‘Surely that’s the Twelve’s domain?’
‘Not any more. The Twelve are the establishment now. You know what the assassination department is called? Housekeeping.’
Eve stands up and starts to walk around in tight circles. She’s still in free-fall, plummeting down some endless lift-shaft. She can feel the barrel of the Glock rubbing sweatily in the cleft of her buttocks. Pulling the gun from her waistband, she holds it loosely in her right hand. Villanelle doesn’t move.
‘Niko would think I was dead?’
‘Everyone would.’
‘And there’s no alternative?’
‘Not if you want to stay alive.’
Eve nods, and continues to pace. Then, quite suddenly, she sits down again.
‘Give me that,’ says Villanelle, gently taking the Glock.
Eve narrows her gaze. ‘What happened here?’ she asks, reaching out and touching the scar on Villanelle’s lip.
‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. But this isn’t the time.’
Eve nods. Time rushes almost audibly past her ears. There’s the world that she knows, the world of work, alarm calls, email, car insurance and supermarket loyalty cards, and there’s mir teney, the shadow world. There’s Niko, who loves her, and is the kindest and most decent man she has ever met, and there’s Villanelle, who kills for pleasure.
She looks into the waiting grey eyes.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘What do we do?’
On the dining table, Villanelle places the medical supplies from Whitlock and Jones, and from her backpack takes a bin bag, a tin of Waitrose dog food, a white porcelain cup, a plastic belt, a tin of modelling wax, a small glass dropper of spirit gum, a fountain pen, a packet of hair-grips, a face powder compact, an eye-shadow palette, a comb, several condoms, her Sig Sauer automatic and suppressor and Eve’s Glock.
‘OK, the first thing I need is some of your hair. I’m going to pull it out.’ She does so, Eve winces, and Villanelle smiles. ‘Now I need a dark sheet. Darkest you’ve got. Quickly, while I set everything up.’
Taking herself to the bedroom, Eve returns with a folded dark blue bedsheet, which Villanelle places on the table with the other items. She’s turned the TV on, and is streaming a noisy Japanese cop show. ‘Sit,’ she orders Eve, pointing to the sofa. ‘Pull up your sleeve.’
A little apprehensively, Eve does as she’s bidden. From the table, Villanelle takes a cannula, a hollow blood collection needle. The cannula has a twistable port and a clear PVC transfer tube attached. Villanelle feeds the open end of the tube into a condom, holding it tightly in place with an elastic hair-grip. Taking the plastic belt, she tightens it around Eve’s bicep until the vein in her forearm is bulging, and then, surprisingly gently, slips in the cannula and opens the port.
‘Squeeze your fist,’ Villanelle tells her, as blood flows through the PVC tube and begins to fill the condom. After a few minutes, it holds two-thirds of a pint of Eve’s blood, and Villanelle turns off the port, and detaches and knots the condom.
Picking up the Sig Sauer, Villanelle walks to the centre of the room, then, holding the sagging condom over the carpet, she fires a single, downward-angled shot into its dark, distended belly. There’s a wet smack, and an outward burst of blood. From the centre of the carpet, a shining red spatter fans outwards towards the window, shading into a myriad of fine droplets which gleam on the floor and furniture and walls.
Villanelle regards her work with a critical eye, then moves back to Eve. Taking a pinch of modelling wax, she rolls it into a marble-size ball, flattens it, and glues it to Eve’s forehead with spirit gum. Then taking the cap off the fountain pen, she presses the circular end into the low mound of wax, cutting a neat hole through to the skin. With the face powder, she blends the wax into Eve’s forehead, fills the hole with black eye-shadow, and surrounds the raised area with bruise-coloured purple.
‘You’re going to have such a pretty entry wound,’ she tells Eve. ‘But now I need more blood. It’s going to leave you feeling a bit weird, OK?’
This time she takes two condoms of blood, another full pint.
Eve is very pale. ‘I think I’m going to pass out,’ she whispers.
‘I’ve got you,’ Villanelle says. Placing an arm around Eve’s shoulders and another under her knees, she lays her on her side on the carpet, with her head at the epicentre of the blood spray. Carefully spread-eagling her limbs, she places the Glock in her right hand. ‘Don’t move,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to work fast before the blood clots.’
Eve flutters her eyelids in response. She’s swimming in and out of consciousness now. The room is shadowy and insubstantial and Villanelle’s voice is muted, as if it’s coming from far away.
