‘Maria?’ Villanelle raises her head from the pillow. ‘Maria works for you? Why the fuck didn’t you—’
‘Because you didn’t need to know. As it happened, there was a high-altitude blizzard that night, and no emergency helicopters could get up there. So the guests were forced to spend the night of the explosion in the hotel, which apparently caused a certain amount of panic and distress. At least Linder’s body was properly refrigerated. After you blew out the plate-glass window, the temperature in that room must have dropped to minus 20 degrees.’
‘And me?’
‘Maria kept an eye on you overnight. At first light I chartered a helicopter, and had you picked up before the police got there.’
‘No one thought this was weird?’
‘The guests were asleep. The hotel staff assumed it was official, and given the state you were in, were probably glad to see you go. The last thing they needed was a second corpse on their hands.’
‘I don’t remember any of this.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘At the Felsnadel? You don’t need to worry about that. Your part is done.’
‘No, what happens to me? Are the police going to turn up?’
‘No. I drove you here and checked you in myself. As far as everyone at the clinic is concerned, you’re a French tourist convalescing after a driving accident. They’re very discreet here, as they should be, given the price. Apparently they get a lot of post-operative cosmetic surgery patients. There’s some sort of treatment where they pack your face in snow.’
Villanelle touches the dressings on her face. The scabbing cuts are starting to itch. ‘Linder’s dead, as you requested. I’m worth everything you pay me and more.’
Seating himself on the bedside chair, Anton leans forward. ‘He’s dead, as you say, and we appreciate that. But right now it’s time to get your shit together, and fast. Because thanks to your antics in Venice with Lara Farmanyants, and your Hello! magazine approach to assassination, we have a major fucking problem. Namely that Eve Polastri is currently in Moscow, discussing Konstantin Orlov with the FSB.’
‘I see.’
‘You see? Is that the best you can come up with? For fuck’s sake, Villanelle. When you’re good, you’re brilliant, so why do you have to act up in this childish, narcissistic fashion? It’s almost as if you want Polastri to catch and kill you.’
‘Right.’ She reaches for the Voltarol tablets, and he snatches them away.
‘That’s enough of those. If you’re in pain, I want you to remember that it’s wholly self-inflicted. All this drama you create. Speedboats, made-up aristocratic titles, exploding dildos . . . You’re not living in a fucking TV series, Villanelle.’
‘Really? I thought I was.’
He throws the cabin bag onto the bed. ‘New clothes, passport, documents. I want you in London and ready to work by the end of the week.’
‘And what will I be doing there?’
‘Terminating this shitstorm once and for all.’
‘By which you mean?’
‘Killing Eve.’
Escorted by the men who were in the FSB van, Eve walks into the building. The interior is not quite dark, as it appeared from outside. To one side is a battered steel desk behind which a uniformed officer is seated, eating a meatball sandwich by the light of a desk lamp. As they enter he looks up, and puts down his sandwich.
‘Angliskiy spion,’ says the man in the leather cap, slapping a crumpled document onto the desk.
The officer looks at Eve, reaches unhurriedly for a rubber stamp, inks it from a violet pad in a tin, and applies it to the document. ‘Tak,’he says.‘Dobro pozhalovat’ na Lubyanku.’
‘He says “Welcome to Lubyanka,” ’ Leather-cap informs her.
‘Tell him I’ve always wanted to visit.’
Neither man smiles. The officer lifts the receiver of an ancient desk telephone, and dials a three-figure number. A minute later two heavily built men in combat trousers and T-shirts arrive, look Eve up and down, and beckon her to follow them.
‘I have no shoes,’ she tells Leather-cap, pointing at her dirty bare feet, and he shrugs. The desk officer has already returned to his sandwich. She accompanies the two men down a long, sour-smelling corridor, through a pair of double doors, and into a courtyard littered with cigarette ends. High buildings, some of yellowish brick, some faced with weather-stained cement, rise on all sides. Uniformed and plain-clothes personnel lean against the walls, smoking, and stare expressionlessly at Eve as she passes. The two men lead her to a low door.
Inside is a tiled hall and a trestle table behind which two male officers are lounging, their crested caps tilted at jaunty angles on their shaved heads. One looks up briefly as they enter, then returns to his perusal of a body-building magazine. The other unhurriedly rises and, advancing on Eve, gestures that she should empty her possessions into a plastic tray on the table. She does so, divesting herself of her watch, phone, passport, hotel room keys and wallet. She’s then made to remove her parka, and subjected to a body-scan with a hand-held metal detector. She asks for the jacket back, but is refused, leaving her shivering in a thin sweater, vest and jeans.
From the reception hall she’s led to a flight of stairs giving on to a small landing. From here a dim-lit, concrete-walled corridor leads into the building’s interior. The men walk fast, purposefully, and in silence. Their necks are thick and the back of their heads bristled. Pig-men, Eve thinks. An increasingly painful stabbing in her right heel tells her that she’s trodden on something sharp. The pig-men cannot fail to see her limping but they don’t slow down.
‘Pozhalusta,’ she says. ‘Please.’
They ignore her, and Eve’s hope that the situation is stage-managed, and designed to deliver her to Richard’s contact, begins to ebb. The corridor turns at right-angles several times, each change of direction delivering an identical vista of bare bulbs and concrete walls. Finally they reach an atrium, and a large service elevator. The air smells of garbage and decay; the stench catches in Eve’s throat. All this sends a very bad message. Is she
