She answers in English. “Mr. Kedrin? Viktor? It’s Julia. We spoke at the lecture. You said to call you later. Well… it’s later.”
Silence. “Where are you?”
“Here. At the hotel.”
“OK. I gave you my room number, yes?”
“Yes. I’ll come up.”
She puts on the parka. The valise is now empty except for a clear plastic evidence bag. Opening this, Villanelle shakes its contents into the valise, which she then stows in the wardrobe. The evidence bag goes into the inside pocket of her parka. Then, after a last look around the room, she leaves, holding the CZ 75 by the suppressor so that the body of the handgun is up her sleeve.
Outside Room 521, she taps lightly on the door. There’s a pause, and it opens a few inches. Kedrin is flushed, his hair awry, his shirt open halfway to the waist. His eyes narrow as he examines her.
“Can I come in?” she asks, tilting her head and looking up at him.
He bows, semi-ironically. Ushers her in with a vague, sweeping gesture. The room is similar to Villanelle’s own, but larger. An ugly gilt chandelier hangs from the ceiling. “Take off your coat,” he says, sitting down heavily on the bed. “And get us a drink.”
She slips off her parka and drops it into an armchair, the CZ 75 concealed in the sleeve. A side table holds an empty bottle of Staraya Moskva vodka and four used glasses. Villanelle checks the fridge. In the freezer there’s a plastic half-bottle of duty-free Stolichnaya. Uncapping the bottle, she pours a liberal amount into two of the glasses, and meeting his gaze, hands him one.
“A toast,” he says blearily, his eyes dropping to her breasts. “We must have a toast. To love. To beauty!”
Villanelle smiles. “I drink to our ruined home…” she begins, speaking Russian. “And to life’s evils, too…”
He stares at her for a moment, his expression at once surprised and melancholy, and continues the Akhmatova poem. “I drink to the loneliness we share.” He throws back the vodka. “And I drink…”
There’s a sound like a snapping stick, and Kedrin is dead. Blood jets briefly from the entry wound beside his left nostril.
“… I drink to you,” murmurs Villanelle, completing the couplet as she pulls the bedclothes over him. Quickly, she pulls on the parka and makes for the door. As she’s leaving the room, she finds herself face to face with one of Kedrin’s pet thugs. He’s broad-shouldered, scowling, and smells of cheap cologne.
“Ssshh,” hisses Villanelle. “Viktor’s sleeping.”
The eyes narrow in the skull-like head. Some instinct tells him that something is wrong. That he’s fucked up. He tries to look past her, and realises far too late that the Glock 19 that he collected from the driver this morning is in his shoulder holster, not in his hand. Villanelle puts two rounds through the base of his nose, and as his knees go, catches the front of his flight jacket and swings him back through the door of the room. He falls backwards, hitting the monogrammed hotel carpet like a ton of condemned beef.
She briefly considers dragging the body out of view, but it will take more time than it will save. Then the phone in the room starts ringing, and she knows she has to get out. Making for the stairs she passes Skull-Head’s colleague and Ponytail, hears them running to Kedrin’s room. One look inside the door and they’re after her, pounding along the corridor.
Villanelle races up the stairs to the sixth floor, continues upwards, and bursts out into the night. The roof is virgin white, and a blizzard of snow swirls around her as she bolts the stairwell door. Visibility is no more than a few feet. She has perhaps fifteen seconds start.
The door splinters and the lock flies outwards. The two men come out fast, breaking left and right respectively, leaving the door swinging in the icy wind. The roof is deserted. Footsteps lead from the stairwell to a balustrade, beyond which is whirling darkness.
Suspecting a trap, the two men duck behind a chimney stack. Then, very slowly, the younger man leopard-crawls across the snowy roof to the balustrade, peers over, and beckons cautiously to Ponytail. There, just visible, is Villanelle, with her back to them, the parka whipping around her body in the wind. She appears to be watching the chimney stack.
Both men discharge their weapons, and seven suppressed headshots tear through the parka hood. When the slight figure doesn’t fall they freeze; there’s an instant of terrible comprehension, and then their heads twitch in near unison as Villanelle squeezes off two shots from the fire escape behind them.
Like lovers, the two men fold into each other. And stepping up from the fire-escape ladder, unknotting the sleeves of her parka from the flue-pipe, Villanelle watches them die. As always, it’s fascinating. There can’t be much brain-function left after a Black Rose round has bloomed inside your cerebellum, clawing its way through your memory, instincts and emotions, but somehow, some spark lingers on. And then, inevitably, dims.
Standing there on the rooftop, in her cage of snow, Villanelle feels the longed-for power-surge. The feeling of invincibility that sex promises, but only a successful killing truly confers. The knowledge that she stands alone at the whirling heart of events. And looking around her, with the dead men at her feet, she sees the city resolved into its essential colours. Black, white and red. Darkness, snow and blood. Perhaps it takes a Russian to understand the world in those terms.
That Saturday is, without exception, the worst day of Eve Polastri’s life. Four men shot dead on her watch, an A-grade assassin on the loose in London, her MI5 superiors incandescent, the Kremlin no less so, a COBRA group convened, and—it goes without saying—her Thames House career fucked.
When the office ring to tell her that Viktor Kedrin has been found shot dead in his hotel room, she’s still in bed. At first she thinks that she’s going to faint, and then, staggering to the bathroom, and finding the corridor blocked by Niko’s bicycle, she vomits all over her bare feet. By the time Niko reaches her, she’s crouched on the floor in her nightdress, ash-grey and shaking. Simon rings while Niko is sitting with her in the kitchen. They agree to meet at the Vernon Hotel. Somehow, she manages to get dressed and drive there.
There’s quite a crowd in Red Lion Street, held at bay by a barrier of crime-scene tape and two police constables. The senior investigating officer at the scene is DCI Gary Hurst. He knows Eve, and hurries her into the hotel, away from the probing camera lenses. In the reception area, he directs her to a banquette, pours her a cup of sugary tea from a Thermos flask, and watches as she drinks it.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Gary.” She closes her eyes. “God, what a shit-storm.”
“Well, it’s a colourful one. I’ll say that.”
“So what have we got?”
“Four dead. Shot at close range, all headshots, definitely a pro job. Victim one, Viktor Kedrin, Russian, university professor, found dead in his room. With him, victim two, late twenties, looks like hired muscle. On the roof, victims three and four. We think three is Vitaly Chuvarov, supposedly a political associate of Kedrin’s, but almost certainly with organised crime connections. Four is more muscle. All armed with Glock 19s except for Kedrin. The pair on the roof discharged seven shots between them.”
“Must have picked up the weapons here.”
The DCI shrugs. “Easily done.”
“Suggests they were expecting trouble.”
“Maybe. Maybe they just feel happier if they’re carrying. Do you want to get suited up and go upstairs? The other Thames House guy’s waiting for you up there.”