Eve slips from the bed before Niko wakes. When she emerges from Goodge Street Underground station the pavement is still shining from the night's rain, but the sky is washed with a thin sunlight. The office door, to her surprise, is unlocked; she enters hesitantly.

"Well, if you're buying, an almond croissant and a latte. And perhaps a shortbread finger."

"That kettle's gross. What do you want?"

"Er, all night."

"Billy, hi. It's not even eight yet. How long have you been here?"

"Yeah, I'd say so."

He blinks and runs a hand through his black-dyed hair. "Yeah, well. Kicked off the search into that guy Yevtukh, and one thing led to another."

"Good. Hold that thought. I'm going down to the café."

"We've got instant. And tea bags."

She's back five minutes later. It's clear that Billy's fading. His eyes gleam with exhaustion. Even his lip-ring looks dull. "Eat," she says, placing his order in front of him.

Billy takes a large bite of the croissant, showering his keyboard with crumbs, then washes it down with a gulp of coffee. "OK, Yevtukh. Basically the guy's your typical Sov-bloc gang boss. Or was. Headed up an outfit called the Golden Brotherhood, based in Odessa. Usual stuff. Sex trafficking, people-smuggling and drugs. The Ukrainian police also have him down for at least a dozen murders, but have never been able to get anyone to testify against him."

"Shit, Billy. That's way beyond the call of duty."

"Anything we can use?"

"We know all this."

"OK, but you probably don't know what happened earlier this year. According to a file sent to the Europol database, there was a major shoot-out at a luxury property Yevtukh owned in a place called Fontanka, about fifteen kilometres outside Odessa. By the time the local cops got there the house was pretty much wrecked, and half a dozen people were dead. It was obviously gang-related, so at that point the investigation was handed over to the Ukrainian Criminal Police, who handle serious and violent crime."

"So do we know who carried out the attack?"

"Was Yevtukh implicated?"

"This is where it gets weird. One of the people found dead at the house was nothing to do with Yevtukh. He was somebody his men had been holding prisoner. He'd been badly beaten up and then shot, and the police couldn't immediately identify him. So a photograph, fingerprints and a DNA sample were sent to the interior security service in Kiev, and they knew who he was straight away. His name was Konstantin Orlov, and he was an ex-head of operations at Directorate S in Moscow."

"Not directly. He was in Kiev at the time, seeing his family, but it was his foot-soldiers who died at Fontanka."

"Morning, Eve, Billy. Looking a bit rough round the edges, squire, if you don't mind my saying so."

"That's more than weird. You know what Directorate S is?"

"I do now. It's the espionage and agent-running wing of the SVR."

Billy stares into the middle distance, almond filling oozing from his croissant.

"Anything else in that Europol report?"

"For example."

The door opens and they both look round. It's Lance, an unlit roll-up between his lips.

"Exactly. And its Operations Department is like our E Squadron. A special forces team responsible for executing deniable and deep-cover operations overseas."

"Assassinations, for example."

"He's been up all night," Eve says. "And he's discovered something a bit bloody brilliant. Listen to this." Briefly, she puts Lance in the picture.

Billy shakes his head. "'Fraid not. No one seems to be able to work out what an ex-Russian spymaster was doing locked in a Ukrainian gangster's house in Odessa. It doesn't make any sense. Or none that I can see. We should ask Richard. Bet he knew this Orlov bloke."

Taking a deep swig of coffee, Billy makes an up-your-arse gesture with the shortbread finger.

"Doing what, do we know?" asks Lance.

"So if Orlov was SVR, why would a scumbag like Yevtukh want to go anywhere near him, let alone lock him up and torture him? I'd have thought the last thing someone like that would want to do is to make enemies of the Russian secret service."

"Revenge for what?" Billy asks.

"As the actress, etcetera…"

Lance and Billy shake their heads.

"For the killing of Orlov."

"Stop," says Eve. "Both of you. Sorry, but I think we're coming at this from the wrong end."

"Orlov was ex-SVR," Billy says. "He'd been out for a decade."

"Suppose it was revenge."

"Lance, shut the fuck up. Billy, my coffee. Both of you just… shush a minute." She stands there, motionless. "OK. Let's ignore for a moment what Orlov was doing, or not doing, in Yevtukh's house in Odessa. Let's think about our assassin, and quite possibly her girlfriend, making Yevtukh disappear in Venice. Why is she, or why are they, doing that?"

"Almost certainly. But why? What's the motive?"

"Contract hit?" Lance suggests.

"You're going to have to take it slowly," says Billy, rubbing his eyes. "Because I don't."

Silence for a heartbeat. "Bloody hell," Lance murmurs. "I see where you're going with this."

"Let's take it from the top," says Eve. "Orlov heads up the Operations Department of Directorate S, a bureau whose existence is denied by the authorities, but which is, nevertheless, a reality. He runs a worldwide network of operatives, drawn from secret units in the Russian military and trained as deep-cover spies and assassins. Imagine what kind of man Orlov must have been, to have reached a position like that. Imagine what kind of experience he must have had. And then imagine what happens when he leaves the SVR, as he did ten years ago, armed with all that knowledge and experience."

"He goes into the private sector," says Lance.

"The Twelve, for instance?"

Eve shrugs. "It explains the link between him and our female assassin."

"That would be my guess. He's recruited by an organisation that needs his particular, perhaps unique, skill-set."

Lance grins. "Now you're talking. Proper old-school intelligence work."

"It's wall-to-wall geeks and metalheads."

In answer Billy pulls up his T-shirt sleeve. There's a tattoo on his doughy upper arm. Five black dots arranged in a grid.

"Cold at this time of year, though," Billy says. "Snow makes my asthma flare up."

"What d'you mean?"

"What actually happened with all that?" Eve asks. "I've read the file, but…"

"Well, I was going to go to prison in America at one point, but that fell through."

