Luke Jennings: Codename Villanelle

“It’s not compulsory,” says the man, his wry smile at odds with the calm of his gaze.

Villanelle stands, lifts her glass. “I’d love to join you. I was expecting a friend, but she must have been held up.”

“In that case…” The man rises to his feet. “I’m Olivier. And this is Nica.”

“Villanelle.”

The conversation unfolds conventionally enough. Olivier, she learns, has recently launched a career as an art dealer. Nica intermittently works as an actress. They are not related, nor on closer inspection do they give the impression of being lovers. Even so, there is something subtly erotic in their complicity, and the way they’ve drawn her into their orbit.

“I’m a day-trader,” Villanelle tells them. “Currencies, interest-rate futures, all that.” With satisfaction, she notes the immediate dimming of interest in their eyes. She can, if necessary, talk for hours about day-trading, but they don’t want to know. Instead, Villanelle describes the sunlit first-floor flat in Versailles from which she works. It doesn’t exist, but she can picture it down to the ironwork scrolls on the balcony and the faded Persian rug on the floor. Her cover story is perfect now, and deception, as always, affords her a rush of pleasure.

“We love your name, and your eyes, and your hair, and most of all we love your shoes,” says Nica.

Villanelle laughs, and flexes her feet in her strappy satin Louboutins. Catching Olivier’s eye, she deliberately mirrors his languid posture. She imagines his hands moving knowledgeably and possessively over her. He would see her, she guesses, as a beautiful, collectible object. He would think himself in control.

“What’s funny?” asks Nica, tilting her head and lighting a cigarette.

“You are,” says Villanelle. How would it be, she wonders, to lose herself in that golden gaze? To feel that smoky mouth on hers. She’s enjoying herself now; she knows that both Olivier and Nica want her. They think that they’re playing her, and Villanelle will go on letting them think so. It will be amusing to manipulate them, to see how far they will go.

“I have a suggestion,” says Olivier, and at that moment the phone in Villanelle’s bag begins to blink. A one-word text: DEFLECT. She stands, her expression blank. She glances at Nica and Olivier, but in her mind they no longer exist. She’s out of there without a word, and in less than a minute is swinging into a northbound stream of traffic on her Vespa.

It’s three years now since she first met the man who sent her the text. The man who, to this day, she knows only as Konstantin. Her circumstances, then, were very different. Her name was Oxana Vorontsova, and she was officially registered as a student of French and Linguistics at the University of Perm, in central Russia. In six months’ time she was due to sit her finals. It was unlikely, however, that she would ever walk into the university’s examination hall as, since the previous autumn, she’d been unavoidably detained elsewhere. Specifically, in the Dobryanka women’s remand centre in the Ural Mountains. Accused of murder.

It’s a short drive, perhaps five minutes, from Le Jasmin to Villanelle’s apartment near the Porte de Passy. The 1930s building is large, anonymous and quiet, with a well-secured underground garage. After parking the Vespa alongside her car, a fast and anonymous silver-grey Audi TT Roadster, Villanelle takes the lift to the sixth floor, and ascends the short flight of stairs to her rooftop apartment. The front door, although faced with the same panelling as the others in the building, is of reinforced steel, and the electronic locking system is custom-made.

Inside, the apartment is comfortable and spacious, even a little shabby. Konstantin handed Villanelle the keys and title deeds a year ago. She has no idea who lived there before her, but the place was fully furnished when she moved in, and from the decades-old fixtures and fittings, she guesses it was someone elderly. Uninterested in decoration, she has left the apartment as she found it, with its faded sea-green and French-blue rooms, and its nondescript post-Impressionist paintings.

No one ever visits her here—her professional meetings take place in cafes and public parks, her sexual liaisons are mostly conducted in hotels—but if they were to do so, the apartment would bear out her cover story in every detail. In the study, her computer, a top-of-the-range wafer of stainless steel, is protected by civilian security software that a halfway skilled hacker would quickly bypass. But a scan of its contents would reveal little more than the details of a successful day-trading account, and the contents of the filing cabinet are similarly non-committal. There is no music system. Music, for Villanelle, is at best a pointless irritation and at worst a lethal danger. In silence lies safety.

Conditions at the remand centre were unspeakable. The food was barely edible, the sanitation non-existent, and an icy, numbing wind from the Dobryanka river penetrated every cheerless corner of the institution. The slightest infraction of the rules resulted in a prolonged period of shiza , or solitary confinement. Oxana had been there for three months when she was ordered from her cell, marched without explanation to the prison courtyard, and ordered to climb into a battered all-terrain vehicle. Two hours later, deep in the Perm Krai, the driver halted by a bridge over the frozen Chusovaya river, and wordlessly directed her to a low, prefabricated unit, beside which a black four-wheel- drive Mercedes was parked. Inside the unit, there was just enough room for a table, two chairs, and a paraffin heater.

A man in a heavy grey coat was sitting on one of the chairs, and to begin with, he just looked at her. Took in the threadbare prison uniform, the gaunt features, the posture of sullen defiance. “Oxana Borisovna Vorontsova,” he said eventually, consulting a printed folder on the table. “Age, twenty-three years and four months. Accused of triple homicide, with multiple aggravating circumstances.”

She waited, staring out of the window at a small square of snowy forest. The man was ordinary enough looking, but she knew at a glance that this was not someone who could be manipulated.

“In a fortnight’s time you will face trial,” he continued. “And you will be found guilty. There is no other conceivable outcome, and in theory you could be sentenced to death. At best you will spend the next twenty years of your life in a penal colony which will make Dobryanka look like a holiday resort.”

Her eyes remained blank. The man lit a cigarette, an imported brand, and offered her one. It would have bought her an extra helping of food for a week at the remand centre, but Oxana refused it with a barely perceptible shake of the head.

“Three men found dead. One with his throat slashed to the bone, two shot in the face. Not quite the behaviour expected of a final year linguistics student at Perm’s top university. Unless, perhaps, she happened to be the daughter of a Spetsnaz close-quarter battle instructor.” He drew on his cigarette. “Quite a reputation he had, Senior Sergeant Boris Vorontsov. Didn’t help him, though, when he fell out with the gangsters he was moonlighting for. A bullet in the back, and left to die in the street like a dog. Hardly a fitting end for a decorated veteran of Grozny and Pervomayskoye.”

From beneath the table he took a flask and two cardboard cups. Poured slowly, so that the scent of strong tea infused the cold air. Nudged one of the cups towards her.

“The Brothers’ Circle. One of the most violent and ruthless criminal organisations in Russia.” He shook his head. “What were you thinking, exactly, when you decided to execute three of their foot soldiers?”

She looked away, her expression disdainful.