‘That sensation’s called paraesthesia,’ Marina explains in Russian, sipping her wine. ‘It’s a symptom of aconitine poisoning.’
Rinat stares at her, his eyes widening.
‘It was in the limoncello. In less than an hour you’ll die of either heart failure or respiratory arrest, and looking at you right now my money’s on heart failure. Until then you can expect—’
Twisting convulsively in the ironwork chair, Rinat vomits for a second time and then voids his bowels, not silently, into his ivory silk slacks.
‘Exactly. And as for the rest, I won’t spoil the surprise.’ Turning, she waves to the other woman. ‘Lara, detka, come over here.’
Lara lays down the spade and walks unhurriedly over. ‘I’ve pretty much finished digging out that grave,’ she says, and after some thought selects one of the pastries from the box. ‘Oh my God, kotik, these are so good.’
‘Aren’t they heaven? I got them from that pasticceria in San Marco where we had the cream cake.’
‘We must go back there.’ Lara glances at Rinat, who has fallen off his chair and is convulsing on the ground, blowflies buzzing around his soiled slacks. ‘How long till he’s actually dead, do you think?’
Marina wrinkles her nose. ‘Half an hour or so? It’ll be good to get him in the ground. That smell’s really putting me off my lunch.’
‘It is a bit rank.’
‘On the other hand we could save his life if he tells us what we need to know. I’ve got an antidote for the aconitine.’
Rinat’s eyes widen. ‘Pozhaluysta,’ he whispers, tears and vomit streaking his face. ‘Please. Whatever you need.’
‘I’ll tell you what I need right now,’ says Lara thoughtfully, selecting another pastry. ‘I’ve had this tune going round and round in my head all morning, and it’s literally driving me crazy. Dada dada dada dada da dadadada . . .’
‘Posledniy raz,’ whispers Rinat, agonisedly contracting into a foetal position.
‘Oh my God, that’s right. How totally embarrassing. My mum used to sing along to that song. I bet yours did too, detka.’
‘To be honest, she didn’t have much to sing about. Unless you count terminal cancer.’ The tip of her tongue flicks to the scar on her upper lip. ‘But we’re wasting Rinat’s last precious minutes.’ She crouches down so that she’s directly in his line of sight. ‘What I need from you, ublyudok, is answers, and I need them fast. One lie, one fucking hesitation, and you can shit yourself to death.’
‘The truth. I swear it.’
‘OK then. The man you kidnapped in Odessa. Why did you take him?’
‘We were ordered by the SVR, the Russian secret—’
‘I know who the fucking SVR are. Why?’
‘They called me in to one of their centres. Told me—’ He’s racked by another spasm, and a bubble of yellowish drool forms on his lips.
‘Clock’s ticking, Rinat. What did they tell you?’
‘To . . . take that man Konstantin. Take him to the villa in Fontanka.’
‘So why did you do what they asked?’
‘Because they . . . Oh my God, please . . .’ His hands claw at his arms and chest as the paraesthesia renews its assault.
‘Because they?’
‘They . . . they knew things. About Zolotoye Bratstvo, the Golden Brotherhood. That we’d sent girls from Ukraine to Turkey, Hungary, Czech Republic for sex work. They had interviews, documents, they could have destroyed me. Everything I’d—’
‘And the SVR interrogated this man Konstantin at your house in Fontanka?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they get the answers they wanted?’
‘I don’t know. They questioned him but they . . . Oh God . . .’ He retches, spits bile, and his bladder empties. The smell, and the furious buzzing of the blowflies, intensifies. On the other side of the table Lara helps herself to a third pastry.
‘They . . .?’
‘They made me keep away. All I heard was one question that they kept shouting at him. “Who are the Dvenadtsat, the Twelve?” ’
‘Did he tell them?’
‘I don’t know, they . . . They beat him up pretty badly.’
‘So he talked, or not?’
‘I don’t know. They kept asking this same question.’
‘So who or what are the Twelve?’
‘I don’t know. I swear it.’
‘Govno. Bullshit.’
He retches again, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Please,’ he whimpers.