Villanelle drops the porcelain cup into the Waitrose shopping bag, and swings it against the dining table so that it shatters, Then, opening the dog-food can, she empties its contents into Eve’s hair, at the back of her head, and carefully arranges half a dozen of the larger pieces of shattered porcelain in the gelatinous mess. Satisfied with the composition, she pours the first condom of blood on top, dotting a scarlet forefinger into the cosmetic entry wound. The contents of the second condom form a dark lake behind Eve’s head.
‘OK. Look dead.’
This takes very little effort on Eve’s part.
Taking out her phone, Villanelle photographs her from various angles and distances, checking the pictures until she’s satisfied. ‘Done,’ she says eventually, and performs a little dance of pleasure. ‘That looks so great. The jelly in the dog food is just perfection. Now I’m going to clean you up. Don’t move.’
She runs the comb through Eve’s hair, dragging out the already congealing blood and offal. Then, having put the Waitrose bag over Eve’s head, and propped her up against the sofa, she scrapes the porcelain fragments and the remainder of the dog food from the carpet with a kitchen spoon, depositing it in the tin, and the tin in the rubbish bag. With it go the cannula and tube, the remains of the condoms, the comb, the eye-shadow and powder, the spirit gum and wax, the belt, the pen and the hair-grips.
Taking the hair she’s pulled from Eve’s head, Villanelle sprinkles it in the congealing blood, which she then smears across the carpet with a swipe of her hand. She peels off the latex gloves and drops them in the bin-bag then pulls on a new pair. ‘Your turn for a bath,’ she announces, scooping Eve up in her arms.
Lying semi-conscious in the warm water as Villanelle rinses her hair, Eve feels a vast sense of peace. It’s as if she’s between lives. Half an hour later, dried and dressed in clean clothes, she sits on the sofa drinking sweet tea and eating slightly stale chocolate digestive biscuits. She’s crushingly tired, her skin is clammy, and the smell of blood is thick in her nostrils. ‘This is the definitely the weirdest I’ve ever felt,’ she murmurs.
‘I know. I took a lot of your blood. But look what I’m sending to Anton.’
Eve takes Villanelle’s phone. Notes with awe her own chalk-white features, half-closed eyes and gaping mouth. Just above the bridge of her nose, there’s a purplish crater around a blackened 9mm entry wound. And at the back of her head, a chaotic horror of skull fragments, the bone shining whitely through the red, and a slick porridge of destroyed brain matter.
‘Fuck. I really did die, didn’t I?’
‘I’ve seen headshots up close,’ Villanelle says delicately. ‘It’s accurate.’
‘I know. Your friend Lara blew an old man’s brains out in the metro, aiming for me.’
‘I’m really shocked she missed. And then to be picked up by the FSB and thrown into Butyrka. That’s such a shitty day’s work.’
‘Aren’t you upset about her?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Just wondering.’
‘Don’t wonder. Get your strength back. I’m going to tidy up and pack the car.’
‘You’ve got a car?’
‘It’s a van, in fact. Give me that mug and biscuit wrapper.’
‘Can I take a
nything with me?’
‘No. That’s the thing about being dead.’
‘I suppose it is.’
Five minutes later, Villanelle surveys the flat. The place is as she found it, except for the bloody tableau in the main room, which looks just as she planned. She’s particularly pleased with the clotted red-brown smear on the carpet, suggesting a bled-out corpse dragged away by the legs. As to what narrative will be constructed around this, she doesn’t care. She just needs time. Forty-eight hours will do it.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Time to go. I’m going to wrap you up in this sheet, cover you with a folded rug and carry you out over my shoulder.’
‘Mightn’t people see?’
‘Doesn’t matter if they do, they’ll just think it’s someone moving their stuff. Later, when the street’s full of police cars, they might see it differently, but by then . . .’ Villanelle shrugs.
In the event, it’s accomplished very quickly, and Eve marvels at Villanelle’s strength as she lowers her, apparently without effort, onto the floor of the panel van. Mummified in the blue sheet, with Villanelle’s rucksack jammed beneath her head, she hears the van’s rear doors close and lock.
It’s not a comfortable journey, and the first half-hour is made worse by a succession of speed bumps, but eventually the road levels out and the van picks up speed. For Eve, it’s enough just to lie there, seeing nothing at all, in a state that’s not quite wakefulness and not quite sleep. After what might have been an hour, but might equally have been two, the van comes to a halt. The doors open, and Eve feels the sheet unwrapped from her face. It’s dark, with a faint wash of street lighting, and Villanelle is sitting on the tailgate of the van, her rucksack over her shoulder. Leaning inside she unbinds Eve from her winding sheet. Outside it’s cold, and smells like rain. They’re in a car park beside a motorway, surrounded by the dim forms of heavy-goods vehicles. An illuminated shack announces CAFÉ 24 Hrs.
