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Cruising through Muswell Hill on his carbon-framed bike, his hands resting lightly on the alloy handlebars, Dennis Cradle feels a pleasing exhaustion. It's a longish ride from the office to his north London home, but he's made good time. It's something that he would hesitate to confide to his colleagues or his family, but Dennis sees himself as the upholder of certain values. The hard cross-town ride satisfies the Spartan in him. Cycling keeps him lean and mean, and, incidentally, looking pretty damn sportif in his form-fitting Lycra shorts and tactical-fabric jersey, given that he's going to be forty-eight next birthday.

As the director of D4 Branch at MI5, responsible for counter-espionage against Russia and China, Dennis has reached a level of seniority where he can, if he wishes, get chauffeured home in one of the Service's fleet of anonymous, mid-range vehicles. Tempting of course, status-wise, but a slippery slope. Let the fitness go, and it's all over. Before he knows it, he'll be one of those paunchy old shags propping up the Thames House bar, nursing his Laphroaig and complaining about how much better things were before the fembots in HR took over.

Cycling helps keep Dennis in touch. Keeps his ear to the street and the blood racing through his veins. Which is where he needs it, given Gabi's raging libido. God, he wishes he was going home to her right now, rather than to Penny, with her diet-drained body and her incessant fault-finding.

As if on cue, as he glides the final hundred metres, the "Eye of the Tiger" theme from Rocky III kicks in on the Bluetooth player in his cycling helmet. As the big chords punch home, Dennis's heart begins to pound. In his mind, Gabi is waiting for him on a king-size bed in the master cabin of a superyacht. She's naked, except for a pair of fluffy white tennis socks, and her gym-toned legs are invitingly parted.

Then, incomprehensibly, a steel-strong hand grabs his arm and wrenches him to a halt, the bike skidding to the ground beneath him. Dennis opens his mouth to speak, but is silenced by a vicious short-arm punch to the gut.

"Sorry, squire. Need your attention." Dennis's captor is fortyish, with the features of a well-groomed rat, and smells of stale cigarette smoke. With his spare hand, he removes Dennis's cycle helmet and drops it on the fallen bike. Dennis writhes, but the grip on his arm is unyielding.

"Stand still, yeah? Don't want to hurt you."

Dennis groans. "What the fuck…?"

"I'm here for a friend, squire, who needs to talk to you. About Babydoll."

The remaining colour drains from Dennis's face. His eyes widen with shock.

"Pick the bike up. Put it in the back of the vehicle. Then get into the front seat. Do it now." He releases Dennis, who looks around him with dazed eyes, noting the elderly white Ford Transit van and the pasty-faced youth with the lip-piercing at the wheel.

Opening the van's rear door, his hands trembling, Dennis turns off the helmet's Bluetooth sound-system, which is now playing "Slide It In" by Whitesnake. He hooks the helmet over the handlebars and loads the bike into the van.

"Phone," Ratface says, following the demand with a stinging slap that leaves Dennis's ears ringing. Shakily, Dennis hands it over. "OK, into the passenger seat."

As the van pulls out into the traffic, Dennis tries to remember the Service capture and interrogation protocols. But suppose this lot are the sodding Service, and part of some internal investigation team? They'd have to have gone to the DG to authorise turning over someone of his rank. So who the fuck? Could they be hostiles? SVR, perhaps, or CIA? Just say nothing. Take each moment as it comes. Say nothing.

The drive takes less than ten minutes, with the Transit van weaving in and out of the rush-hour traffic. They cross the North Circular Road, and then pull in to the car park of a Tesco superstore. The driver selects a bay at the furthest point from the store's entrance, brings the van quietly to a halt, and switches off the ignition.

Dennis sits there, his face the colour of raw pastry, staring through the windscreen at the boundary fence. A faint fuel haze rises from the traffic on the North Circular. "Now what?" he asks.

"Now we wait," says the voice of Ratface behind him.

Further minutes pass, and then a ringtone sounds. Grotesquely, it's a laughing duck.

"For you, squire." From the back seat, Ratface passes him a cheap plastic phone.

"Dennis Cradle?" The voice is low, with a tinny electronic twang. Voice-changer, he notes subconsciously.

"Who is this?"

"You don't need to know. What you need to know is what we know. Let's start with the big one, shall we? That in return for betraying the Service, you've accepted the best part of fifteen million pounds, and parked it in an offshore account in the British Virgin Isles. Do you have any comment to make about that?"

Cradle's world contracts to the windscreen in front of him. His heart feels as if it's been packed in ice. He can't think, let alone speak.

"I thought not. So let's continue. We know that earlier this year you took possession of a three-bedroom apartment in a building named Les Asphodèles in Cap d'Antibes on the French Riviera, and that last month you bought a forty-two-foot motor yacht named Babydoll, presently moored at the Port Vauban marina. We also know about your association with twenty-eight-year-old Ms Gabriela Vukovic, currently employed by the fitness club and spa at the Hotel du Littoral."

"At present neither MI5 nor your family know about any of this. Nor do the Metropolitan Police or the Inland Revenue. Whether that state of affairs continues is up to you. If you want us to remain silent -- if you want to retain your freedom, your job and your reputation -- you need to tell us everything, and I mean everything, about the organisation that's been paying you. Short-change us, hold a single fact back, and you will spend the next quarter-century in a Belmarsh Prison cell. Unless you die first, obviously. So what do you say?"