‘Please what?’
‘You said . . .’
‘I know what I said, mudak. Tell me about the Twelve.’
‘All I’ve heard is rumours.’
‘Go on.’
‘They’re supposed to be some kind of . . . secret organisation. Very powerful, very ruthless. That’s all I’ve heard, I swear.’
‘What do they want?’
‘How the fuck would I know?’
She nods, her expression thoughtful. ‘So how old were those girls? The ones the Golden Brotherhood sent to Europe?’
‘Sixteen, minimum. We don’t do—’
‘You don’t do kids? What are you, a feminist?’
Rinat opens his mouth to answer but convulses, his back arching upwards so that, for a moment, he is supported on his hands and feet like a spider. Then a foot is planted on his chest, forcing him agonisingly to the ground, and the woman he knows as Marina Falieri pulls off her raven-black wig and removes her amber contact lenses. ‘Burn these,’ she tells Lara.
Undisguised, she looks very different. Dark blonde hair, and ice-grey eyes of a fathomless blankness. Not to mention the silenced CZ automatic pistol in her hand. Rinat knows it’s the end, and somehow, with this knowledge, the pain recedes a degree or two. ‘Who are you?’ he whispers. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘My name is Villanelle.’ She points the CZ at his heart. ‘I kill for the Twelve.’
He stares at her, and she fires twice. In the sultry midday air the suppressed detonations sound like the snapping of dead wood.
It doesn’t take long to drag Rinat to the prepared grave and bury him. It’s a hot and unpleasant task, and Villanelle leaves it to Lara. Meanwhile she loads the table, chairs and remains of lunch into the motoscafo. When she returns, it’s with a fuel can. She takes off her T-shirt and jeans, soaks them in gasoline, and places them on the fire that Lara has built, on top of the smouldering remains of the wig.
When Lara has finished burying Rinat, Villanelle orders her to take off her shorts and bikini top. The clean-up takes the best part of an hour, but eventually the clothes have all been burned, the ashes picked through, and all surviving buttons, studs and clips thrown in the lagoon.
‘There’s a bucket in the boat,’ Villanelle murmurs, staring out over the water.
‘What for?’
‘Take a guess?’ She indicates the pungent traces of Rinat’s bodily fluids.
Finally, she’s satisfied, and they go down to the jetty, change into new clothes that Lara has brought, untie the boats from their moorings, and set off on a north-easterly course. The Venice Lagoon is shallow, with an average depth of ten metres, but there are declivities of more than twice this. Not far from the island of Poveglia, the motoscafo’s depth-finder indicates that they are passing over just such a drop-off, and Villanelle takes the opportunity to drop the metal table and chairs, the pickaxe and the spade overboard.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Poveglia was a quarantine station for the crews of ships harbouring the plague. In the early twentieth century it was home to a mental institution where, Venetians say, patients were subjected to sinister experiments. Now abandoned, and reputed to be haunted, the island has a desolate look about it, and tourist craft rarely venture there.
A narrow canal, overhung by foliage, divides Poveglia into two halves. Here, out of sight of any passing vessel, the two women moor the launches. Under Villanelle’s critical eye, Lara wipes every surface of the motosca
fo clean with an anti-DNA Erase spray, and then removes the drain plug, and joins Villanelle in the second launch. It takes twenty minutes for the motoscafo to slip quietly beneath the water and come to rest on the floor of the canal.
‘She’ll be found,’ Villanelle says. ‘But not immediately. We should go to the hotel. We’re supposed to be sisters, right?’
‘Yes, I told them I was picking you up from Marco Polo airport.’
‘Wouldn’t I have luggage?’
‘In the locker.’
Villanelle inspects the calfskin Ferragamo bags. ‘So who are we?’
‘Yulia and Alyona Pinchuk, co-owners of MySugarBaby.com, a dating agency based in Kiev.’
‘Nice. Which am I?’
‘Yulia.’
Villanelle settles back against the cream leather passenger seat of the launch. ‘Let’s go. We’re done here.’
