Luke Jennings - Codename Villanelle

“The Year 11 boys would have a better understanding of differential calculus if they didn’t all stay up until two in the morning playing Final Attrition 2. Or maybe not. How about you?”

She hesitates. “I’ve got a problem for you. I’ve been trying to figure it out all day.”

Niko knows what she does, and while he never presses her for information Eve often thinks how useful a mind like his would be to her employers. At the same time the thought of him walking the featureless corridors of Thames House fills her with horror. It’s her world, but she wouldn’t want it to be his.

After leaving Cracow University with a Master’s degree in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Niko took off round Europe in a battered van with a friend named Maciek. Living and sleeping in the van, the pair travelled from tournament to tournament—bridge, chess, poker, anything offering a cash prize—and after eighteen months on the road, retired with over a million zloty between them. Maciek spent his share in less than a year, mostly on the girls at the Pasha Lounge on Warsaw’s Ulitsa Mazowiecka. Niko headed for London.

“Tell me,” he says.

“OK. Three dead men on the floor of a theatre box, after a performance. Two bodyguards and a Mafia don. All shot. But the don has been tranquillised first. Paralysed by an immobilising agent injected into one eye. What’s the story? Why was he not just shot like the bodyguards?”

Niko is silent for a minute. “Who was killed first?”

“I’m assuming the bodyguards. The shooter, thought to be the don’s nephew, used a silencer. Low-calibre weapon at point-blank range.”

“Body shots?”

“The don, yes. The bodyguards, back of the neck. No mess. Very professional.”

“And the syringe, or whatever. The immobilising agent. What do we know about that?”

“I’ll show you.”

She takes a photocopy of a photograph from her bag. They stop for a moment in a whirl of snowflakes beneath a street light.

“Nasty-looking thing.” He blows snow from his moustache. “But clever. And perhaps it wasn’t the nephew. Is there a woman involved?”

She stares at him. “What makes you say that?”

“The killer’s first problem is how to get past the bodyguards with a weapon. These are going to be tough, experienced guys.”

“OK.”

“But this, on the other hand…” He holds up the photocopy. “They’re not going to give this a second look.”

“How come?”

He reaches into his coat pocket, and takes out a pen. “Look, if I draw a retaining wire which attaches here, and snaps into place there, what do we have?”

Eve stares at the limp photocopy. “Oh for fuck’s sake. How can I have missed that?” Her voice is a whisper now. “It’s a hairclip. A woman’s fucking hairclip.”

Niko looks at her. “So, is there a woman involved?”

In the business-class lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport, Villanelle checks her messages. A coded text confirms that Konstantin will meet her at the La Spezia cafe in Gray’s Inn Road in London at 2 p.m. as arranged. Returning her phone to her bag she sips her coffee. The lounge is warm, with smoothly moulded seating in restful shades of white and taupe; the walls are flecked with illuminated leaf-shapes. Beyond the plate-glass exterior wall the tarmac, slush and sky are a barely distinguishable grey.

Villanelle is travelling on a false passport as Manon Lefebvre, the co-author of a French investment newsletter. Her cover story is that she is in London to talk to an online publisher interested in setting up a partnership. She looks professionally anonymous in a mid-length trenchcoat, narrow jeans and ankle boots. She’s wearing no make-up, and despite the season, grey-lensed acetate sunglasses; airports attract photographers and, increasingly, law-enforcement professionals armed with facial recognition software.

An Air France steward appears in the lounge and directs the business-class passengers to their flight. Villanelle has reserved the front aisle seat in the waiting Airbus, and although she makes a point of not meeting his eye, she can tell that the man in the window seat, currently flicking through an inflight magazine, is determined to engage her in conversation. She ignores him, and taking out a 4G tablet and earphones, is soon immersed in a video clip.

The clip shows, in slow motion, the contrasting terminal performances of two handgun rounds when fired into a block of clear ballistics gelatin, a testing medium designed to simulate human tissue. One round is Russian, one American. Both are jacketed hollow point, designed to deliver massive kinetic shock and remain within a target’s body rather than passing through. Knowing that she’s likely to be operating in a busy urban environment, this information is of interest to Villanelle. She’s going to want a one-shot, lights-out kill. She can’t risk the possibility of collateral damage.

She frowns, torn between the two hollowpoint rounds. The Russian round expands on entry, its jacket peeling back like the petals of a flower as it blasts through flesh and bone. The U.S. round, by contrast, doesn’t deform but tumbles nose over point, tearing a devastating wound cavity as it goes. Both have their very considerable merits.

“Could I ask you to switch off your device, Mademoiselle?”

It’s the stewardess, chic in her dark-blue tailored suit.

“Of course.” Villanelle smiles coolly, blanks the screen and takes out the earphones.

“Good movie?” asks her companion, seizing his chance.

She noticed him earlier, in the business-class lounge. Late thirties and implausibly good-looking, like a designer-dressed matador.

“Actually, I was shopping.”

“For yourself?”

“No, for someone else.”

“Someone special?”

“Yes. It’s going to be a surprise.”

“Lucky him.” He levels a dark-brown gaze at her. “You’re Lucy Drake, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Lucy Drake? The model?”

“Sorry, no.”

“But…” He reaches for the inflight magazine, and pages through it until he reaches a fragrance advertisement. “That’s not you?”

Villanelle looks at the page. It’s true, the model does look uncannily like her. But Lucy Drake’s eyes are a piercing green. The fragrance is called Printemps . Spring. Villanelle takes off her sunglasses. Her own eyes are the frozen grey of the Russian midwinter.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I was mistaken.”

“It’s a compliment. She’s lovely.”

“She is.” He holds out his hand. “Luis Martín.”

“Manon Lefebvre.” She looks down at the magazine, now on the armrest between them. “How did you know that model’s name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m in the business. My wife and I own an agency, Tempest. We’ve got divisions in Paris, London, Milan and Moscow.”

“And this Lucy Drake is on your books?”

“No, I think she’s with Premier. She’s not working so much any more.”

“Really?”

“She wants to act, apparently. And she thinks the more editorial and advertising she does, the less chance she has of being taken seriously.”

“So does she have talent?”

“She has talent as a model, which is very much rarer than you might think. As an actress…” He shrugs. “But then people so often undervalue their real talents, wouldn’t you say? They dream of being something they can never be.”

“You’re Spanish?” asks Villanelle, deflecting the personal questions that she senses coming.

“Yes, but I spend very little time in Spain. Our main residences are in London and Paris. Do you know London?”

She considers. Did six weeks’ brutal unarmed combat training in the Essex marshes count? A fortnight spent hurtling round hairpin bends on the evasive driving course at Northwood? A week learning to pick locks with a retired burglar on the Isle of Dogs?