The faint drone of traffic. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of an ambulance alarm. "Whoever you are, you can fuck yourself," Dennis says, his voice low and unsteady. "Assault and kidnapping are crimes. Say whatever you want to whoever you want. I don't give a shit."

"You see, here's the problem, Dennis," the tinny voice continues. "Or maybe I should say, here's your problem. If we send a report to Thames House, and there's an investigation and a prosecution and all that sort of thing, it will be assumed that you've talked to us, and the people who are paying you all that money -- and fifteen mill is a lot -- will be forced to make an example of you. You'll be dealt with, Dennis, and it'll be nasty. You know what they're like. So really, you don't have a choice. There's no bluff to call."

"You haven't the first idea what you're talking about, have you? I may have concealed certain things from my wife and my employers, but having an affair isn't a crime, at least it wasn't when I last checked."

"No, it isn't. But treason is, and that's what you'll be charged with."

"You've got no grounds whatever to charge me with anything of the sort, and you know it. This is just a cheap attempt at blackmail. So whoever you are, like I said, go fuck yourself."

"OK, Dennis, here's what's going to happen. You're going to get out of that van in five minutes' time, and ride your bike home. You might want to pick up some flowers for your wife; they've got some very reasonably priced roses at the petrol station. Tomorrow morning a car will pick you up at your house at 7 a. m. and drive you to Dever Research Station in Hampshire. Your deputy at Thames House has been informed that you will be spending the next three working days there, attending a counter-terrorism seminar. In the course of that time, you will also, in another part of the station, be privately interviewed about the subjects we've discussed. No one else there will be aware of this, and there will be no outward sign of any break in your usual duties. Dever, as I'm sure you know, is listed as a government secret asset, and is completely secure. If these interviews go well, which I'm sure they will, you will be free to go."

"And if I say no?"

"Dennis, let's not even begin to think about what happens if you say no. Seriously. It would be a total shit-storm. Penny, for a start. Can you imagine? And the kids. Their dad on trial for treason? Let's not even go there, OK?"

A long silence. "You said 7 a. m.?"

"Yes. Leave it any later and the traffic will be impossible."

Dennis stares into the hazy twilight. "OK," he says.

Laying the phone on her desk, Eve Polastri exhales and closes her eyes. The tough, authoritative character she's been playing for Dennis Cradle is nothing like her own, and face to face with him she wouldn't have been able to keep up the mocking tone, not least because he seemed so stratospherically senior to her when she worked at MI5. But with that final "OK", he's effectively conceded his guilt, and if he'll almost certainly be shocked to see her sitting opposite him tomorrow, it won't be anything she can't handle.

"Neatly played," says Richard Edwards, removing the headphones through which he's been listening to Dennis and Eve's conversation, and settling back into the Goodge Street office's least uncomfortable chair.

"Team effort," says Eve. "Lance scared the hell out of him, and Billy drove like an angel."

Richard nods. The head of MI6's Russia desk, Richard is technically Eve's employer, although he's an infrequent visitor to the office, and her name is not on any official Security Services personnel list. "We'll give him tonight to meditate on his situation, ideally in the presence of that short-tempered wife of his. Tomorrow you can set about stripping him to the bone."

"You think he'll be there at 7 a. m.? You don't think he'll cut and run tonight?"

"No. Dennis Cradle may be a traitor, but he's not a fool. If he runs, he's finished. We're his only chance, and he'll know that."

"No chance he'll…"

"Kill himself? Dennis? No, he's not the type. I've known him since we were at Oxford together, and he's a ducker and diver. The sort who thinks you can sort out any problem, no matter how tricky, over a decent bottle of wine in a good restaurant, preferably on someone else's expense account. He'll tell us what we need to know, and he'll keep quiet about it. Because scary though our people can be, the lot he's betrayed us to have got to be infinitely more so. Any suggestion he's compromised, they'll shut him down straight away."

"With prejudice."

"With extreme prejudice. They'd probably send your lady friend to do it."

Eve smiles, and the phone in her bag vibrates. It's a text from Niko, asking when she's going to be home. She answers eight o'clock, although she knows that her actual arrival time is likely to be at least eight thirty.

Richard stares through the office's single, long-uncleaned window. "I know what you're thinking, Eve. And the answer is no."

"What am I thinking?"

"Wring Cradle out, then use him as bait. See what swims up out of the deep."

"It's not a wholly bad idea."

"Murder's always a bad idea, trust me, and murder's what it would amount to."

"Don't worry, I'll stick to the plan. Dennis will be back in the arms of the lovely Gabi before you can say full-blown mid-life crisis."

Rinat Yevtukh, leader of Odessa's Golden Brotherhood crime network, is frustrated. Venice, he's been assured, is more than a city. It's one of the high citadels of Western culture, and perhaps the ultimate luxury destination. But somehow, standing at the window of his suite at the Danieli Hotel in his complimentary dressing gown and slippers, he can't quite engage with the place.

Partly, it's stress. Kidnapping the Russian in Odessa was a mistake, he sees that now. He'd assumed, quite reasonably, that the thing would play out in the usual way. A flurry of back-channel negotiations, a cash sum agreed on, and no hard feelings on either side. In the event, some lunatic chose to take the whole thing personally, leaving Rinat with six men and the hostage dead, and his house in Fontanka shot to pieces. He has other houses, obviously, and men are easily enough replaced. But it's all extra work and, at a given point in your life, these things begin to take their toll.