In the restaurant of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido, Villanelle and Lara are sipping pink Mercier champagne, and eating iced frutti di mare from a tiered silver stand. The room, a pillared Moorish fantasia in shades of white and ivory, is not quite full; it’s late in the season and the summer crowd has moved on. There’s an animated buzz of conversation, nevertheless, frequently interrupted by laughter. Beyond the terrace, indistinct in the dusk, is the lagoon, its surface a shade darker than the sky. There’s not a whisper of a breeze.
‘You did well today,’ says Villanelle, spearing a langoustine with her fork.
Lara touches the back of her hand to Villanelle’s warm shoulder. ‘Thank you for mentoring me, kroshka. This whole work experience has been incredibly valuable. I’ve learned so much. Seriously.’
‘You’re certainly starting to dress more stylishly. Not so lesbiskoye porno.’
Lara smiles. In her silk-chiffon dress, with her cropped hair and bared, muscular arms, she looks like some mythical goddess of war.
‘Do you think they’ll be sending you out on solo actions soon?’ Villanelle asks.
‘Possibly. The problem is my languages. Apparently I still speak English like a Russian, so they’ve got me a temporary position as an au pair.’
‘In England?’
‘Yes. Somewhere called Chipping Norton. Have you been there?’
‘No, but I’ve heard of it. It’s one of those dirty-money suburbs like Rublyovka, full of bored housewives snorting cocaine and fucking their tennis coaches. You’ll love it. What does the husband do?’
‘He’s a politik. A Member of Parliament.’
‘In that case you’ll probably have to get him to lick your pussy for kompromat.’
‘I’d rather lick yours.’
‘I know, detka, but work is work. How many kids?’
‘Twin girls. Fifteen.’
‘Well, be careful. Try not to hit them, or not so that it shows. The English are sensitive about that.’
Lara gazes into the oyster shell in her hand, lets a single drop of Tabasco fall into the brine, and watches the oyster’s tiny convulsion. ‘I wanted to ask you something. About today.’
‘Go on.’
‘Why did you have to do that whole poison thing? When you had the gun?’
‘You think I should have just threatened to shoot him if he didn’t talk?’
‘Why not? Much easier.’
‘Think. Play the scenario out in your mind.’
Lara pours the oyster down her throat and gazes out into the soft dusk. ‘Because it’s a stalemate game?’
‘Exactly. They’re tough, these old-school vory, even shit-sacks like Yevtukh, and in that world, face is everything. You can threaten to kill a guy like that if he doesn’t talk, but if he says go fuck yourself, what then? If you kill him, you don’t get his story.’
‘How about you shoot him through the hand or the foot, somewhere super-painful but not life-threatening, and tell him you’ll do the other one if he doesn’t talk?’
‘That’s smarter, but if you’re after the truth, you don’t want your subject in shock from a gunshot wound. People say very weird things when they’re traumatised. The whole point about the poison-antidote play is that it takes the game to him. He’s the one with the hard choice, not you. He may or may not believe you, and by the way there’s no known antidote for a lethal dose of aconitine, but he knows that his only chance of survival is to talk. If he stays silent he definitely dies.’
‘Checkmate.’
‘Exactly. It’s all in the timing. You’ve got to let the poison do its work so that it, and not you, is exerting the pressure. In the end he’ll be so desperate you won’t be able to shut him up.’
Much later, they’re lying in bed. A faint night breeze is agitating the curtains.
‘Thank you for not killing me today,’ Lara murmurs into Villanelle’s hair. ‘I know you considered it.’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because I’m beginning to understand how you work. How you think.’
‘So how do I think?’
‘Well, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you shot Rinat, like you did, and then you shot me, and you put both bodies on the boat and blew it up . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘When the police investigate the explosion, they’d find the remains of Rinat and a woman. And then when they talked to people at Rinat’s hotel they’d find out that he left by boat this morning with a woman.’
‘OK.’
‘So they’d assume that my remains were that woman’s. And that there had been some kind of fatal accident.’
‘And why would I go to all this trouble, detka?’
‘Well, the police wouldn’t look for you, because they’d think you were dead. And I really would be dead. The only person who knows who you are. The only person who knows that you used to be Oxana Vorontsova from Perm.’
