Luke Jennings - Codename Villanelle

“Tempting, isn’t it?”

Villanelle turns, amazed to hear her thoughts so precisely echoed. He’s about thirty, lean-featured, in a well-cut tweed coat with the collar turned up.

“I wasn’t planning on doing any swimming.”

“You know what I mean. ‘To sleep: perchance to dream…’” His eyes are steady, and as dark as the frozen waterway.

“You admire Shakespeare?”

He wipes snow off the balustrade with his sleeve, and shrugs. “He’s a good companion in a war zone.”

“You’re a soldier?”

“Used to be.”

“And now?”

He lifts his gaze to the distant glow of Kensington. “Research, you might say.”

“Well, good luck with that…” She rubs her ungloved hands together, and blows into them. “The light’s going. And so should I.”

“Home?” The broken smile suggests they’re sharing a private joke.

“That’s right. Goodbye.”

He raises a hand. “See you around.”

Hunching into her parka, she walks away. Just some fucked-up weirdo hitting on her. Except that he wasn’t. With that lethal English courtliness of his, he’s both more and less threatening than that. And familiar, somehow. Is it possible that she’s seen him before, perhaps in the course of the counter-surveillance exercises that she performs, almost subconsciously, wherever she goes? Is he MI5?

Angling sharply southwards, she glances back at the bridge. The man has disappeared, but she still senses his presence. Heading northwards for the nearest exit she performs a cleaning run, designed to shake off any tail that she might have picked up. No one follows, no one changes direction, no one speeds up to match her pace. But if they’re serious, whoever they are, they’ll have a primary team foot-following, and a secondary team on static surveillance, ready to latch on if she burns the primaries.

Turning eastwards, Villanelle walks along Bayswater Road towards Marble Arch. Not racing, but fast enough to make any tail pick up his or her speed. She stops briefly at a bus stop as if resting her legs, discreetly checking the area for anyone in the calculatedly drab plumage of the professional pavement artist. There’s no one obvious, but then if she had one of MI5’s A4 teams locked on to her, there wouldn’t be.

Forcing herself to breathe steadily, she makes for the Marble Arch underpass network. With its multiple exits, it’s a good place to expose and lose a tail. Descending the steps at Cumberland Gate she surfaces beside the Edgware Road, and hovers in a sports shop entrance, watching the reflection of the underpass exit in the plate-glass window. No one glances at her, no one breaks step. Strolling to the Marble Arch entrance, she speed-walks the hundred-odd metres through the underpass, cuts back on herself by Speaker’s Corner, and makes for the tube station. On the westbound Central Line platform she lets the first two trains pass, scanning the platform for stay-behinds. The line’s busy, and there are several possibles. A young woman in a grey windproof jacket, carrying a backpack. A bearded guy in a reefer jacket. A middle-aged couple holding hands.

Stepping onto the third train, she travels as far as Queensway, and then just as the doors are closing, squeezes out between them. Crossing the platform, she returns eastbound to Bond Street, surfaces, and hails a taxi in Davies Street. For the next ten minutes she sends the driver on a circuitous route through Mayfair. A grey BMW follows them for a time, but then turns eastwards on Curzon Street with an irritable growl. A minute later a black Ford Ka appears in the wing-mirror, and three turn-offs later is still there. As they coast into Clarges Mews, a choke-point, Villanelle hands the driver a fifty-pound note and issues swift instructions. Thirty seconds later the taxi drifts to a halt, blocking the road, and the engine dies. As Villanelle slips out of a rear door, she hears the angry blare of the Ka’s horn, but no one follows her down the narrow, brick-walled passageway, and when she doubles back five minutes later, the mews is deserted.

And perhaps, she tells herself later in the South Audley Street apartment, no one was following me anyway. What would be the point? If the UK Intelligence Services know who and what I am, then it’s all over. There won’t be an arrest, just a visit from a Special Forces action team, probably E Squadron, and cremation in a municipal waste incinerator. This, according to Konstantin, is the British way, and nothing that Villanelle has seen of the British gives her the slightest reason to doubt him.

But the E Squadron scenario is not going to happen, and with a smooth effort of will, she erases the apprehensions prompted by the afternoon’s encounter. Curled like a panther on the white leather Eames chair, she raises a glass of pink Alexandre II Black Sea champagne to the fading light. The wine is neither distinguished nor expensive, but it’s a symbol of everything that in her other, earlier life she could never have dreamed of.

And it suits her mood. She’s in lockdown now, her focus already narrowing to the moment-by-moment details of the next day’s action. Anticipation rises through her, as sharp and effervescent as the bubbles prickling to the surface of the champagne, and with it the ache of the hunger that never completely goes away. She coils and uncoils on the white leather. Perhaps she’ll go out and have some more sex. It will help kill a few hours.

Eve groans. “What time is it?”

“Six forty-five,” murmurs Niko. “Like every day at this time.”

Eve buries her face in the warm valley between his shoulder blades, clinging to the last vestiges of sleep. The strangulated coughing of the espresso machine overlays the measured tones of Radio 4’s Today programme. She’s decided, during the night, to put an SO1 Protection team on Viktor Kedrin.

“Coffee’s done,” Niko says.

“OK. Give me a couple of minutes.”

Returning from the bathroom, she smacks her shin, not for the first time, on the low, glass-fronted fridge that he bought a month earlier on eBay.

“Shit, Niko, please . Do we have to have this… thing here?”

He rubs his eyes. “Not if you don’t want milk in your coffee in the morning, myszka . Besides, where else would you like me to put it? There’s no room in the kitchen.”

Ensuring that the blind is down—it has a habit of shooting up without warning—Eve lifts her nightdress over her head, and reaches for her underwear. “I’d argue that we don’t need a medical standard refrigeration unit to cool one little milk jug. And if there’s no room in the kitchen, it’s because it’s full of all your stuff.”

“Ah, suddenly it’s all my stuff?”

“OK, Swedish cookbooks? That solar-powered microwave…”

“They’re Danish. And that microwave is going to save us money.”

“When? This is London NW3. There isn’t any frigging sun for eleven months of the year. Either we get rid of some of your stuff, or we move somewhere bigger. And a lot less nice.”

“We can’t move.”

She dresses quickly. “Why not?”

“Because of the bees.” He knots a dark-brown tie over a silver-grey shirt.

“Niko, please. Don’t get me started on those fucking bees. I can’t go into the garden, the neighbours are terrified of being stung to death…”

“One word, myszka . Honey. This summer, we could harvest fifteen kilos per hive. I’ve spoken to the deli, and—”

“Yes, I know it all makes sense in the future. Your five-year economic plan. But it’s the here and now we have to deal with. I can’t live like this. I can’t think straight.”

They cross the tiny landing, stepping over a stack of back issues of Astronomy Now and an ancient, dented cardboard box marked Oscilloscope Testing Equipment/ Cathode Ray Tube , and descend the stairs.