The Doge's Suite at the Danieli is reassuringly luxurious. Winged cherubs disport among candy-floss clouds in the ceiling fresco, portraits of Venetian aristocrats hang from walls shining with gold damask, antique carpets cover the floors. On a side table stands a metre-high, multicoloured glass statuette of a weeping clown, bought in a Murano factory that morning and destined for Rinat's Kiev apartment.

Katya Goraya, Rinat's twenty-five-year-old lingerie model girlfriend, is sprawled barefoot across a rococo chaise longue. Dressed in a Dior crop top and Dussault thrashed jeans, Katya is gazing at her phone, chewing gum, and nodding her head to a Lady Gaga song. At intervals she sings along, insofar as the chewing gum and her limited English permit. There was a time when Rinat found this endearing, now he just finds it annoying.

"Bad Romance," he says.

Unhurriedly, her expensively augmented breasts straining against the lacy fabric of her top, Katya removes her ear-buds.

"Bad Romance," Rinat repeats. "Not Bedroom Ants."

She looks at him blankly, then frowns. "I want to go back to Gucci. I've changed my mind about that bag. The pink snakeskin one."

There's nothing Rinat wants to do less. Those superior San Marco shop assistants. All smiles until they've got your money, and then you might as well be dogshit.

"We need to go now, Rinat. Before they close."

"You go. Take Slava with you."

She pouts. Rinat knows that she wants him to come because if he does, he will pay for the bag. If the bodyguard takes her it will come out of her allowance. Which he also pays for.

"You want to make love?" Katya's gaze softens. "When we get back from the shop I'll fuck you up the ass with the strap-on."

Rinat shows no sign of having heard her. What he really wants is to be somewhere else. To lose himself in the world beyond the gold silk curtains, where afternoon is shading into evening, and gondolas and water taxis are drawing pale lines across the lagoon.

"Rinat?"

He closes the bedroom door behind him. It takes him ten minutes to shower and dress. When he returns to the reception room, Katya hasn't moved.

"You're just leaving me here?" she asks, incredulous.

Frowning, Rinat checks his reflection in a silvered octagonal mirror. As he closes the door of the suite behind him, he hears the sound, not unimpressive in its way, of a twenty-kilo Murano glass clown shattering on an antique terrazzo floor.

In the hotel's top-floor bar, it's blessedly quiet. Later it will be thronged with guests, but for now there are just two couples, both sitting in silence. Installing himself on the terrace, Rinat leans back in his chair, and through half-closed eyes watches the soft rise and fall of the gondolas at their moorings. Soon, he muses, it will be time to leave Odessa. To get his money out of Ukraine and into a less volatile jurisdiction. For the last decade sex, drugs and human trafficking have proved themselves the ultimate gilt-edged trifecta, but with new players like the Turkish gangs moving in, and the Russians cracking down hard, the game is changing. The wise man, Rinat tells himself, knows when to move on.

Katya has her gaze set on Miami's Golden Beach, where for less than $12 million, including bribes to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, you can get a luxury waterfront home with a private dock. Rinat, however, is increasingly of the opinion that life might be less stressful without Katya and her incessant demands, and the last few days have got him thinking about Western Europe. About Italy in particular, which appears to take a relaxed view of crimes of moral turpitude. The place is classy -- the sports cars, the clothes, the fucked-up old buildings -- and Italian women are unbelievable. Even the shop-girls look like movie stars.

A grave young man in a dark suit materialises at his elbow, and Rinat orders a malt whisky.

"Cancel that. Make the gentleman a Negroni Sbagliato. And bring me one too."

Rinat turns, and meets the amused gaze of a woman in a black chiffon cocktail dress, who is standing behind him.

"You are, after all, in Venice."

"I am," he concurs, a little dazedly, and nods to the waiter, who silently withdraws.

She looks out over the lagoon, which shimmers like white gold in the dusk. "See Venice and die, is what they say."

"I'm not planning to die yet. And I haven't seen much of Venice, except the inside of the shops."

"That's a pity, because the shops here are either full of tourist trash, or the same as those in a hundred other cities, except maybe more expensive. Venice is not about the present, Venice is about the past."

Rinat stares at her. She really is very beautiful. The amber gaze, the oblique smile, the whole artfully expensive look of her. Belatedly, it occurs to him to offer her a chair.

"Sei gentile. But I'm interrupting your evening."

"Not at all. I'm looking forward to that drink. What was it again?"

She sits, and with a whisper of silk tights, which Rinat does not fail to appreciate, crosses her knees. "A Negroni Sbagliato. It's a Negroni, but with sparkling wine instead of gin. And at the Danieli, naturalmente, they make it with champagne. For me, the perfect drink at sunset."

"Better than a single malt whisky?"

A faint smile. "I think so."

And so it proves. Rinat is not an obviously handsome man. His shaved head resembles a Crimean potato, and his handmade silk suit cannot disguise his brutal build. But wealth, however acquired, has a way of commanding attention, and Rinat is not unused to the company of desirable women. And Marina Falieri, as he learns her name to be, is nothing if not desirable.

He can't take his eyes off her mouth. There's a faint scar on the bow of her upper lip, and the resultant asymmetry lends her smile an equivocal quality. A vulnerability that speaks, quietly but insistently, to the predator in him. She is flatteringly interested in everything he has to say, and in response he finds himself holding forth freely. He tells her about Odessa, about the historic Cathedral of the Transfiguration, where he is a regular worshipper, and about the magnificent Opera and Ballet Theatre, to which, as an enthusiastic patron of the arts, he has contributed millions of roubles. This account of himself, if wholly fictional, is richly and convincingly detailed, and Marina's eyes shine as she listens. She even persuades him to teach her a couple of phrases in Russian, which she repeats with endearing inaccuracy.