"I don't think so," Eve says. "But I need to talk to Richard. If anyone can shine any light on a figure like Orlov, he can. And one thing's becoming increasingly clear: everything points to Russia. Sooner or later we're actually going to have to go there."

"You're sure we're not making false connections?" Lance says. "Joining imaginary dots to convince ourselves we're moving forward?"

"I've never actually been abroad. Mum doesn't like it."

"Never?" Eve asks.

"You'd love Moscow, mate. Fit right in."

"Fuck's that?" Lance asks.

"How come you didn't?" Lance asks.

"So what happened?"

Eve peers at it. "I literally have no idea what you're talking about."

"And that's when MI6 came knocking?" Eve asks.

"Glider pattern from the Game of Life."

"It's a hacker emblem. When I was seventeen, I was in this collective. We never met face to face, but we'd communicate online. We had some pretty advanced tools and basically we'd hack anything we could, especially US corporate and government sites. We didn't do it because we were like, anarchists or anything, but just for the arse of it. Anyway, there was a sort of unofficial leader of the group, called La-Z-boi, who used to direct us to sites, especially foreign government sites. And I will honestly never know how we didn't figure this one out, it's so obvious, but La-Z-boi worked for the FBI, and took us down. Everyone went to prison except me."

"Released on bail. Had to live at home with my mum, which is where I lived anyway, but under curfew, and with no access to the internet."

"Under age."

"Basically, yeah."

She nods. "Get onto Richard. Set up a secure meeting. We need to know more about Orlov."

Even if it's only a means to an end, Villanelle takes little pleasure in her work at the hotel. She and the other room attendants are required to rise at six thirty, eat a hurried breakfast of cheese, bread and coffee in the kitchen, and then start vacuuming the public spaces of the hotel. When this is complete the morning room-cleaning shift begins.

There are twenty-four guest bedrooms at Felsnadel, and Villanelle is responsible for eight of them. She is expected to start cleaning each room at the end furthest from the door, so that no detail is missed. Every surface -- dressing tables, desks, televisions, headboards, wardrobe doors -- is to be dusted or wiped down. Wastepaper baskets are emptied, and anything on the desks or bedside table tidied. Beds are then stripped and neatly remade with fresh sheets and pillowcases. In the bathrooms, where room staff are required to wear rubber gloves at all times, cleaning is carried out from top to bottom, starting with mirrors. Baths, shower-stalls and toilets are cleaned and sanitised, towels and toiletries replaced. The suite and its carpets are then vacuumed.

By the time Villanelle reaches Roger Baggot's room, her eighth and last, she's in a vengeful mood. The place reeks of cologne, and when Villanelle strips the bed she discovers a woman's crumpled thong, which she guesses to be Johanna's, and a used and knotted condom. When the room is finally presentable, Villanelle allows herself to sink into one of the calfskin-upholstered chairs. If the work is unpleasant, and at times revolting, Villanelle is conscious that her room-attendant duties afford her some badly needed privacy. Maria is a friendly enough room-mate, but her depressive character irritates Villanelle, as does her snoring.

Silas Orr-Hadow's room, by contrast, looks barely touched. He's made his own bed, folded and put away all his clothes, and left the bathroom exactly as he has found it. On the desk, every book, paper and pencil is aligned and squared off. On his bedside table is a photograph of an anxious-looking bespectacled boy, recognisably Orr-Hadow himself, holding the hand of a uniformed nanny. Beside it are two well-thumbed hardback books: Winnie the Pooh and Mein Kampf.

Some rooms require more work than others, and all are revealing of their occupants. Magali Le Meur's room is chaotic, with towels, bedclothes and used underwear strewn over every surface. Her dressing table holds a carton of menthol cigarettes and a half-empty bottle of Peach Amore Schnapps. The bathroom floor is sodden, the toilet unflushed.

For Linder's guests, the pace of life at Felsnadel is leisurely. There is an extended breakfast offered in the dining room until eleven o'clock. Following this drinks are available outside on the terrace, where reclining chairs, warmed by infrared heaters, are placed to take advantage of the view of the High Tyrol. The sky is a hard, pure blue, against which the snowy ridge-line of the Granatspitze massif shimmers like a blade.

The morning briefing with Birgit has also yielded a single, salient fact: the whereabouts of Linder's room. He's on the first floor, in a spacious suite overlooking the front of the hotel. None of the rooms that Villanelle services is on the first floor. Killing her target is going to require careful timing.

Inside, a series of informal talks is under way. As Villanelle enters the reception area to report to Birgit that her rooms have all been cleaned, the tiny Italian fascist Leonardo Venturi is holding forth to half a dozen admirers.

"Then, finally, the old order will fall," he declaims. "And a new golden age will come into being. But this will not be painless. For the new Imperium to be born, the roots of the old must be cut away without pity."

"Yes."

Birgit looks up, her expression frosty. "Room Seven. A complaint. You need to go straight away and deal with it."

Room Seven is Petra Voss's. When Villanelle knocks on the door and opens it with her pass key, Petra is lying on the bed, smoking. She's wearing jeans and an ironed white shirt.

"Physical training. At my prep school we had it every day. The instructor was an ex-military policeman, and if you didn't do your press-ups properly you had to report for a cold shower. And he'd jolly well watch to make sure you stood there for a full five minutes, too. Marvellous old boy. Sorry, you were saying?"

Petra stares at her. "You're quite a piece of work in that uniform, aren't you? Quite the Aryan cutie-pie."

"Yes, Birgit."

"Sorry, thought for a moment you said without PT."

But Venturi has lost his train of thought, and in the brief hiatus Villanelle makes her way across the reception area to the desk.

"Without pity. Without mercy."

"What is PT?"

"Come over here, Violette. That is your name, isn't it?"

"Without what, old chap?" asks Orr-Hadow.

"If you say so."

"You might be," she says.

"You're a guest. Obey the rules."

