identifies a series of murders, apparently by a woman, of prominent figures in politics and organised crime. The motive for the murders is unclear. Viktor Kedrin, a controversial Moscow activist, comes to give a talk in London, and when Eve requests protection for him, she is blocked by a superior, whom we may reasonably assume to have been Dennis Cradle. Kedrin is duly murdered, and as a consequence of his death Eve is dismissed from MI5. It’s probably Cradle, once again, who engineers this.
‘A Chinese People’s Army hacker is killed in Shanghai, reportedly by a woman. Eve and Simon Mortimer share intel with Jin Qiang, who returns the compliment by providing evidence that a multimillion-pound payment has been made by a Middle Eastern bank to one Tony Kent. Jin clearly knows more than he’s letting on, and lo and behold, when we investigate Kent, we discover that he’s an associate of Dennis Cradle.
‘While Eve and Simon are in Shanghai, Simon is murdered. We’re not sure why, but possibly to intimidate Eve. We know that the woman who signs herself V was in Shanghai at the time, as she later produces a bracelet she stole from Eve’s hotel room there.
‘Investigation of Dennis Cradle shows that he is being paid huge sums by an unknown source. We confront him, and he tells Eve of the existence of a covert but rapidly growing organisation named the Twelve, and attempts to recruit her, apparently having been given the green light to do so. In other words, he has contacted the Twelve to tell them he has been compromised. Their actual intention, however, is to kill him, which they duly do.’
‘Query,’ says Lance, dropping tobacco into a cigarette paper and beginning to roll. ‘Why do they, the Twelve, let Cradle try to recruit Eve? And in doing so, tell her so much about the organisation?’ He licks the paper and places the cigarette behind his ear. ‘Why don’t they tell him to stall? Standard resistance to questioning?’
‘I’ve asked myself the same question,’ says Eve. ‘And I think it’s because they know Cradle’s not stupid. If they tell him to stall, he’ll suspect that they mean to kill him, and he’ll cut and run. If they give him a specific job to do – turning the situation round and recruiting me – he’ll think they trust