And then, all too soon, the evening is over. She has to attend an official dinner in Sant'Angelo, Marina explains apologetically. It will be dull, and she wishes she could stay, but she's on the steering committee of the Venice Biennale, and…

"Per favore, Marina. Capisco," Rinat says, discharging his entire stock of Italian with what he hopes is a gallant smile.

"Your accent, Rinat. Perfezione!" She pauses, and smiles at him conspiratorially. "It's not possible, by any chance, that you're free for lunch tomorrow?"

"Well, as it happens, I am."

"Excellent. Let's meet at eleven at the hotel's river entrance. It will be my pleasure to show you something of… the real Venice."

They rise, and she's gone. Four empty cocktail glasses stand on the white linen tablecloth, three of his and one of hers. The sun is low in the sky, half obscured by oyster-pink cirrus clouds. Rinat turns to beckon for the waiter, but he's already standing there, as patient and unobtrusive as an undertaker.

In the bus, moving at a snail's pace up the Tottenham Court Road, the only person to give Eve a second glance is an obviously disturbed man who winks at her persistently. It's a warm evening and the interior of the bus smells of damp hair and stale deodorant. Opening the Evening Standard, Eve flicks through the news pages and the descriptions of parties and serial adultery in Primrose Hill, and settles pleasurably into the property section.

There's no question of her and Niko being able to afford any of the living spaces so seductively laid out there. All those Victorian warehouses and industrial units reimagined as fabulous, light-filled apartments. All those panoramic river-views framed in steel and plate glass. Nor, in any real sense, does Eve covet them. She's entranced by them because they're deserted, and not quite believable. Because they serve as the imagined backdrops to other lives that she might have led.

She reaches the one-bedroom flat that she and Niko rent shortly after eight forty-five, and pushing past the accretion of footwear, bicycle accessories, Amazon packaging and fallen coats, follows the smell of cooking to the kitchen. The table, which holds an unstable pile of maths textbooks and a bottle of supermarket Rioja, is laid for two. A hissing sound and a tuneless whistling from the bathroom tell her that Niko is in the shower.

"Sorry I'm late," she calls out. "Smells delicious. What is it?"

"Goulash. Can you open the wine?"

Eve has just taken the corkscrew from the drawer when she hears a frantic clicking sound on the floor behind her, and turns to see two substantial animal forms hurtling through the air and landing on the table, sending the textbooks flying. For a moment she's too shocked to move. The Rioja rolls from the table and smashes on the tiled floor. Two pairs of sage-green eyes watch her quizzically.

"Niko."

He saunters damply out of the bathroom, a towel round his waist, slippers on his feet. "My love. I see you've met Thelma and Louise."

She stares at him. When he steps over the widening lake of Rioja and kisses her, she doesn't move.

"Louise is the clumsy one. I expect it was her that --"

"Niko. Before I fucking kill you…"

"They're Nigerian dwarf goats. And you and I are never buying milk, cream, cheese or soap again."

"Niko, listen to me. I'm going to the off-licence, because I've had a bitch of a day, and every drop of alcohol we have is there on the floor. When I get back I want to sit down to your goulash, and a nice bottle of red wine, possibly two, and relax. We won't even mention those two animals on the table, because by then they will have vanished as if they'd never existed, OK?"

"Er… OK."

"Excellent. See you in ten minutes."

When Eve returns with another two bottles of Rioja, the kitchen has had a superficial but adequate makeover, there are no goats in sight, and Niko is fully dressed. With a simultaneous lifting and plummeting of her heart Eve notes that he smells of Acqua di Parma, and is wearing his Diesel jeans. Neither of them has ever put it into words, but Eve knows that when Niko wears these particular jeans and that cologne after 6 p. m., it's to signal that he's romantically inclined, and would like the evening to end with them making love.

Eve has no equivalent of Niko's sex jeans, as she calls them. No fuck-me shoes or flirty dresses, no lace and satin lingerie. Her work wardrobe is anonymous and utilitarian, and she feels silly and self-conscious wearing anything else. Niko regularly tells her that she's beautiful, but she doesn't really believe him. She accepts that he loves her -- he says so too often for it not to be true -- but why he should do so is wholly mysterious to her.

They talk about his work. Niko teaches at the local school, and has a theory that less well-off teenagers, who do all their shopping with cash, are much better at mental arithmetic than richer kids who have been given credit cards.

"They call me Borat," he says. "Do you think that's a compliment?"

"Tall, eastern European accent, moustache… Kind of inevitable. But you're wonderful with them, you know that."

"They're good kids. I like them. How was your day?"

"Weird. I phoned someone using a voice-changer."

"Actually to disguise your voice, or for fun?"

"To disguise it. I didn't want the guy to know I was a woman. I wanted to sound like Darth Vader."

"I'm not even going to begin to imagine that…" He looks at her. "I think you'd like the girls. Truly."

"Which girls?"

"Thelma and Louise. The goats. They're very sweet."

She closes her eyes. "Where are they now?"

"In their house. Outside."

"They have a house?"

"It came with them."

"So you've actually bought them. They're permanent?"