Villanelle helps Eve out of the van, and they pick their way over the puddled ground. Inside the café, beneath the lunar glow of strip lights, a dozen men are silently addressing plates of food at plastic-topped tables as Elvis’s ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ issues from ancient wall-mounted speakers. Behind a counter a woman in a rockabilly ban-dana is frying onions on a hotplate.
Five minutes later, steaming mugs of tea and two of the biggest, greasiest burgers that Eve has ever seen are placed in front of them.
‘Eat,’ Villanelle orders. ‘All of it. And all the chips.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m starving.’
When they leave, Eve feels transformed, if a little nauseated. She follows Villanelle across the car park, and then, mystifyingly, along a darkened path towards a sparsely lit residential block. At the foot of a tower, Villanelle inserts a key into a steel-fronted door. They climb an unlit stairway to the third floor, where Villanelle opens another armoured door, and turns on the light. They’re in an unheated studio flat, furnished with bleak austerity. There’s a table, a single chair, a military canvas-topped camp bed, a khaki sleeping bag, a cloth-covered wardrobe with a hanging rail full of clothes, and a stack of metal storage boxes. Insulated blackout curtains prevent the escape of light.
‘What is this place?’ Eve asks, looking around her.
‘It’s mine. A woman needs a room of her own, don’t you think?’
‘But where are we?’
‘Enough questions. The bathroom’s there, take what you need.’
The bathroom proves to be a concrete cell with a toilet, a basin and a single cold tap. A plastic crate on the floor holds a jumble of toiletries, tampons, wound dressings, suturing kits and painkillers. When Eve comes out, the sleeping bag has been unrolled on the camp bed and Villanelle is field-stripping and cleaning her Sig Sauer at the table. ‘Sleep,’ she says, not looking up. ‘You’re going to need all your strength.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be fine. Go to bed.’
Eve wakes into a cold and unidentifiable twilight. Villanelle is sitting at the table in the same position, but she is wearing different clothes and slowly scrolling through maps on a laptop. Slowly, wonderingly, Eve’s memory recreates the events of the previous day. ‘What’s the time?’ she asks.
‘Five p.m. You’ve been asleep for fifteen hours.’
‘Oh my God.’ She unzips herself from the sleeping bag. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Good. Get ready and we’ll go and eat. I’ve put out new clothes for you.’
They step outside into a desolate, twilit landscape. Eve looks about her. It’s the sort of place she’s driven past countless times without really seeing. The building they’ve just left is a condemned tenement block. Metal shutters cover doors and windows, security notices warn of patrolling guard dogs, wild lilac bushes have grown through the forecourt’s littered tarmac. Mir teney, the shadow world.
When they leave the café the drizzle has become rain. On the motorway, the traffic is unceasing, zipping by in a grey, vaporous spray. Eve follows Villanelle past the building where they stayed the night, to a graffiti-tagged row of garages. The end garage is secured with a galvanised steel roller-door and a heavy-duty coded padlock, which Villanelle unlocks. Inside, it’s dry, clean and surprisingly spacious. A hydraulic motorcycle repair bench runs along one wall; against the other, a shelved unit holds helmets, armour-panelled leather jackets, trousers, gloves and boots. Between them a volcano-grey Ducati Multistrada 1260 waits on its stand, fitted with locked panniers and top-box.
‘Everything’s packed,’ Villanelle tells Eve. ‘Time to get dressed.’
Five minutes later she wheels the Ducati out of the garage, and waits while Eve pulls down and locks the roller door. The rain has stopped, and for a moment the two women stand there, facing each other.
‘Ready for this?’ Villanelle asks, zipping up her jacket, and Eve nods.
They put on their helmets, and mount the Ducati. The whisper of the Testastretta engine becomes a murmur, the headlight beam floods the darkness. Villanelle takes the slip road slowly, allowing Eve to find her balance and settle tightly against her. She waits for a gap in the traffic, the murmur builds to a snarl, and they’re gone.
Acknowledgements
To Patrick Walsh at Pew Literary, unreserved thanks. The same to Mark Richards at John Murray and Josh Kendall at Mulholland; I couldn’t hope for finer or more supportive editors. Tim Davidson’s surgical experience was invaluable, forensic psychologist Tarmala Caple gave me vital insights into psychopathy, and for correcting my Russian, thank you Olga Messerer and Daria Novikova.
Table of Contents
Also by Luke Jennings
Title Page
Imprint Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Acknowledgements
No Tomorrow: The basis for Killing Eve, now a major BBC TV series (Killing Eve series Book 2) Page 21