We feel the Kirovo-Chepetsk slowing. A glance through the hatch tells us that the approach to St. Petersburg is frozen, with the ice extending at least two miles out to sea. For the next few hours we barely move, and then an icebreaker vessel appears off our port bow, and begins cutting a ship lane for us. It's a desperately slow business, and we alternate between lying in frustrated silence on the clothing bales and facing the glacial wind at the hatch as the icebreaker shears, meter by meter, through the creaking, protesting ice.

By the time the Kirovo-Chepetsk docks at the terminal in Ugolnaya harbor, and the engine vibrations finally cut out altogether, it's been dark for hours. In the steel box that's been our home for the best part of a week, the air is thick with the smell of our bodies. We've eaten the last of the cheese and chocolate and hunger is tearing at my guts. I'm exhausted, wrung out and terrified, mostly at the thought of being separated from Villanelle. What's her plan? What will happen when the container doors are opened? Where will we be, and what will we face?

Unloading begins a couple of hours after docking. We're one of the first containers to be lifted off the Kirovo-Chepetsk, and my heart races as we swing through the air and lock on to the waiting trailer. Zipped into the inside pockets of my motorcycle jacket are the Glock, which presses uncomfortably against my ribs, and three magazines of 9mm ammunition. If the container is scanned for body heat, or searched in the course of a security check, God knows what will happen. Igor assured us in Immingham that no such checks would be made, and that our safe transit to a St. Petersburg industrial depot would be taken care of, but we are a long way from Immingham now. As the container truck moves off, I reach for Villanelle and touch her cheek. She flinches irritably.

"What?"

"Suppose we're stopped?"

"Well?"

She yawns. "Fuck's sake, Eve."

"If we're stopped, just do what I say."

"You always say that. It doesn't help."

"I don't give a shit. Stop getting on my tits."

She turns her back to me, and I lie there, grinding my teeth. Right now I'd welcome arrest if it involved a square meal, and to hell with Villanelle and the future. I imagine a warm office, a steaming bowl of borscht, crusty brown bread, fruit juice, coffee… I'm so furious, and so knotted up with hunger and anxiety, that I fail to realize we've left the port area behind us.

With an agonized scraping the container slides to the ground. Minutes pass, and then there's a muted clanking as the locking rods are released and the doors are swung open. Beneath the bales I freeze, my jaw clenched and my eyes squeezed shut, so scared I can't think. The moment stretches out, but I can hear nothing. Vaguely, I become aware of one of Villanelle's arms lying across my back. And then, just meters away, something slams shut, a truck engine grumbles into life, and there's the distant screech of un-oiled gates.

The container truck's progress through the outskirts of St. Petersburg is unhurried, and we feel every grinding gear change. When we finally come to rest, there's absolute silence. Then a thunderous vibration seizes the container and it tilts sharply, so that everything inside slips downhill and banks up against the rear doors. I go with it, and end up with Villanelle's knee in my face. Hurriedly, arms and legs scrabbling, we drag the bales on top of us. I burrow so far down that I can feel the cold steel floor of the container beneath me. The cargo doors are likely to be opened at any moment, and my heart is beating so violently I'm afraid I'm going to pass out.

"Hey, dumbass," she whispers, directing the beam of a red-light torch at my face. "It's OK. There's no one here."

"Are you sure?"

For several minutes, neither of us moves. Then I feel the arm slither away, and the bales shifting. Even so I remain frozen to the container floor, not daring to hope that we're alone. It's only when I hear Villanelle's voice that I open my eyes and glance upward.

Hesitantly, I feel my way to the open doors of the container, find my glasses, and look around me. We're in the loading dock of a warehouse the size of a cathedral. Above us, strip lights suspended from rusting joists give off a sick, sulfurous glow. To our left are the dim outlines of the steel doors, now closed, through which the container truck entered and exited. A razor-cut of light shows around a judas gate let into one of the doors. Ahead of us, vanishing into the shadows, stand serried ranks of industrial garment rails, all holding wedding dresses. It looks like an army of ghostly brides.