"Such attitude from the maid." Languidly, Petra swings her legs from the bed, and stands so that she is eye to eye with Villanelle. Very slowly and deliberately, she draws Villanelle's black neckerchief through its woven leather knot. "But then I'm your type, aren't I?"

"Konstantin Orlov," says Richard. "How strange to hear his name after all these years."

"I do say so. Bring me something I can use as an ashtray."

"So. You don't approve of me."

"Whatever."

Villanelle considers. According to the hotel schedule the afternoon's guest entertainment is an hour-long helicopter flight through the high peaks of the Tyrol and Carinthia, hosted by Linder. It's due to depart from the landing strip at 2 p. m. She's got, perhaps, an hour.

In response, Villanelle reaches forward, and takes the cigarette from Petra's mouth. She walks over to the window, opens it, admitting a blast of cold air, and throws the cigarette out into the snow.

Petra smiles. "Actually, I'm not a fucking guest. I'm paid to be here. A lot."

"Apparently, yes. Killed in unexplained circumstances, near Odessa."

He and Eve are sitting at a window table in a department store café. The café is on the fourth floor, overlooking Oxford Street. Eve is drinking tea, and Richard is staring without enthusiasm at a plate of reheated shepherd's pie.

"I panicked. Embarras du choix. Orlov's dead, you say."

"He was killed in the house of a Ukrainian gangster called Rinat Yevtukh. A nasty piece of work."

"As they so often are. Go on."

"Last month Yevtukh vanished off the face of the earth while on holiday in Venice, after taking off in a motor launch with an unknown, and reportedly glamorous, young woman. Now we know that our female assassin was in Venice at that time, and I'm wondering if she killed Yevtukh as some kind of punishment for Orlov's death."

Eve smiles. "You're wishing you hadn't ordered that now, aren't you?"

"Sadly appropriate. His life was a series of unexplained circumstances." He looks out over the rooftops for a moment, then takes up his fork and determinedly addresses his meal. "So what's his death got to do with our enquiry?"

"Exactly, to Yevtukh, it doesn't mean to say that they knew each other. Equally, just because she's in Venice at the same time as Yevtukh, it doesn't mean she…"

Eve sips her tea and lowers her cup to its saucer. "Not yet. But bear with me. We know that our female assassin -- who we're calling Villanelle, by the way, for reasons that I'll explain -- was in Venice. We know that she's employed by the Twelve, the organisation that Cradle told us about."

"That presupposes a connection between her and Orlov. Is there any reason to think that such a connection exists?"

"Yes, I can see that if you suppose that, you can construct a revenge motive. But just because this woman and Orlov both had a connection to, um…"

"Yevtukh."

"Whoever they might be."

"Yes. Now suppose, for argument's sake, that Orlov worked for them too."

"Oh dear. My friend's enjoying his shepherd's pie."

They fall silent as an elderly woman pushes a shopping trolley very slowly past their table. "I had the cauliflower cheese," she confides to Eve. "It tasted of nothing at all."

"So what is her name again?"

"That's nice." The woman peers at Richard. "Bit simple, is he?"

"Villanelle."

"What?"

"I'm pretty sure that the name she uses professionally, or as a codename, is Villanelle."

They watch her go. Eve swallows the last of her tea, and leans forward. "Of course she killed him, Richard. He went off with her and never came back. The whole affair has her name written all over it."

She explains.

"This woman leaves you a card, sprayed with her scent and signed V. You discover that she uses a scent called Villanelle, so you conclude that she calls herself the same thing. That's guesswork, not a logical consequence of the known facts. And the same is true of the connection between the woman --"

He puts down his fork. "You're doing it again."

"How did you arrive at that?"

"All right then, if you insist, between Villanelle and Orlov. You want it to be so, so you deduce that it is so. My personal opinion is that we should pursue the Sverdlovsk-Futura line of enquiry that you outlined in your report. Follow the money, in other words."

"Of course. We should do that. But with respect, I need you to trust me on this, because I'm getting to understand our assassin and how she operates. She gives an impression of recklessness, giving me that bracelet, for example, but actually she takes very calculated risks. She guessed that I'd follow her to Venice, sooner or later, and that I'd figure out that she killed Yevtukh. That's all part of her plan. Because knowing I'm there, just a couple of steps behind, gives the game its edge. She's a psychopath, remember. Emotionally and empathetically, her life is a flatlining blank. What she wants, above all, is to feel. Killing gives her a rush, but only a temporary one. She's good at it, it's easy, and the thrill diminishes each time. She needs to jack up the excitement. To know that her wit and her artistry and the sheer horror of what she's doing are appreciated. That's why she's drawing me in. That's why she told me her name, using the perfume. She likes setting me these perverse little puzzles. It's intimate and sensual and hyper-aggressive, all at the same time."

"I mean that she's calling all the shots."

"Assuming that this is true, why you?"

"Were you the same age?"

"You and Konstantin Orlov?"

"Yes."

"No, he was a couple of years older. He fought as a conscript in the Soviet-Afghan War. Served under Vostrotin and was wounded, quite badly, at Khost. Won a medal, a good one, which must have brought him to the attention of someone with a bit of pull, because a couple of years later he turned up at the Andropov Academy. That's the finishing school for spies outside Moscow. It used to be run by the KGB, but by the time Orlov left they'd become the SVR."

"Because I'm the one who's after her. I'm the source of the greatest danger to her, and that excites her. Hence the provocations. All that erotic bait-and-switch."

Richard is expressionless. For perhaps half a minute he stares out of the window at the busy street below. "We share a birthday. Shared, I should say."

"By which you mean what, exactly?"

"Well, it's clearly working."

"I acknowledge that. I admit that she's been fucking with my head. What I'm suggesting is that we get ahead of the game. Let me go to Russia. I agree that it's possible that Villanelle and Orlov have no connection, that their lives don't intersect at all, but let's just look and see what we find. Please. Trust me on this."