"I've done the maths, my love. Nigerian dwarfs give the richest milk of all breeds, and they only weigh about seventy-five pounds fully grown, so they eat the least hay. We'll be completely self-sufficient for dairy products."

"Niko, this is the arse end of the Finchley Road, not the fucking Cotswolds."

"Also, Nigerian dwarfs are --"

"Please stop calling them that. They're goats, period. And if you think I'm getting up every morning -- or any morning, for that matter -- to milk a pair of goats, you're insane."

In answer, Niko gets up from the table, and goes out onto the tiny paved area that they call the garden. A moment later Thelma and Louise come bounding joyfully into the kitchen.

"Oh God." Eve sighs, and reaches for the wine.

After the meal Niko does the washing-up, then takes himself to the bathroom to freshen up the Acqua di Parma, wash his hands, and run his wet fingers through his hair. When he returns he finds Eve fast asleep on the sofa, a spoon in one hand and an ice-cream tub trailing from the other. Thelma is lying contentedly at her side, and Louise is standing with her forelegs on the sofa, scouring the tub for the last of the melting Chocolate Chip with a long, pink tongue.

Rinat Yevtukh has dressed carefully for his morning rendezvous, and after some thought has selected a Versace polo shirt, raw silk slacks and Santoni ostrich-skin loafers. A solid-gold Rolex Submariner completes the impression of a man who espouses quiet good taste, but is by no imaginable means to be fucked with.

Marina Falieri keeps him waiting underneath the ironwork canopy of the Danieli's river entrance for half an hour. Two bodyguards in tightly fitting suits lounge behind him, surveying the narrow canal with bored eyes. Katya's vindictive mood has not abated, but has been tempered by the promise of a photo-spread in Russian Playboy, and perhaps even the cover. Such a thing is by no means within Rinat's gift, but he will cross that bridge when he comes to it. Meanwhile, Katya is safely ensconced in the hotel's hairdressing salon, undergoing a revitalising treatment involving white truffle essence and pulverised diamonds.

Shortly after eleven thirty, an elegant white motoscafo launch swings beneath the low, balustraded bridge and draws up at the hotel jetty. Marina is at the wheel in a striped T-shirt and jeans, her dark hair swinging around her shoulders. She's also wearing -- and this Rinat finds unaccountably sexy -- soft leather driving gloves.

"So." She raises her sunglasses. "Ready to see la vera Venezia?"

"Very much so." Stepping onto the varnished mahogany afterdeck in his new loafers, Rinat teeters for a moment. As the bodyguards move reflexively forward, he lurches into the cockpit beside Marina, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder for balance.

"Excuse me."

"No problem. Those your boys?"

"They're on my security staff, yes."

"Well, you should be quite safe with me." She smiles. "But you're welcome to ask them along if you'd like to."

"Of course not." Rinat addresses the two men in fast idiomatic Russian, ordering them to keep an eye on Katya, and to tell her that he is lunching with a business associate. A man, obviously. Not this devushka.

The men smirk and withdraw.

"I'm definitely going to learn Russian," Marina says, manoeuvring the launch beneath the road bridge. "It sounds such an expressive language."

Skilfully, she threads a path between the gondolas and the other river traffic, and steers an unhurried southern course past the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the eastern curve of the Giudecca. As the motoscafo noses through the unruffled surface of the lagoon, its 150-horsepower engine carving a pale wake behind them, she tells Rinat about the palaces and churches that they pass.

"So where exactly do you live?" Rinat asks her.

"My family has an apartment next to the Palazzo Cicogna," she says. "The Falieri were originally from Venice, but our principal residence is now in Milan."

He glances at her gloved left hand, curled lightly round the wheel. "And you're not married?"

"I was close to someone, but he died."

"I'm sorry. My condolences."

She opens up the throttle. "It was very sad. I was there when he passed away. I was devastated. But life goes on."

"Indeed it does."

She turns to him and pushes up her sunglasses so that, for a moment, he's caught in her amber gaze. "If you look behind you, in that cold-box, you'll find a shaker and some glasses. Why don't you pour yourself a drink?"

He retrieves the ice-frosted shaker and a tall glass. "Can I give you one?"

"I'll wait until we get to the island. You go ahead."

He pours, drinks and nods appreciatively. "This is… very good."

"It's a limoncello cocktail. Perfect, I always think, for a morning like this."

"Delicious. So tell me about this island we're going to."

"It's called the Ottagone Falieri. It was once a fortification, built to protect Venice from invaders. One of my ancestors bought it in the nineteenth century. We still own it, even though no one goes there any more, and it's pretty much a ruin."

"It sounds very romantic."

She gives him a veiled smile. "Let's see. It's certainly an interesting place."

They're holding a steady course now. The Giudecca is far behind them; ahead Rinat can see only grey-green water. The limoncello is creeping through his veins with glacial slowness. He feels, for the first time in as long as he can remember, at peace.

The fortification looms, quite suddenly, out of the haze. Walls of cut stone, and above them a few sparse treetops. Soon, a jetty becomes visible. Tied up to it is another, smaller motor launch, with a black-painted hull.

"We have company."

"I asked someone to come ahead with the lunch," Marina says, as if this is the most natural thing in the world.