"Yes. Come out."

Villanelle beckons and I follow. I stop after a few steps, dizzy and light-headed. I feel bloated, and there's a sharp pain lancing through my guts.

I stand there for a moment, swaying. "Just need to get my balance."

"Are you OK?"

"It's obvious. You can't just not shit for a week."

She frowns, then turns back and jabs a finger into my side. "Sore?"

"I'm sure I'll get round to it soon. Anyway, it's stopped hurting, so let's go."

We walk the perimeter of the warehouse, but there's no quick way out. There are a couple of steel fire doors, both immovably locked. The windows are way out of reach, at least ten meters from the ground, and the skylight that runs the length of the building is even higher. A small office, accessible by a stairway, is suspended above the shop floor. We climb the stairs. The door is unlocked, and on the desk there are invoices and other documents indicating that the warehouse is owned by a company named Prekrasnaya Nevesta. Beautiful Bride. The desk also holds a cheap TeXet phone and a paper bag containing a stale sausage sandwich.

"Yes, how did you know?"

She's lying, obviously, but I wolf it down anyway.

"Have it," Villanelle says. "I'm not hungry."

"I won't," I tell her. "And I don't care."

"Just don't expect me to kiss you anytime soon," she says, pulling on a pair of the latex gloves that she always seems to carry around with her. "That thing stinks. It's probably donkey meat."

She turns the phone on. It has 1 percent battery life left. Before it dies in her hands I check the time against my watch. Twenty to six.

"What time do you think people start work here?"

As I search the container, removing the evidence of our stay -- rucksacks, empty water bottles, food wrappings, shit bags -- Villanelle prowls round the warehouse, examining the ranks of wedding dresses. Massive electrical heaters mounted on wheels stand at intervals in the floor's central aisle, and one of these seems to particularly interest her. After a couple of minutes she returns to the container, collects the neatly knotted bags of her own shit, and directs me to a hiding place among the garment rails, about ten or twelve meters from the gate. "Wait here," she says, passing me the rucksacks. "And don't move."

"I saw a punch clock by the entrance. Let's go back down and have a look at the employees' cards."

It turns out that the first members of the workforce arrive at six, or shortly after. We have barely a quarter of an hour. "When they come in, that's when we need to make our move," Villanelle says. "If we try and stay hidden we'll definitely get caught."

The minutes pass with agonizing slowness. I'm terrified that people will arrive early, Villanelle will be caught out in the open, and I'll be discovered crouching among the wedding dresses. Eventually, however, she reappears beside me. "When I give the word, run like fuck for the gate," she tells me, as we put on our rucksacks. "Don't speak, don't look back, and stay close to me."

"That's the plan? Run like fuck?"

"That's the plan. Remember, they're civilians. Factory workers. They'll be much more scared of you than you are of them. They won't have any idea what's going on."

I look at her doubtfully, and at that moment we hear the creak of the judas gate opening. As quickly as I can I take off my glasses and stuff them into a pocket. Then there's a murmur of voices, and an unhurried series of electronic clunks as the Prekrasnaya Nevesta employees begin to punch their timecards. Overhead lights flicker on, there's a whiff of cigarette smoke, and as unseen figures shuffle past our hiding place, the distance between the two of us and the gate seems to grow greater and greater. Cool it, I tell myself, trying to steady my breathing. It'll be like running up Tottenham Court Road for a number 24 bus. Easy-peasy.

A series of vibrant rumblings announces that the heating units have been switched on. Tightening the straps of her backpack, Villanelle moves to a runner's crouch. "Get ready," she whispers, and I imitate her, dry-mouthed with apprehension. The rumbling of the heaters becomes a whirr and then there's a spattering sound, ragged screams, an outburst of swearing, and the sound of feet running past us toward the center of the warehouse. "Go!" Villanelle mouths, and sprints toward the warehouse entrance, her pack bouncing on her back.

