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Softly, Villanelle's lips brush those of the other woman, and her husband shifts appreciatively in his chair. One by one, Villanelle undoes the half-dozen buttons of the woman's pleated shift dress, which falls soundlessly to the floor. The woman's hands move towards Villanelle's face, but Villanelle gently forces them down: she wants total control here.

Villanelle glances at him, swallows a mouthful of vintage Moët et Chandon, and turns her attention to the woman. Seated beside her husband, she has dark eyes and hair the colour of summer wheat. She is, at a guess, in her late thirties. Villanelle places her champagne flute on a side table, beside an arrangement of white roses, then takes the woman's slender wrists and draws her to her feet. For a few moments they dance together, the only sound the murmur of the evening traffic in the Place de la Concorde.

The man sits, ankles crossed, in a carved oak armchair upholstered in emerald silk. He is wearing a charcoal suit, and his blood-red Charvet tie strikes a dramatic note in the muted surroundings of the hotel suite. Frowning thoughtfully, he removes his tortoiseshell spectacles, polishes them with a silk handkerchief, and replaces them.

"Tell her she's a dirty bitch," says the man. "Une vraie salope."

Villanelle opens her eyes. Catches sight of herself in the overmantel mirror. The slicked-back hair, the raking cheekbones, the permafrost gaze. She frowns. This isn't working for her. The woman whose legs she's parting is a stranger, and her husband's pleasure is repulsive. Abruptly, Villanelle disengages, and wipes her fingers on the roses, scattering the floor with petals. Then she walks out of the suite.

Soon the woman is naked, and stands there tremulous and expectant. Closing her eyes, Villanelle runs her hand over the woman's hair, inhales her scent, explores the soft curves of her body. As her fingers move downwards she hears herself breathing a long-unspoken name, murmuring half-remembered endearments in Russian. The years and her surroundings fall away, and once again she is in the flat on Komsomolsky Prospekt, and Anna is there, smiling her sad smile.

From the taxi, she watches as the illuminated shopfronts of the rue de Rivoli glide past. It's as if she's in a silent film, detached from her surroundings, disconnected from experience and sensation. She's felt like this for a couple of weeks now, since coming back from England, and it worries her, although the worry itself is something vague, something she can't quite bring into focus.

Perhaps it's a delayed reaction to the killing of Konstantin. Villanelle is not given to self-pity, but when you're ordered to kill your handler, who not only discovered and trained you but is also your friend, insofar as such things are possible, it's disconcerting. She's only human, after all. Now that Konstantin is gone, Villanelle misses him. His judgements could be brutal, he castigated her again and again for her recklessness, but at least he cared enough to make them. And he valued her. He appreciated just how rare a creature she was, with her unblinking savagery and her incapacity for guilt.

Anton, Konstantin's replacement, has so far failed to give Villanelle the impression that he thinks of her as more than an employee. He dispatched the kill orders for Yevtukh and Cradle in the usual way, via innocuous-looking steganographically encrypted emails, but he didn't thank her afterwards, as Konstantin always did, which Villanelle considers just plain rude. Not even the fun she's having with Eve makes up for the fact that Anton is shaping up to be a thoroughly unsatisfactory handler.

As an assassin for the Twelve, Villanelle has always accepted that she will never see the organisation's grand plan, never be told more of the story than she needs to know. But she's also aware, because Konstantin repeatedly told her so, that her role is vital. That she's more than just a trained killer, she's an instrument of destiny.

Villanelle doesn't go straight back to her apartment, but heads for La Muette. For ten minutes she threads the narrow streets, her gaze flickering between her wing mirror and the vehicles ahead of her, all senses alert. She varies her speed, pretends to stall at a green traffic light, and at one point, deliberately drives in the wrong direction down the tiny, one-way Impasse de Labiche. Finally, satisfied that she is not being followed, she turns westwards to the Porte de Passy, and the building where she lives.

The taxi draws up to the kerb in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Villanelle's scooter is parked opposite the club where she met the couple. The club's still open, and the lamps flanking the entrance still dimly glowing, but she doesn't give the place a second glance. Rocking the scooter off its stand, she kick-starts the engine and glides unhurriedly into the traffic.

After parking the Vespa in the underground car park beside her silver-grey Audi, she takes the lift to the sixth floor, and climbs a short flight of stairs to the entrance of her rooftop apartment. She's about to disarm the electronic locking system when she hears a faint, distressed mewing from the stairs behind her. It's a kitten, one of several belonging to the building's housekeeper, Marta, who lives on the fifth floor. Carefully scooping up the tiny creature, Villanelle strokes and calms it before ringing Marta's bell.

The housekeeper is effusive in her thanks. She's always liked the quiet young woman from the sixième étage. She's clearly extremely busy, judging by how often she's away, but she always finds a smile for Marta. She's a caring person, unlike so many of her generation.

When all the niceties have been observed, and the other kittens and their mother admired and cooed over, Villanelle returns to the sixth floor. Locking the door of the apartment behind her, she is finally enfolded in silence. The apartment, with its walls of faded sea-green and French blue, is spacious and restful. The furniture is mid-twentieth century, worn but stylish, with several pieces by the designer Eileen Gray. There's a scattering of minor post-Impressionist paintings which Villanelle has never examined, but whose presence she tolerates.