"I'll tell you a story about him. We met at a reception at the Russian embassy -- this was in Kabul -- and after directing me to the best vodka, he introduced me to a colleague of his whom he described as a secretary although we both knew she was no such thing. Anyway she was attractive, and obviously clever, and laughed at my jokes despite my far-from-brilliant Russian, and when she went it was with a backwards glance that lasted just that moment longer than it needed to. It was all done with a very light touch, and when I told Konstantin that I'd love to see her again but just couldn't face the paperwork, he laughed and gave me another glass of Admiralskaya."

"Why, in a free world, would you choose to have a tongue piercing?" Richard asks when Agniezka has gone.

"No, thank you."

"Truly, I don't know. I'll ask Billy. Go on about Orlov."

"Khost was in 1988, and Orlov graduated from the Academy in, I'd guess, 1992. One of Yevgeny Primakov's brightest and best, by all accounts. There was a posting in Karachi and then another in Kabul, which is where I met him. Very clever, very charming, and I'd guess completely ruthless."

"So this was all… when?"

"Don't like?"

"No. Yes. Just… Not hungry."

"Yes, diplomatic cover. So he was on the circuit. But he had fast-track SVR written all over him. And he knew exactly who I was too."

"Thank you, yes."

A staff member, name-tagged "Agniezka", appears at their table. "I take?" she asks, nodding at Richard's abandoned shepherd's pie.

"I give you anyway. You're welcome."

"I have no idea."

"Is it a sex thing?"

"He was declared?"

"You want feedback form?"

"And that's when I saw these lines of perches, and on them, these superb birds of prey. Sakers, lanners, peregrines. It was a falconry camp. I followed Konstantin into one of the tents, and there, hooded and ready to fly, were half a dozen gyrfalcons, the most beautiful and expensive hunting birds in the world. There was also a white-bearded guy there, extremely fierce-looking, who Konstantin said was a local tribal chieftain. He introduced us, someone brought us lunch, Coca-Cola and some kind of meat on skewers, and then we drove further into the desert and the falconers flew their birds at bustard and sand-grouse. It was truly spectacular."

"Anyway, I reported the encounter in the usual way and the next day I got a couriered message from Konstantin. He remembered that I'd said I liked bird-watching, and wondered if I'd like to go on a short drive with him outside the city. So I logged the approach, and a couple of days later I met Konstantin in Dar-al-Aman Road outside his embassy, where two vehicles turned up with Afghan drivers and half a dozen wild-looking locals armed with AKs. We drove out of the city on the Bagram road, past the airport, and half an hour later we turned off in the middle of nowhere, drove round a low hill, and there were all these parked vehicles, and tents, and the smoke from fires. There were thirty or forty people there. Arabs, Afghans, tribespeople and a team of heavily armed bodyguards. So I asked Konstantin, rather nervously, what the hell was this place? And he said, don't worry, it's all fine, look closer."

"And Orlov didn't make any kind of approach?"

"I would never have had you down as a bird-watcher."

"It was an extraordinary day, and I honestly didn't care that I was probably spending it with arms traders, opium dealers and the high command of the Taliban. I wouldn't even have been surprised to have come face to face with Osama bin Laden, who I later learned owned several gyrfalcons."

"So you had a good day with Orlov?"

"I wasn't one until I joined the Service. Then I found out that several of the top Russia hands were birders, and that it wasn't enough to know your Pushkin and Akhmatova, you had to know your waxwings from your wagtails too. So I took it up, and caught the bug."

"Lord, no. He was much too smart for that. We talked very little except about the birds and the wildness and strangeness of the occasion. And while he obviously had his professional reasons for cultivating me, I sensed that he took a real pleasure in my enjoyment of the day. I liked him very much, and I meant to return the invitation in some way. I felt that it was important not to be in his debt. But I never got the chance. He was recalled to Moscow shortly afterwards, and we later learned that he'd been appointed chief of Directorate S."

"Once, very briefly. It was in Moscow at a party for Yuri Modin, who fifty years earlier had been the KGB controller for Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt, the Cambridge spies. Modin, by then pretty old, had just written a book about it all, and Konstantin was something of a disciple of Modin's. They met, I'm guessing, at the Andropov Academy, where Modin was a guest lecturer. He taught a course named 'Active Measures', which included subversion, disinformation and assassination, and from the way that Konstantin ran the directorate, it was clear that he had taken Modin's philosophy very much to heart."

"Did you ever see him again?"

"Then in 2008 Konstantin leaves the SVR altogether. Jumped or pushed?"

"From the little I knew of him, that wouldn't have been his way. Konstantin was an old-school Russian fatalist. He'd have taken it philosophically, packed his bags, and moved on."

"So he might be resentful of his old bosses?"

"Put it like this: when you're running an SVR directorate it's up or out. And he wasn't promoted."

"No. From then to now, when he turns up dead in Odessa, we have absolutely no knowledge of his whereabouts or activities. He vanishes."

"Gardening at his dacha? Running a nightclub? Salmon fishing in Kamchatka? Who knows?"

"To what, do we know?"

"You don't think that's strange?"

"I do, and it is. But it doesn't tie him to our killer."

"Eve, there is no logical reason in the world to believe that that's the case. None."

"So what do you think he was doing for the last decade?"

"How about placing a lifetime's experience of covert operations at the disposal of the Twelve?"

"Richard, you didn't hire me for my logical skills. You hired me because I was capable of making the imaginative leaps that this investigation demands. Villanelle might play with the idea of leading us on, of leading me on, but when it really matters she covers her tracks like a professional. Like a professional who's been trained by the best. By a man like Konstantin Orlov."

He frowns, steeples his fingers, and opens his mouth to speak.