I'm there at her shoulder, running for that bus. Away to our right I'm aware of a confusion of shouting figures and angry faces swiveling toward us. Somehow we reach the judas gate. Villanelle swings it open, we leap through, and race over the rough, frozen ground toward a chain-link fence. Waiting for us at the exit is a security guy in a hi-vis jacket. He stretches out his arms in a tentative attempt to block us and Villanelle whips her Sig Sauer from her jacket and points it at his face. He dives sideways, and I reach past Villanelle for the latch of the exit gate and wrench it open. She pushes through, dragging me after her, but my foot twists on the frozen ground, and I fall heavily onto my hip. I try to stand, but my ankle explodes with pain.

"Get up, Eve," Villanelle says with quiet urgency, as a shouting mob begins to pour out of the warehouse.

She looks down at me, her eyes expressionless. "Sorry, baby," she says, and runs.

Within moments, I'm surrounded. Everyone's arguing, swearing at me, staring at me, and shouting questions. I curl up in a fetal position on the ground, my knees drawn up to my chest and my eyes closed. I can feel my ankle swelling. It hurts like hell. This is the end.

"Otkryvay glaza. Vstavay." Open your eyes! Stand up! A male voice, harsh and accusatory.

"I can't."

"Ty kto?" Who are you?

I squint upward. Angry faces against an iron-gray sky. The speaker is an older man with a shaven head and skull-like features. To his side is a woman, fortyish, with a spectrally pale complexion and discolored teeth, and a young guy with a spider's-web neck tattoo. Others, perhaps a dozen of them, mill around. They're wearing hoodies, overalls and work boots. Their voices are strident, but most of them just look baffled.

I don't answer. Perhaps, as Villanelle hoped, they'll think that I'm mentally ill. That I've been driven by voices in my head to commit random acts of trespass and destruction. Perhaps, and this is admittedly a long shot, someone will take me to a hospital, from where I can contact the British authorities. Erratic behavior as a consequence of post-traumatic stress, I will suggest apologetically, and this will not be far from the truth. I will be flown home and prescribed rest. Niko will take a lot of winning over, but sooner or later he will take me back, and forgive me. And then the Twelve will kill me. Fuck.

The two women help me over the step and through the judas gate, and I'm immediately assaulted by a stomach-turning stench. It's everywhere, filling my nostrils, throat and lungs, and it gets worse the further we proceed into the building.

I stare back at skull-face, and he issues a series of directives. I am yanked to my feet, my rucksack is lifted from my back, and two of the women support me as I half-walk, half-hop back to the warehouse. The young man with the neck tattoo, meanwhile, speaks with quiet urgency into a mobile phone. Now that I'm helpless, and wholly unable to control events, I discover that I'm no longer afraid.

"Zdes vonyayet," says one of the women, holding a headscarf over her nose, and I can't help but agree. It stinks.

"Ty kto?"

In front of one of the fan heaters, everything has been sprayed with a fine mist of shit. The floor is slippery with it, as are the ceiling and light fittings, and a dozen of the most elaborate wedding dresses, formerly shell-pink, pearly white or ivory, are unromantically flecked with brown.

Villanelle's improvised diversion has proved shockingly effective. When she was setting it up I was too tense to pay much attention, but I now see what she was up to. Having anticipated that one of the first things that the Prekrasnaya Nevesta workforce would do on arrival at the warehouse was to get the place warmed up, she packed the interior of one of the heating units with a week's worth of her own shit, neatly knotted into six biodegradable bags. The bags would have melted fast, and the fans would have done the rest. The heater in question has been turned off, but it's still steaming and dripping.

Disgusting, but classic Villanelle. A signature piece, you might say, charged with the brilliance and horror that she brings to her finest work. Even as I gag at the stench, I recognize the flair that drew me to pursue her in the first place. I also can't help reading the scene as a personal message. If you're hoping for happy-ever-after, she's saying, then forget it, that's all shit. She clearly meant it, because she's gone. Given the choice between rescuing me and saving herself, she legged it.

Of course she did. She's a psychopath.