Rinat nods. Of course. Everything about this woman charms and impresses him. Her unusual beauty, which over the last couple of hours he has had considerable opportunity to examine at close range. Her easy familiarity with wealth. Old-money wealth, of the kind that doesn't need to proclaim itself, but nevertheless makes its presence felt with unambiguous force. It's not enough to be rich, Rinat knows. You have to be connected, to know the secret signs by which real insiders recognise each other. Insiders like Marina Falieri.

Katya, it's increasingly clear, has to go.

Marina ties up the motoscafo, and as they make their way along the sun-bleached planking of the jetty, Rinat hears a faint clinking sound. There are steps built into the wall, and at the top is an octagonal compound, perhaps a hundred metres from end to end. At one extremity are the ruins of a brick and tile building, shadowed by stunted pines. Elsewhere the ground is rough scrub, quartered by a pathway. At the end of the compound furthest from the steps, a strongly built young woman with cropped hair is wielding a pickaxe, swinging it steadily at the stony ground. In her bikini top, military shorts and combat boots, she cuts an unusual figure. As Rinat watches, the woman turns, briefly meets his gaze, drops the pick, and saunters towards the ruined building.

Ignoring her, Marina leads Rinat to a table covered by a white cloth at the centre of the compound. At either side of the table is an ironwork garden chair. "Shall we?" she asks.

They sit. Beyond the stone wall there is no land in sight, just the vast stillness of the lagoon. Behind him, Rinat hears the rattle of a tray. It's the pickaxe woman, with chilled wine and mineral water, antipasti and tiny, exquisite pastries. A faint sheen of sweat covers her muscled body, and her calves and combat boots are dusty.

Marina ignores her, and smiles at Rinat. "Please. Buon appetito."

Rinat tries to swallow a forkful of mortadella, but for some reason his appetite has deserted him, and he feels mildly nauseated. He forces himself to chew and swallow. Soon the steady clinking of the pickaxe resumes.

"What's she doing, exactly?" His voice sounds distant, disembodied.

"Oh, just some gardening. I like to keep her busy. But let me pour you some of this wine. It's a local Bianco di Custoza, I'm sure you'll like it."

Wine, local or otherwise, is the last thing that Rinat feels like, but politeness compels him to tender his glass. He can hardly hold it steady as she pours. Sweat is running down his face and back; the horizon shimmers and sways. Some still-observant part of him notes that the clinking of the pickaxe has been replaced by the steady, rhythmic thudding of a spade. He tries to drink some mineral water but gags, and regurgitates the wine and mortadella onto the tablecloth. "I'm…" he begins, and slumps back heavily in his chair. His heart is racing, and his arms and chest have started to prickle and burn as if fire-ants were creeping beneath his skin. He claws at himself, panic rising in his chest.

"That sensation's called paraesthesia," Marina explains in Russian, sipping her wine. "It's a symptom of aconitine poisoning."

Rinat stares at her, his eyes widening.

"It was in the limoncello. In less than an hour you'll die of either heart failure or respiratory arrest, and looking at you right now my money's on heart failure. Until then you can expect --"

Twisting convulsively in the ironwork chair, Rinat vomits for a second time and then voids his bowels, not silently, into his ivory silk slacks.

"Exactly. And as for the rest, I won't spoil the surprise." Turning, she waves to the other woman. "Lara, detka, come over here."

Lara lays down the spade and walks unhurriedly over. "I've pretty much finished digging out that grave," she says, and after some thought selects one of the pastries from the box. "Oh my God, kotik, these are so good."

"Aren't they heaven? I got them from that pasticceria in San Marco where we had the cream cake."

"We must go back there." Lara glances at Rinat, who has fallen off his chair and is convulsing on the ground, blowflies buzzing around his soiled slacks. "How long till he's actually dead, do you think?"

Marina wrinkles her nose. "Half an hour or so? It'll be good to get him in the ground. That smell's really putting me off my lunch."

"It is a bit rank."

"On the other hand we could save his life if he tells us what we need to know. I've got an antidote for the aconitine."

Rinat's eyes widen. "Pozhaluysta," he whispers, tears and vomit streaking his face. "Please. Whatever you need."

"I'll tell you what I need right now," says Lara thoughtfully, selecting another pastry. "I've had this tune going round and round in my head all morning, and it's literally driving me crazy. Dada dada dada dada da dadadada…"

"Posledniy raz," whispers Rinat, agonisedly contracting into a foetal position.

"Oh my God, that's right. How totally embarrassing. My mum used to sing along to that song. I bet yours did too, detka."

"To be honest, she didn't have much to sing about. Unless you count terminal cancer." The tip of her tongue flicks to the scar on her upper lip. "But we're wasting Rinat's last precious minutes." She crouches down so that she's directly in his line of sight. "What I need from you, ublyudok, is answers, and I need them fast. One lie, one fucking hesitation, and you can shit yourself to death."

"The truth. I swear it."

"OK then. The man you kidnapped in Odessa. Why did you take him?"

"We were ordered by the SVR, the Russian secret --"

"I know who the fucking SVR are. Why?"

"They called me in to one of their centres. Told me --" He's racked by another spasm, and a bubble of yellowish drool forms on his lips.

"Clock's ticking, Rinat. What did they tell you?"

"To… take that man Konstantin. Take him to the villa in Fontanka."

"So why did you do what they asked?"

"Because they… Oh my God, please…" His hands claw at his arms and chest as the paraesthesia renews its assault.

"Because they?"