"Seriously, Richard, we've got nothing else to go on. I agree with you about the money-trail and the Tony Kent connection, but how long's that going to take us to untangle? Months? Years? The three of us at Goodge Street certainly don't have the resources. Or the experience."

"Eve, it's a no. You can investigate the hell out of Orlov from here, but I'm not sending you to Russia."

"No, listen to me. I know there's a chance that Orlov and the Twelve aren't connected. But if there's a chance they are, even a small one, then surely we have to follow it up. Surely?"

"Eve --"

"Richard, please."

"Look, either you're wrong, and there's no connection, in which case it's a waste of your time and my resources. Or you're right, in which case I'd be encouraging you, in the most irresponsible fashion imaginable, to place yourself in harm's way. You turn up in Russia and start asking questions about political assassinations and the careers of men like Orlov… I don't even want to think about the consequences. Or, for that matter, about what I'd tell your husband if anything happened to you. We're talking about a country so traumatised, so abused by its leaders, so systematically ransacked by its business class that it can barely function. You start making enemies in Moscow, and a teenager will shoot you in the face for the price of an iPhone. There are no rules any more. There's no pity. It's just havoc."

"No, I don't. If I was a man you'd send me, and you know it."

"It may be all those things -- and I'm going to pretend I didn't hear what you said about my husband -- but it's also where the answers are."

"Possibly. But you've said it yourself. Who do we trust? If we're to believe Cradle, and in the light of events we've got no choice but to believe him, the Twelve are buying up precisely the kind of people we'd need to help us."

"You don't give up, do you?"

He nods. "Eve, please. We can talk further if you want, but there's a couple over there staring at us, and I think they want this table. Also, I need to get back to the office."

"Happy to be of service." Villanelle extricates her naked thigh from between Petra's. "Just don't forget who's really in charge around here."

"That's what I want to ask you. There must be someone you know over there who's clean. Some man or woman of principle who can't be bought."

"Remind me."

Petra Voss yawns and stretches. "Well, that was nice. I'm glad I rang for you."

"He's got this…" She gasps, and pushes Villanelle's fingers deeper.

"Eva Braun, apparently. Please, don't stop."

"Tell me about Max Linder," Villanelle says.

"I'm curious."

"Seriously?"

"If I don't have one, I'll end up in the shit with Birgit. And that I don't need."

"He's got this what?"

"Who's Birgit?"

"This thing for… Mmm, yes. There."

"Like he's her reincarnation. Are you going to fuck me again or not?"

"Again?"

"Max's crazy bitch manageress. She sniffs us to make sure we're clean. If I walk into her smelling of pussy she'll fire me."

"Are you serious?"

"No, I mean the cat's mother. Scheisse!"

"So you've got time for a shower, then?"

"Eva Braun?" Villanelle raises herself on one elbow. "You mean, Hitler's --"

Petra bucks against Villanelle's hand. "He's weird."

"Yes. I'm just going to borrow your shower."

"I've got a terrible memory." Taking Villanelle's hand, Petra pulls it between her legs.

"I'd love to," says Villanelle, withdrawing her hand. "But I should get back to work."

"What kind of thing?"

"This thing for?"

"In what way?"

"Well, we don't want that, do we? I might join you in the shower."

She hands Villanelle an apple, a wedge of Emmental cheese, and a slice of Sachertorte on a saucer. "We're not supposed to have the cake, I took it out of the room-service fridge."

"You missed lunch," Maria says. "Where were you?"

"Shit. Which one?"

"That's not fair, not in your lunchbreak. I saved you some food from the kitchen."

Back in the staff quarters, the temperature is, as usual, several degrees lower than elsewhere in the hotel. In the room they share Villanelle finds Maria sitting on her bed, wrapped in a blanket, reading a Polish paperback.

"Be my guest."

Villanelle takes her rucksack from the chest of drawers and, turning her back on Maria so as to block her view, reaches inside it and takes out a ring of keys. "A guest wanted me to make up her room again."

"That singer. Petra Voss."

"I already am."

"Thanks, Maria. That's nice of you."

"People don't know how hard it is, all the shit we have to do."

"No," mumbles Villanelle, her mouth full of Sachertorte. "They really don't."

"I don't need babysitting, Lance. I'm an adult woman. Which appears to be a problem round here."

"So we're not going to Moscow after all," says Lance. "That's a shame. I really fancied some of that."

"Really?"

"Because I was there too."

"That last night in Venice, for example. You should have let me know where that jewellery designer's party was."

"How do you know the party was for a jewellery designer?"

"Richard thought it was too dangerous to send me. Being a woman and everything."

"I'm… I don't know what to say."

She stares at him. "You followed me? You seriously fucking followed me?"

"You're kidding. I didn't see you."

He shrugs. "Yeah."

"You have no field training, Eve. That's the issue, and that's why I'm here." He glances at her. "Look, you're good, OK? Smart. None of us would be here if you weren't. But when it comes to tradecraft and procedure, you're… well, you've got to trust me. No flying solo. We watch each other's backs."

"Well, you wouldn't have."

"To be fair, you're not field-trained. And you do have a tendency to go a bit off-piste."

"I was doing my job. Making sure you were OK."

After pulling on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves, Villanelle uses her pass-key to let herself into Linder's room, which Maria has serviced earlier. She works fast. The bathroom cupboards reveal little of interest, beyond a predilection for rejuvenating face creams. The clothes in the wardrobe are good quality, but not so showy and expensive as to alienate his working-class supporters, or to give the lie to his supposedly spartan lifestyle.

In the base of the wardrobe there's an aluminium-bodied briefcase fitted with a lock. Villanelle's keyring holds several conventional door keys -- enough to give a normal profile on an airport scanner -- but also locksmith's jigglers and a bump key. A delicate twist of one of the smaller jigglers, and the lock springs open. Inside are an Apple laptop computer, several unmarked DVDs in plain boxes, a plaited leather bullwhip, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch, a boxed pair of cougar-head cufflinks by Carrera y Carrera, a Waffen SS ceremonial dagger, a death's-head ring, a display case holding a heavy steel dildo ("The Obergruppenführer"), and several thousand euros in unused banknotes.