"Kto ona takaya?" Who is she? Skullhead points in the direction that Villanelle went, and I frown as if I don't understand the question, or who he's referring to.

The two women lead me to the center of the warehouse floor, where skullhead is waiting, and a chair has been pulled up for me. My rucksack is placed at my side. All things considered, I'm amazed at their civility and consideration.

"Ty kto?" I'm asked again, and again I stare back vacantly.

"Ona bolnaya na golovu," says the woman with the headscarf, and at her suggestion that I have mental health problems I gaze at her piteously and, to my surprise, discover that I'm weeping.

Once I've started, I can't stop. I lean forward in the chair, bury my face in my hands, and sob. I feel my shoulders shake, and the tears run through my fingers. I've lost my husband, my home, and to all intents and purposes, my life. I'm trapped in a country I barely know, forced to use a language I speak poorly, fleeing an enemy I can't begin to identify. Niko thinks I'm dead, but the Twelve will not be so easily deceived. The only person who could have kept me safe was Villanelle, and now I've lost her too.

Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I look at the faces surrounding me. Whoever this Dasha is, her arrival is clearly not good news.

She beckons to the men. Two of them approach me, preceded by a dizzying gust of cologne. The first pulls me to my feet and subjects me to a disdainful body search, the second empties my rucksack on the floor and separates the Glock and the magazines from the crumpled sweaters and dirty socks and panties. The woman glances at the handgun. Placing her hands on her knees, she leans forward and stares at me thoughtfully. Then she slaps me, really hard.

There are five of them. The four men are young, thuggish, and sharply dressed. They stop dead when they enter, pinch their noses, and glance at each other with disbelief. The woman ignores the smell and the milling employees, strides to the center of the warehouse floor, and looks about her. In these surroundings, she's a vision. Black shearling jacket zipped to the throat, cool green eyes, lustrous chestnut hair cut in a chin-length bob.

How long I remain in this self-pitying state, I don't know, but when I finally raise my head, the guy with the neck tattoo is lowering his phone. "Dasha Kvariani's coming," he announces grimly. "She'll be here any minute."

I almost fall out of the chair. It's not the stinging force of the blow, it's the assumption that I'm someone who can and should be hit that really shocks me. I gape at her, and she slaps me again. "So what's your name, you rancid whore?" she asks. Russian insults can be colorful.

Something shifts in me and I remember Villanelle's words. Her demand that I should be more like her. More like Oxana. She wouldn't be slumped in a chair, tearfully waiting for the worst. She'd be ignoring the fear, sucking up the pain, and planning her next move.

Everyone freezes, and the two men who searched me grab my arms. I'm so high on adrenaline I don't feel a thing. Even my ankle is anesthetized. The Kvariani woman is swearing vengefully, in a voice thick with blood and mucus. I can't follow all of it, but I catch the words "ogromnaya blyat oshibka," which means "huge fucking mistake." She issues a series of orders, and two of the warehouse employees slip away, one returning with a long coil of industrial twine, the other wheeling one of the tall, steel garment hangers.

I've never hit anyone in my life. So when I propel myself from the chair and punch Dasha Kvariani smack on the tip of her pretty nose, I'm almost as surprised as she is. There's a biscuity crunch, blood jets from her nostrils, and she turns sharply away, clutching her face.

The pain gets worse, and becomes inseparable from the sound of my gasping and sobbing. Dasha Kvariani steps in front of me, so that all I can see of her is her fur-lined ankle boots. Then a plastic bucket of water is placed beside one of the boots, her hands lift it, and a moment later I'm drenched, and gasping at the icy shock. I jerk and writhe so violently that the garment hanger tips toward the floor. I'm a split second from a smashed face when invisible hands catch the hanger and ease it back upright. There's no feeling in my arms and shoulders now. I have to fight to breathe, dragging the air into my constricted lungs. I'm so cold I can't think.