"They… they knew things. About Zolotoye Bratstvo, the Golden Brotherhood. That we'd sent girls from Ukraine to Turkey, Hungary, Czech Republic for sex work. They had interviews, documents, they could have destroyed me. Everything I'd --"

"And the SVR interrogated this man Konstantin at your house in Fontanka?"

"Yes."

"Did they get the answers they wanted?"

"I don't know. They questioned him but they… Oh God…" He retches, spits bile, and his bladder empties. The smell, and the furious buzzing of the blowflies, intensifies. On the other side of the table Lara helps herself to a third pastry.

"They…?"

"They made me keep away. All I heard was one question that they kept shouting at him. "Who are the Dvenadtsat, the Twelve?""

"Did he tell them?"

"I don't know, they… They beat him up pretty badly."

"So he talked, or not?"

"I don't know. They kept asking this same question."

"So who or what are the Twelve?"

"I don't know. I swear it."

"Govno. Bullshit."

He retches again, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Please," he whimpers.

"Please what?"

"You said…"

"I know what I said, mudak. Tell me about the Twelve."

"All I've heard is rumours."

"Go on."

"They're supposed to be some kind of… secret organisation. Very powerful, very ruthless. That's all I've heard, I swear."

"What do they want?"

"How the fuck would I know?"

She nods, her expression thoughtful. "So how old were those girls? The ones the Golden Brotherhood sent to Europe?"

"Sixteen, minimum. We don't do --"

"You don't do kids? What are you, a feminist?"

Rinat opens his mouth to answer but convulses, his back arching upwards so that, for a moment, he is supported on his hands and feet like a spider. Then a foot is planted on his chest, forcing him agonisingly to the ground, and the woman he knows as Marina Falieri pulls off her raven-black wig and removes her amber contact lenses. "Burn these," she tells Lara.

Undisguised, she looks very different. Dark blonde hair, and ice-grey eyes of a fathomless blankness. Not to mention the silenced CZ automatic pistol in her hand. Rinat knows it's the end, and somehow, with this knowledge, the pain recedes a degree or two. "Who are you?" he whispers. "Who the fuck are you?"

"My name is Villanelle." She points the CZ at his heart. "I kill for the Twelve."

He stares at her, and she fires twice. In the sultry midday air the suppressed detonations sound like the snapping of dead wood.

It doesn't take long to drag Rinat to the prepared grave and bury him. It's a hot and unpleasant task, and Villanelle leaves it to Lara. Meanwhile she loads the table, chairs and remains of lunch into the motoscafo. When she returns, it's with a fuel can. She takes off her T-shirt and jeans, soaks them in gasoline, and places them on the fire that Lara has built, on top of the smouldering remains of the wig.

When Lara has finished burying Rinat, Villanelle orders her to take off her shorts and bikini top. The clean-up takes the best part of an hour, but eventually the clothes have all been burned, the ashes picked through, and all surviving buttons, studs and clips thrown in the lagoon.

"There's a bucket in the boat," Villanelle murmurs, staring out over the water.

"What for?"

"Take a guess?" She indicates the pungent traces of Rinat's bodily fluids.

Finally, she's satisfied, and they go down to the jetty, change into new clothes that Lara has brought, untie the boats from their moorings, and set off on a north-easterly course. The Venice Lagoon is shallow, with an average depth of ten metres, but there are declivities of more than twice this. Not far from the island of Poveglia, the motoscafo's depth-finder indicates that they are passing over just such a drop-off, and Villanelle takes the opportunity to drop the metal table and chairs, the pickaxe and the spade overboard.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Poveglia was a quarantine station for the crews of ships harbouring the plague. In the early twentieth century it was home to a mental institution where, Venetians say, patients were subjected to sinister experiments. Now abandoned, and reputed to be haunted, the island has a desolate look about it, and tourist craft rarely venture there.

A narrow canal, overhung by foliage, divides Poveglia into two halves. Here, out of sight of any passing vessel, the two women moor the launches. Under Villanelle's critical eye, Lara wipes every surface of the motoscafo clean with an anti-DNA Erase spray, and then removes the drain plug, and joins Villanelle in the second launch. It takes twenty minutes for the motoscafo to slip quietly beneath the water and come to rest on the floor of the canal.

"She'll be found," Villanelle says. "But not immediately. We should go to the hotel. We're supposed to be sisters, right?"

"Yes, I told them I was picking you up from Marco Polo airport."

"Wouldn't I have luggage?"

"In the locker."

Villanelle inspects the calfskin Ferragamo bags. "So who are we?"

"Yulia and Alyona Pinchuk, co-owners of MySugarBaby. com, a dating agency based in Kiev."

"Nice. Which am I?"

"Yulia."

Villanelle settles back against the cream leather passenger seat of the launch. "Let's go. We're done here."

In the restaurant of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido, Villanelle and Lara are sipping pink Mercier champagne, and eating iced frutti di mare from a tiered silver stand. The room, a pillared Moorish fantasia in shades of white and ivory, is not quite full; it's late in the season and the summer crowd has moved on. There's an animated buzz of conversation, nevertheless, frequently interrupted by laughter. Beyond the terrace, indistinct in the dusk, is the lagoon, its surface a shade darker than the sky. There's not a whisper of a breeze.

"You did well today," says Villanelle, spearing a langoustine with her fork.

Lara touches the back of her hand to Villanelle's warm shoulder. "Thank you for mentoring me, kroshka. This whole work experience has been incredibly valuable. I've learned so much. Seriously."

"You're certainly starting to dress more stylishly. Not so lesbiskoye porno."