Sitting on the bed, Villanelle closes her eyes. A half-dozen heartbeats, and she smiles. She knows exactly how she is going to kill Max Linder.

Turning round in his chair, Billy takes off his headphones. "Video file coming in from Armando Trevisan. Subject: attention Noel Edmonds. Is someone taking the piss?"

Eve looks up from the Sverdlovsk-Futura Group's website. "No, get it up. Best quality you can."

Leaving the case open, Villanelle conducts a quick tour of the rest of the room. On the bedside table is a miniature projector, an iPad tablet, a hardback copy of Julius Evola's Ride the Tiger, and a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Beneath these, on the floor, is a cabin-size valise secured by a five-digit combination lock. Glancing at her watch, Villanelle decides not to attempt to open the valise; instead, she tentatively lifts and shakes it. Whatever's inside is light; a faint swish suggests clothes. She replaces the valise, then unzips the large tan leather suitcase that has been placed against the wall. It's empty.

A clip of a crowded pavement, shot from about a metre above head-height. A dozen or so pedestrians enter and exit the frame, a couple of them lingering in front of a clothes shop window. The footage is low-resolution grey on grey. It runs for seven and a half seconds and cuts out.

"That's the Van Diest boutique in Venice," Eve says. "Run it again at half-speed. Keep going until I say."

"Is there a message?" Lance asks.

Billy runs the clip twice before Eve stops him. "OK, slow it down even more. Watch the women in the hats."

Billy shakes his head. "Just the vid."

"Out of the way, fatso," Lance murmurs.

The man's there for a full five seconds, then he turns towards the camera to look behind him, and as he does so the cowboy hat appears to slip back on the second woman's head, momentarily exposing her face.

"Give us a sec."

As they enter the frame the women seem to be together. The nearer of the two is wearing an elegant print dress, and her face is concealed by a broad-brimmed hat. The further figure is taller and broader; she's wearing jeans, a T-shirt and what looks like a straw cowboy hat. A large man steps between them and the camera.

The moment replays, infinitely slowly. "Best I can do," says Billy finally, moving backwards and forwards between frames. "You've either got the full profile blurred, or the part-profile with her hand in the way."

"The Russian girlfriend?" Lance asks.

"Could be, if the timing fits with when they visited the shop. Which I'm guessing is why Trevisan sent this. Let's see it frame by frame, and see if we can get a look at her."

"Print both," Eve tells him. "And the frames bracketing them."

"OK… Hang on, there's another email from Venice."

"Read it out."

"Dear Ms Polastri, I hope this CCTV footage from Calle Vallaresso is of use. It corresponds to the time of the two women's visit to the Van Diest shop as described by yourself and confirmed to me by the manager Giovanna Bianchi. In this connection two Russian-speaking females, registered as Yulia and Alyona Pinchuk, stayed at the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido for one night, two days after the date on the CCTV footage. Hotel staff have confirmed that the Pinchuks, described as sisters, might have been those shown in the footage. With compliments -- Armando Trevisan."

"I don't think so. She's totally surveillance aware. And I'll bet that's the girlfriend, too. Remember what Giovanna at the jewellery shop said. The same age but a little taller. Short blonde hair. The physique of a swimmer or a tennis player."

"Might be just coincidence."

Eve stares at the printout of the two women. The features of the woman with the cropped blonde hair are pixilated and indistinct, but the essence of her is there. "I'll know you when I see you, Cowgirl," she murmurs savagely. "You can count on that."

"Run a check on those names, Billy. Yulia and whatever the other one was Pinchuk." She grabs the first of the printouts, as the printer wheezily disgorges it. "That's got to be Villanelle in the dress. Look how she angles the hat so that it completely hides her face from the CCTV camera."

Lance nods. "She does fit that description. Broad shoulders, definitely. Can't tell if she's blonde, but the hair's definitely very short. Just wish the face wasn't so blurred."

"OK. Yulia and Alyona Pinchuk," says Billy. "Seems they're the co-proprietors of an online dating and escort agency called MySugarBaby. com, based in Kiev, Ukraine. The contact address is a post office box in the Oblonskiy district of the city."

"Sure?" he asks.

An hour before the dinner shift, Villanelle knocks at Johanna's door. Unlike the other temporary staff members, Johanna has a room to herself. She is also, alone of the twelve of them, not required to serve at dinner. Kissing Birgit's ass has its rewards.

"Absolutely sure. You've done more than enough for one day. Lance, what's your plan for the evening?"

"I'm meeting someone. The bloke from the Hampshire Road Policing Unit whose bike was nicked by your, um…"

"She's not my anything, Lance. Call her Villanelle."

"Can you dig a bit deeper? See if you can find pictures or any biographical stuff? I'm sure they're just cover identities, but let's make sure."

"Will you be able to get back OK?"

"Yeah, no problem. Last train's around eleven."

Eve frowns. "Thank you both. Seriously."

Billy nods. He looks dazed with exhaustion, and Eve feels a stab of guilt. "Do it tomorrow," she tells him. "Go home now."

"No, I'm taking a train from Waterloo out to Whitchurch, which is where his unit is based. Apparently they serve a nice pint at the Bell."

"He's coming to London, this bloke?"

"OK. By Villanelle."

The door opens slowly. Johanna is wearing tracksuit pants and a crumpled sweater. She looks half-awake. "Ja. What do you want?"

Villanelle holds up a clear plastic bag containing the grubby thong retrieved from Roger Baggot's bed. "Listen, schatz. If you don't take that dinner shift for me I'm going to have to tell Birgit where I found this. I don't think she'll be pleased to find out you've been fucking the guests."

"I want you to take my place at dinner tonight."