‘I’m not going to kill you, Lara. Truly.’
‘But you thought about it.’
‘Maybe for a second or two.’ She turns to face Lara so that they are eye to eye, mouth to mouth, breathing each other’s breath. ‘But not seriously. You’re soon going to be a fully-fledged soldier for the Twelve. They wouldn’t be very pleased if I blew you into little pieces, now would they?’
‘Is that the only reason?’
‘Mmm . . . I’d miss all this.’ She runs her hand down Lara’s hard belly, her fingertips stroking the warm skin.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ Lara says, after a moment. ‘I look at you, and I can hardly believe you’re so perfect. Yet you do such . . .’
‘Such?’
‘Such terrible things.’
‘So will you, trust me.’
‘I’m a soldier, kroshka. You said so yourself. I’m built to fight. But you could have any life you want. You could walk away.’
‘There’s no walking away. And I wouldn’t if I could. I like my life.’
‘Then you’ll die. Sooner or later the Englishwoman will find you.’
‘Eve Polastri? I want her to find me. I want to have some fun with her. I want to roll her under my paw like a cat with a mouse. I want to prick her with my claws.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I’m not mad. I like to play the game. And to win. Polastri’s a player too, that’s why I like her.’
‘Is that the only reason?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe not.’
‘Should I be jealous?’
‘You can if you want. Doesn’t make any difference to me.’
Lara is silent for a moment. ‘You never have any doubts? About any of this?’
‘Should I have?’
‘That moment before you pull the trigger. When the target’s already dead, but doesn’t know it. And then when you close your eyes at night, there they all are. All the dead people, waiting for you . . .’
Villanelle smiles, kisses Lara’s mouth, and slips her hand between her legs. ‘They’re gone, detka. All of them.’ Her fingers begin a delicate dance. ‘The only person who’s waiting for you is me.’
�
��You never see them?’ Lara whispers.
‘Never,’ says Villanelle, sliding her fingers inside her.
‘So do you ever feel . . . anything about them?’ Lara asks, moving against Villanelle’s hand.
‘Sweetie, please. Shut the fuck up.’
They’re almost asleep when, half an hour later, a phone stars to vibrate on the bedside table.
‘What is it?’ asks Lara dreamily, as Villanelle reaches across her.
‘Work.’
‘You’re fucking kidding me.’
Villanelle plants a kiss on the tip of her nose. ‘No rest for the wicked, detka. You should know that by now.’
Chapter 2
If Dennis Cradle is surprised to see Eve when she collects him from his house, he conceals it well. The car is an eight-year-old VW Golf from the MI6 vehicle pool, smelling of stale air-freshener, and Cradle takes his place in the passenger seat without a word. As they drive away Eve switches on the Radio 4 Today programme, and they both pretend to listen to it.
Cradle remains silent for the duration of the journey to Dever. Initially, Eve reads this as a desperate attempt to assert some sort of authority, given that when she worked at MI5 he was considerably her senior. And then a darker interpretation of his manner strikes her. He’s not saying anything because he knows exactly what she’s doing here, and so does the organisation he works for. In which case, how much else do they know about her? And for that matter, about Niko? At the thought that her husband might be the object of hostile surveillance, and possibly worse, Eve feels a twisting, agonising guilt. There is no way of avoiding the fact that she’s brought this situation on herself. Richard would have understood if she had decided to step down after Simon Mortimer was murdered in Shanghai; indeed, he encouraged her to do so. But she can’t, and won’t, let go.
In part, it’s a desire for answers. Who is the unnamed woman who has carved such a bloody trail through the shadowlands of the intelligence world? Who are her employers, what do they want, and how have they achieved such terrifying power and reach? The mystery, and the woman at the heart of the mystery, speak to a part of Eve that she’s never really explored. Could she herself ever be transformed into someone who acts as her target does? Who kills without hesitation or pity? And if so, what would it take?
No Tomorrow: The basis for Killing Eve, now a major BBC TV series (Killing Eve series Book 2) Page 3