Lara smiles. In her silk-chiffon dress, with her cropped hair and bared, muscular arms, she looks like some mythical goddess of war.

"Do you think they'll be sending you out on solo actions soon?" Villanelle asks.

"Possibly. The problem is my languages. Apparently I still speak English like a Russian, so they've got me a temporary position as an au pair."

"In England?"

"Yes. Somewhere called Chipping Norton. Have you been there?"

"No, but I've heard of it. It's one of those dirty-money suburbs like Rublyovka, full of bored housewives snorting cocaine and fucking their tennis coaches. You'll love it. What does the husband do?"

"He's a politik. A Member of Parliament."

"In that case you'll probably have to get him to lick your pussy for kompromat."

"I'd rather lick yours."

"I know, detka, but work is work. How many kids?"

"Twin girls. Fifteen."

"Well, be careful. Try not to hit them, or not so that it shows. The English are sensitive about that."

Lara gazes into the oyster shell in her hand, lets a single drop of Tabasco fall into the brine, and watches the oyster's tiny convulsion. "I wanted to ask you something. About today."

"Go on."

"Why did you have to do that whole poison thing? When you had the gun?"

"You think I should have just threatened to shoot him if he didn't talk?"

"Why not? Much easier."

"Think. Play the scenario out in your mind."

Lara pours the oyster down her throat and gazes out into the soft dusk. "Because it's a stalemate game?"

"Exactly. They're tough, these old-school vory, even shit-sacks like Yevtukh, and in that world, face is everything. You can threaten to kill a guy like that if he doesn't talk, but if he says go fuck yourself, what then? If you kill him, you don't get his story."

"How about you shoot him through the hand or the foot, somewhere super-painful but not life-threatening, and tell him you'll do the other one if he doesn't talk?"

"That's smarter, but if you're after the truth, you don't want your subject in shock from a gunshot wound. People say very weird things when they're traumatised. The whole point about the poison-antidote play is that it takes the game to him. He's the one with the hard choice, not you. He may or may not believe you, and by the way there's no known antidote for a lethal dose of aconitine, but he knows that his only chance of survival is to talk. If he stays silent he definitely dies."

"Checkmate."

"Exactly. It's all in the timing. You've got to let the poison do its work so that it, and not you, is exerting the pressure. In the end he'll be so desperate you won't be able to shut him up."

Much later, they're lying in bed. A faint night breeze is agitating the curtains.

"Thank you for not killing me today," Lara murmurs into Villanelle's hair. "I know you considered it."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because I'm beginning to understand how you work. How you think."

"So how do I think?"

"Well, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you shot Rinat, like you did, and then you shot me, and you put both bodies on the boat and blew it up…"

"Go on."

"When the police investigate the explosion, they'd find the remains of Rinat and a woman. And then when they talked to people at Rinat's hotel they'd find out that he left by boat this morning with a woman."

"OK."

"So they'd assume that my remains were that woman's. And that there had been some kind of fatal accident."

"And why would I go to all this trouble, detka?"

"Well, the police wouldn't look for you, because they'd think you were dead. And I really would be dead. The only person who knows who you are. The only person who knows that you used to be Oxana Vorontsova from Perm."

"I'm not going to kill you, Lara. Truly."

"But you thought about it."

"Maybe for a second or two." She turns to face Lara so that they are eye to eye, mouth to mouth, breathing each other's breath. "But not seriously. You're soon going to be a fully-fledged soldier for the Twelve. They wouldn't be very pleased if I blew you into little pieces, now would they?"

"Is that the only reason?"

"Mmm… I'd miss all this." She runs her hand down Lara's hard belly, her fingertips stroking the warm skin.

"You're so beautiful," Lara says, after a moment. "I look at you, and I can hardly believe you're so perfect. Yet you do such…"

"Such?"

"Such terrible things."

"So will you, trust me."

"I'm a soldier, kroshka. You said so yourself. I'm built to fight. But you could have any life you want. You could walk away."

"There's no walking away. And I wouldn't if I could. I like my life."

"Then you'll die. Sooner or later the Englishwoman will find you."

"Eve Polastri? I want her to find me. I want to have some fun with her. I want to roll her under my paw like a cat with a mouse. I want to prick her with my claws."

"You're mad."

"I'm not mad. I like to play the game. And to win. Polastri's a player too, that's why I like her."

"Is that the only reason?"

"I don't know. Maybe not."

"Should I be jealous?"

"You can if you want. Doesn't make any difference to me."

Lara is silent for a moment. "You never have any doubts? About any of this?"

"Should I have?"

"That moment before you pull the trigger. When the target's already dead, but doesn't know it. And then when you close your eyes at night, there they all are. All the dead people, waiting for you…"

Villanelle smiles, kisses Lara's mouth, and slips her hand between her legs. "They're gone, detka. All of them." Her fingers begin a delicate dance. "The only person who's waiting for you is me."

"You never see them?" Lara whispers.

"Never," says Villanelle, sliding her fingers inside her.

"So do you ever feel… anything about them?" Lara asks, moving against Villanelle's hand.

"Sweetie, please. Shut the fuck up."

They're almost asleep when, half an hour later, a phone stars to vibrate on the bedside table.

"What is it?" asks Lara dreamily, as Villanelle reaches across her.

"Work."

"You're fucking kidding me."

Villanelle plants a kiss on the tip of her nose. "No rest for the wicked, detka. You should know that by now."