Luke Jennings: Codename Villanelle

The first-floor apartment was furnished with spare, minimal chic. Its occupant was a tiny, fierce-looking woman of about sixty, dressed completely in black, whom Konstantin introduced as Fantine.

Fantine stared at Oxana, appeared unimpressed by what she saw, and asked her to walk around the room. Self-conscious in her faded T-shirt, jeans and trainers, Oxana complied. Fantine watched her for a moment, turned to Konstantin, and shrugged.

And so began the final stage of Oxana’s transformation. She moved into a four-star hotel two streets away, and each morning joined Fantine for breakfast in the first-floor apartment. At nine o’clock every morning a car came for them. On the first day they went to the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann. Fantine marched Oxana round the department store, ordering her to try on a succession of outfits—daywear, casual, evening—and buying them whether Oxana liked them or not. The tight, flashy clothes to which Oxana was drawn Fantine dismissed without a glance.

“I’m trying to teach you Parisian style, chérie , not how to dress like a Moscow streetwalker, which you obviously know how to do already.”

By the end of the day, the car was piled high with shopping bags, and Oxana was beginning to enjoy the company of her ruthlessly critical mentor. Over the week that followed they visited shoe shops and fashion houses, couture and prêt-à-porter shows, a vintage emporium in St. Germain, and the costume and design museum at the Palais Galliera. At each of these, Fantine offered an unsparing commentary. This was chic, clever and elegant; that was crass, tasteless and irredeemably vulgar. One afternoon Fantine took Oxana to a hairdresser in the Place des Victoires. Her instructions to the stylist were to proceed as she chose, and to ignore anything that Oxana suggested. Afterwards, Fantine stood her in front of a mirror, and Oxana ran a hand through her short, blunt-cut hair. She liked the look that Fantine had put together for her. The designer biker jacket, the stripy T-shirt, the low-rise jeans and ankle boots. She looked… Parisian.

Later that afternoon, they visited a boutique selling scent on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. “Choose,” said Fantine. “But choose well.” For ten minutes Oxana stalked the elegant shop floor, before stopping in front of a glass display cabinet. The assistant watched her for a moment. “ Vous permettez, Mademoiselle ?” he murmured, handing her a slender glass phial with a scarlet ribbon at its neck. Cautiously, Oxana touched the amber scent to her wrist. Fresh as a spring dawn, but with darker base notes, it spoke to something deep inside her.

“It’s called Villanelle,” said the assistant. “It was the favourite scent of the Comtesse du Barry. The perfume house added the red ribbon after she was guillotined in 1793.”

“I shall have to be careful, then,” said Oxana.

Two days later, Konstantin came to collect her from the hotel. “My cover name,” she said. “I’ve chosen it.”

As she crosses the Piazza Verdi in Palermo, her heels clicking faintly on the cobblestones, Villanelle glances up at the imposing frontage of Sicily’s, and indeed Italy’s, largest opera house. Palm trees rise from the piazza, their leaves whispering faintly in the warm breeze; bronze lions flank the broad entrance stairway. Villanelle is wearing a silk Valentino dress and elbow-length Fratelli Orsini opera gloves. The dress is red, but so darkly shaded as to be almost black. A spacious Fendi shoulder bag hangs by a slim chain. Villanelle’s face is pale in the evening light, and her hair is pinned up with a long, curved clip. She looks glamorous, if less showy than the socialites in Versace and Dolce & Gabbana thronging the mirrored entrance hall. First nights at the Teatro Massimo are always an occasion, and tonight’s offering is Puccini’s Tosca , one of the most popular operas of all. That the title role is being sung by a local soprano, Franca Farfaglia, makes the occasion unmissable.

Villanelle buys a programme and moves through the entrance hall to the vestibule. The place is filling fast. There’s a buzz of conversation, the muted clink of glasses and an aroma of expensive scent. Ornate wall-lights paint the marble decorations with a soft lemon glow. At the bar she orders a mineral water, and notices that she is being watched by a lean, dark-haired figure.

“Can I get you something more… interesting?” he asks, as she pays for her drink. “A glass of champagne perhaps?”

She smiles. He is thirty-five, she guesses, give or take a year or two. Saturnine good looks. His silver-grey shirt is impeccable and his lightweight blazer looks like Brioni. But his Italian has the rasp of Sicily, and there’s an edge of threat in his gaze.

“I won’t,” she says. “Thank you.”

“Let me guess. You’re obviously not Italian, even though you speak the language. French?”

“Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“So do you like Puccini operas?”

“Of course,” she murmurs. “Although La Bohème is my favourite.”

“That’s because you’re French.” He holds out his hand. “Leoluca Messina.”

“Sylviane Morel.”

“So what brings you to Palermo, Mademoiselle Morel?”

She is tempted to terminate the conversation. To walk away. But he might follow, which would make things worse. “I’m staying with friends.”

“Who?”

“No one you’d know, I’m afraid.”

“You’d be surprised who I know. And trust me, everyone here knows me.”

Half turning, Villanelle allows a sudden smile to light her face. She waves towards the entrance. “Will you excuse me, Signor Messina. My friends are here.” That was less than convincing, she reproves herself as she edges through the crowd. But there’s something about Leoluca Messina—some long acquaintanceship with violence—that makes her want him to forget her face.

Will Greco come, Villanelle wonders, moving through the crowd with vague purpose, scanning the faces around her as she goes. According to Konstantin’s local contact, who has had several of the front-of-house staff discreetly bribed and questioned, the Mafia boss comes to most of the important first nights. He always arrives at the last moment and takes the same box, which he occupies alone, with bodyguards stationed outside. Whether he has actually booked to come tonight has, frustratingly, been impossible to establish. But his protégée Farfaglia is singing the lead soprano role. The odds are good.

At considerable cost, Konstantin’s people have secured the neighbouring box to the one Greco favours. It is on the first tier, almost directly adjacent to the stage. With ten minutes to curtain-up, and with the box on her left as yet unoccupied, Villanelle enters the nest of red plush. The box is at once public and private. At the front, perched on one of the gilt chairs, with the scarlet-upholstered rail at chest level, Villanelle can see and be seen by everyone in the auditorium. If she leans forward past the partition, she can look into the front of the boxes on either side of her. With the house lights extinguished, however, each box will become a secret world, its interior invisible.

In the gloom of that unseen, secret world, she slips her bag from her shoulder and takes out a lightweight Ruger automatic pistol with an integrated Gemtech suppressor and inserts a clip of .22mm low-velocity rounds. Returning the weapon to the bag, she places it on the floor at the base of the partition separating her from the box to her left.

In the nine months following her rebirth as Villanelle, she killed two men. Each project was initiated by a one-word text from Konstantin, followed by the transmission of detailed background documents—film clips, biographies, surveillance reports, schedules—from sources unknown to her. Each planning period lasted about four weeks, in the course of which she was armed, informed of any logistical support she might expect, and provided with an appropriate identity.