Johanna blinks and rubs her eyes. "I'm sorry, I don't work the evening shift, except for turndown service on the upper corridor. Ask Birgit."

"OK, let's go and speak to Birgit right now. We'll see who she believes."

For a moment Villanelle thinks her bluff is going to be called. Then, slowly, Johanna nods.

"I'll deny it. You can't prove that's mine."

"So what do I say to Birgit? She's going to think it's strange that I'm doing a shift I don't have to."

"OK. I'll do it," she says. "Why's it so important to you, anyway?"

Villanelle shrugs. "I've had enough of Linder's guests. I can't stand another evening of their stupid conversation."

She nods sulkily. "So can I have my tanga back?"

"Later."

"Tell her what you like. Say I'm in my room, throwing up. Say I've got the shits. Whatever."

"My pleasure. Just be there at dinner, OK?"

When Villanelle gets back to her room, she can hear the weak splash of the shower. When Maria steps back into the room, shivering in an undersized towel, Villanelle tells her that she's feeling ill, and that Johanna will be covering her at dinner. If Maria is surprised at this turn of events, she says nothing.

After locking herself in the bathroom, Villanelle applies a thin layer of pale cake make-up, and dusts it with cornstarch. A faint smudge of shadow beneath each eye, and she's the picture of unhealth. Retching into her hand as she passes Maria, she goes in search of Birgit.

"Scheisse, Violette. I thought you were a nice person. But you're a bitch. A real fucking bitch."

She finds her in the kitchen, bullying one of the sous-chefs. Haltingly, Villanelle tells Birgit about her stomach upset and her arrangement with Johanna. Birgit is furious to hear that Villanelle is not going to be serving in the restaurant, and tells her that she's thoroughly unreliable and disrespectful and that she will be docking her pay.

By the time she gets back to the room, Maria is in her serving uniform, and on the point of setting off for the restaurant. "You really don't look well," she tells Villanelle. "Make sure you wrap up warmly. Take the blanket from my bed if you want."

After she's gone, Villanelle waits for a further ten minutes. By now, everyone should be congregating in the main building for pre-dinner drinks. Opening the door onto the staff corridor she peers cautiously out, but can hear nothing. She's alone.

She retreats back inside, takes her phone and a steel-bodied ballpoint pen from the bedroom chest of drawers, and locks herself in the bathroom. Kneeling on the tiled floor, she removes the back from the phone and, lifting out the battery, extracts a tiny foil envelope containing a copper-bodied micro detonator. Then, taking a small violet-scented oval of soap from her washbag, she strikes it with controlled force against the porcelain base of the sink, so that the outer shell of the soap cracks open. Inside it is a 25g plastic-wrapped disc of Fox-7 explosive, which Villanelle returns to the washbag. It's joined there by the micro detonator, the ballpoint pen, and the clippers, cuticle-pushers and scissors from her manicure set.

Goodge Street tube station is crowded. It's always this way during the after-work rush hour, which is one of the reasons that Eve likes to take the bus. She's not claustrophobic precisely, but there's something about being hemmed in by bodies while hurtling through an underground tunnel, with the possibility that the lights may flicker and go out at any second, or the train unaccountably stop, as if its functions have suddenly and catastrophically failed, that makes her profoundly anxious. There are just too many parallels with death.

Now, there's just one more thing she needs.

She dislikes Anton but she has to admit he's provided everything she's asked for. The detonator and the Fox-7 explosive are state-of-the-art, the manicure items are engineered steel, capable of doubling as professional DIY tools, and the pen, with very little adjustment, turns into a miniature 110V soldering iron.

The first train that arrives, a Northern Line train via Edgware, is already full to capacity, and as the ranks of commuters on the platform press forward, trying to force their way aboard, Eve retreats to a bench.

You win. This is Oleg. Do everything he says. R.

Frowning hard to disguise her elation, Eve puts the envelope and note in her bag. "OK, Oleg. Tell me."

"Not much. I learned it at school. A-levels."

"I have something for you." He passes her a brown office envelope. "Read please."

"Crazy, no?" says an expressionless voice next to her.

"OK. Tomorrow morning, very important, you meet me here on station platform, eight o'clock, and give me passport. Tomorrow evening six o'clock meet me here again, and I give back. Wednesday you flying Heathrow to Moscow Sheremetyevo, and staying at Cosmos Hotel. You speak Russian, I think? Little bit?"

"OK, no problem." He opens a briefcase, and takes out two flimsy sheets printed with the tiny, smudgy script common to visa application forms the world over. "Sign, please. Don't worry, I fill in the rest."

It's a handwritten note.

He's in his late thirties, forty at a push. Skin that hasn't seen the sun in months. She looks frostily ahead.

"Once. About ten years ago."

"A-levels Russian. Eto khorosho. Have you been before?"

It takes her a moment to realise that he means Lance.

She hands the forms back to him.

"Also, Moscow very cold now. Raining ice. Take strong coat and hat. Boots."

"Am I going alone?"

It's only at this point that she starts to wonder what the hell she's going to tell Niko.

"No, also your kollega, Lens."

"Thanks, Oleg, do zavtra."

It takes Villanelle fifty-five minutes, working calmly and steadily, to prepare the explosive device with which she intends to kill Linder. When it's ready she changes into her Bund Deutscher Mädel uniform, pockets the device and her pass-key, and leaves the room. Arriving at the guest wing she pauses. The corridor is silent; the guests are still at dinner. Walking unhurriedly to Roger Baggot's room, she knocks quietly on the door, gets no response, and lets herself in. Having pulled on her rubber cleaning gloves, Villanelle takes an envelope from her pocket. In it is a pair of nail scissors and the plastic film in which the Fox-7 explosive was wrapped. In the bathroom she finds Baggot's washbag, makes a small cut in the lining with the nail scissors, and pushes the plastic film inside. The envelope goes in the small pedal waste-bin beside the sink. The scissors go in the bathroom cabinet.