The two men stand me in front of the hanger and bind my wrists behind my back with the twine, knotting it with practiced fingers. My confidence wavers, and I'm not sure that my bad ankle is going to go on supporting me for much longer. As my knees start to shake, the two men lift me by the armpits and stand me on the horizontal bar at the hanger's base, a foot off the ground. Then I feel my wrists wrenched forcefully upward and suspended from the upper bar. I slump forwards, my arms vertical, pain knifing jaggedly through my neck and shoulders. I fight to retain my balance, knowing that if my feet slip off the bar both of my shoulders will be wrenched out of their sockets, but my knees are gluey and my sprained ankle is on fire.

There's a gunshot, shockingly loud, followed by a dimming of the lights and a pattering of falling glass. Then there's a meaty crack and a thump.

"Dasha Kvariani. You're looking good, suchka." It's Villanelle, her voice deadly calm. I'm so relieved I start to cry. She's come back for me.

"Vorontsova?" Kvariani's voice is thick and unsteady. "Oxana Vorontsova? I thought you were dead."

"Wrong. Get her down from there right now, bitch, or you'll be fucking dead."

Hands untie me, and assist me to a chair. I sit there for a moment, dripping and shaking with cold. Villanelle is standing, legs apart, over the unconscious body of one of the thugs that tied me to the garment rail. He's bleeding from a serious head wound inflicted, I'm guessing, with the butt of Villanelle's Sig Sauer. I'm not sympathetic, and I'm pleased to see that the weapon in question is pointed unwaveringly between Dasha Kvariani's eyes.

"Send someone to get her some dry clothes," Villanelle orders, glancing at me, and Kvariani gestures to the pale woman, who hurries nervously away, glass from the shot-out ceiling light crunching and snapping beneath her boots.

"Sorry if we were rough with her. But I have to ask you again, Vorontsova, what the fuck is going on? The owner of this business pays me to make sure there's no trouble here, and I get a call saying that two crazy women have covered the place in human shit, damaged machinery and destroyed hundreds of thousands of rubles worth of stock. I mean, what am I supposed to do?"

Slowly, Villanelle lowers the gun.

"Can you please explain to me what the fuck you're doing here?" Kvariani asks Villanelle. "And put the Sig away. We're both Dobryanka graduates, after all."

The pale woman returns, and leads me by the hand to a dingy women's toilet. She's found me a T-shirt, a grimy pink sweater, and a faded pair of overalls like those worn by the Prekrasnaya Nevesta employees. A filthy hand towel hangs on the back of the door. Gesturing vaguely at the clothes, the woman disappears. By the time I've changed into the dry clothing and limped back to the others, Villanelle and Dasha Kvariani are talking and laughing together. Where the thug with the head wound was lying is now just a long blood smear. At my approach Villanelle and Dasha look up.

Kvariani points at me. "Is she yours?"

"Yes."

"Yes, but my father speaked with them." She switches to Russian.

"Small world."

"She says it was her Me Too moment," Villanelle explains.

"Jesus."

"She was on the Metro one evening, going home from college. The train was like super-crowded, and some guy started feeling her up."

"Yeah, well. Dasha was famous in Dobryanka, everyone called her 'Necksnapper.' Her father was a respected gang leader in the vorovskoy mir. He was so powerful in St. Petersburg the prosecutors didn't dare try Dasha in a local court, they sent her fifteen hundred kilometers away to Perm. And her family still managed to fix everything."

"Anglichanka?" asks Dasha, flashing her teeth at me. "You're English?"

"Yeah, very funny. You did notice, just five minutes ago, that your new best friend was torturing me?"

"You look cute," Villanelle tells me in English. "Proletarian chic suits you."

"Great."

"On my bum," says Dasha. "So I…" She mimes taking the guy's head in her arms and violently twisting it. "His neck maked sound like… popkorn."

"I know, right?"

"Hey, she apologizes, she's really sorry about that. And she's an old friend, not a new one. We know each other from prison."

"Weren't there witnesses?"

I ignore her. My shoulder muscles are still agony. "So why was she on trial?" I ask Villanelle in English. "What did she do?"