"Do zavtra."

She leaves Baggot's room and ascends to the first floor, and Linder's room. Once again she knocks quietly on the door, but there's no sound from within. She lets herself in, her breathing steady, and carefully plants the device that she's prepared. For a moment she stands in the middle of the room, calculating blast and shockwave vectors. Then her body registers alarm, and she realises that she can hear a faint, muffled tread climbing the stairs. It might not be Linder, but it might.

Villanelle considers calmly walking out of the room as if she's just finished turning down the bed linen. But the linen isn't turned down, and there's no time now to do so. Besides, others might see her leaving, and remember. So, exactly as she's rehearsed in her mind, she moves at speed to the tan suitcase, and pulls open the twin zips. Stepping inside, she kneels, contracts, angles her shoulders, and tucks in her head. Then reaching upwards, she draws the zips together, leaving a four-inch space to breathe and look through. It's a brutally tight fit, impossible for anyone who didn't exercise and stretch regularly, but Villanelle ignores the straining tendons in her back and legs and concentrates on regularising her breathing. The case smells of musty pigskin. She can feel the steady beat of her heart.

The door to the room opens, and Max Linder walks in. He hangs the Do Not Disturb sign over the outside handle, and bolts the door from the inside. Rounding the bed, he stoops to pick up the valise, which he places on the bed and unlocks, using a combination code. From inside this, he takes a ginger-coloured garment of some kind, and drapes it from the bed.

He crosses the room. Villanelle can't see the wardrobe because the bed is in the way, but she hears the creak of its double doors, and then the springing click of the lock as Linder opens the briefcase. Pressing one eye to the narrow aperture between the zips, she feels cold sweat crawling from her armpits to her ribs. A moment later Linder walks back into view carrying the laptop computer and a CD, which he places next to the miniature projector on the bedside table. There's a pause as he connects them, and then a dim, projected image appears on the wall of the room, runs for a couple of seconds, and stops. Villanelle can only see the image at an acute angle, but it appears to be the countdown timer of an old black and white film.

He's turning himself into Eva fucking Braun.

Her back and calf muscles screaming now, Villanelle stares through her tiny viewing slit, and remembers what Petra Voss told her.

Returning to the briefcase in the wardrobe, Linder takes out the rectangular box that houses the Obergruppenführer dildo. Given that less than an hour ago Villanelle has fitted the Obergruppenführer with a military-grade detonator and a lethal payload of Fox-7 explosive, this is not good news. Briefly she considers bursting out of the suitcase, killing Linder with her bare hands, and then pitching him out of the window into the snowy darkness outside, but quickly dismisses the idea. Discovery would not be immediate, but it would be inevitable. And weirdly, illogically, she feels safe folded into the suitcase. She likes it in there.

Touching a wall-switch Linder turns off the overhead light, so that the only remaining illumination is provided by the lamp on the bedside table, and the beam of the projector. Then, unhurriedly, he strips naked, and taking the garment from the bed steps into it. It's a dirndl, a traditional Alpine dress with a laced-up bodice, a white blouse with puff sleeves, and a frilled apron. White knee socks complete the costume. Villanelle can't see Linder clearly, but she can see enough to know that the look doesn't suit him. Bending down, he takes a female wig from the valise, and teases it into place on his head. The wig is neatly coiffed and waved, in a stern, mid-twentieth-century style.

Villanelle closes her eyes, presses her forehead to her knees, covers her ears with her hands and opens her mouth. Her neck and shoulder muscles are quivering now, and her heart pounding.

Linder switches on the projector, and as black and white images begin to flicker on the wall, he inserts a pair of in-ear headphones and lies down on the bed. Despite the distorted angle, Villanelle can see that the film is of Hitler, delivering a ranting, histrionic speech to a vast crowd, perhaps at Nuremberg. All she can hear of the speech is a faint whisper from the headphones, but the lace apron of the dirndl is soon twitching like a tent in a high wind. "Oh mein sexy Wolf," Linder mutters, clutching himself. "Oh mein Führer. Fuck me with that big wolf's schwanz. I need anschluss."

The air ruptures, tearing like fabric, and a roar of sound slams from wall to wall, wrapping around Villanelle so tightly that she can't breathe, lifting and upending her. For an extended moment she's weightless, then there's a hard impact and the suitcase bursts open. Lungs heaving, faint with shock, she rolls into a frozen, singing silence. The room's half dark, and there's no plate-glass window any more, just an empty black space. The air is filled with feathers, whirling like snowflakes on the inrushing mountain air. Some, flecked with red, drift to the floor. One settles softly against Villanelle's cheek.

"Invade me, mein Führer!"

Effortfully, she raises herself on one elbow. Max Linder is all over the place. His head and torso, still wearing the laced-up bodice of the dirndl, have been thrown back against the headboard. His legs, all but severed, hang loosely over the bed's end. In between, on the exploded duvet, is a glinting mess of blood, viscera and broken glass from the blown-out overhead light. Above Villanelle's head, something detaches from the ceiling and splatters into her hair. She brushes it away absently; it feels like liver. The ceiling and walls are glazed with blood-spray, and flecked with faecal and intestinal matter. Linder's severed right hand lies, palm down, in the courtesy fruit-bowl.

Slowly, Villanelle gets to her feet and takes a few shaky steps. Vaguely conscious that she's hungry, she reaches for a banana, but its skin is sticky with blood and she lets it fall onto the carpet. Her eyes ache with fatigue, and she's desperately, mortally cold. So she lies down again, curling up like a child at the foot of the bed, as the body fluids of the man that she has killed drip and congeal around her. She doesn't hear the splintering of the door, or the shouts and the screaming that follow. She dreams that she's lying with her head in Anna Leonova's lap. That she's safe, and at peace, and Anna is stroking her hair.