No one ever visits her here. Anne-Laure is under the impression that Villanelle lives in Versailles, and works as a currency trader. Her neighbours in the building know her as a courteous but distant figure, often absent. Her service charges and property taxes are paid from a corporate account in Geneva, and in the unlikely event that anyone were to investigate this, they would find themselves drawn into a web of front companies and cut-outs so complex as to be effectively impenetrable. But no one has ever done so.

In the kitchen Villanelle prepares a plate of yellowtail sashimi and buttered toast, then takes a bottle of Grey Goose vodka from the freezer and pours herself a double measure. Seating herself at a table in front of the long, east-facing plate-glass window, she gazes at the glittering city spread out below her, and thinks about the games she'd like to play with Eve. This is precisely the sort of reckless behaviour Konstantin was always warning her about. It leads to mistakes, and mistakes get you killed. But what's the point of a game if the stakes aren't high? Villanelle wants to shatter Eve's protective shell and manipulate the vulnerable being inside. She wants her pursuer to know that she's been out-thought and outplayed, and to witness her capitulation. She wants to own her.

Equally importantly, Villanelle wants a new assignment. Something more demanding than bread-and-butter kills like Yevtukh and Cradle. She wants a well-protected, high-status target. A really challenging set-up. It's time to show Anton just how good she is.

Three days after his abduction on the A303, Dennis Cradle is found dead by National Trust volunteers, who are removing a fallen tree from a weir pool on the River Wey. Brief notices appear in the local papers, and the finding of Weybridge Coroner's Court is death by misadventure. The victim, it is reported, was a Home Office employee who may have been suffering from amnesia. He appeared to have fallen into the river, struck his head on a rock or other hard surface, lost consciousness, and drowned.

"Obviously our killer didn't make it look too much like murder," says Richard Edwards, when he visits the Goodge Street office on the evening of the inquest. "But I'm guessing Thames House had to call in a few favours to get that result."

Flipping open the laptop on the kitchen counter, she opens the homepage of an innocuous-looking social media account, and posts an image of a cat wearing sunglasses. Anton's tradecraft, she's discovered, often takes a surprisingly sentimental turn.

"I knew she'd kill him," says Eve.

"Poor bugger," says Billy, reaching for a half-eaten Cornish pasty.

"But didn't Cradle tell you he was authorised to try and recruit you?" asks Lance. "Wouldn't the Twelve have let that play out?"

"It did always look probable," Richard admits.

"Poor bugger nothing," says Eve. "I'm sure it was him who blocked me when I requested police protection for Viktor Kedrin. He personally enabled that murder."

The others make their own seating arrangements beneath the strip light's sepulchral glow. Taking a bite from his pasty, Billy coughs crumbs over his knees.

"Whatever they told him, I doubt they believed he could pull it off," says Eve. "The speed with which they deployed V suggests that they decided to kill him the moment he signalled he'd been compromised."

"Fuck's sakes," murmurs Lance, wrinkling his nose. "What's in that thing? Dogshit?"

"So let me just run through where we are now," says Richard, laying his coat over Eve's desk, and pulling up a chair. "Stop me if I make any unfounded assumptions, or you want to add anything."

"A Chinese People's Army hacker is killed in Shanghai, reportedly by a woman. Eve and Simon Mortimer share intel with Jin Qiang, who returns the compliment by providing evidence that a multimillion-pound payment has been made by a Middle Eastern bank to one Tony Kent. Jin clearly knows more than he's letting on, and lo and behold, when we investigate Kent, we discover that he's an associate of Dennis Cradle."

"While Eve and Simon are in Shanghai, Simon is murdered. We're not sure why, but possibly to intimidate Eve. We know that the woman who signs herself V was in Shanghai at the time, as she later produces a bracelet she stole from Eve's hotel room there."

Leaning forward, Richard steeples his fingers. "While at MI5, Eve identifies a series of murders, apparently by a woman, of prominent figures in politics and organised crime. The motive for the murders is unclear. Viktor Kedrin, a controversial Moscow activist, comes to give a talk in London, and when Eve requests protection for him, she is blocked by a superior, whom we may reasonably assume to have been Dennis Cradle. Kedrin is duly murdered, and as a consequence of his death Eve is dismissed from MI5. It's probably Cradle, once again, who engineers this."

"Query," says Lance, dropping tobacco into a cigarette paper and beginning to roll. "Why do they, the Twelve, let Cradle try to recruit Eve? And in doing so, tell her so much about the organisation?" He licks the paper and places the cigarette behind his ear. "Why don't they tell him to stall? Standard resistance to questioning?"

"I've asked myself the same question," says Eve. "And I think it's because they know Cradle's not stupid. If they tell him to stall, he'll suspect that they mean to kill him, and he'll cut and run. If they give him a specific job to do -- turning the situation round and recruiting me -- he'll think they trust him. Which'll give them time to get their killer, V, in place. And when it comes down to it, how much did he tell me about the Twelve? How much did he even know? A couple of names which are certainly false. Some vague stuff about a new world order."

"Investigation of Dennis Cradle shows that he is being paid huge sums by an unknown source. We confront him, and he tells Eve of the existence of a covert but rapidly growing organisation named the Twelve, and attempts to recruit her, apparently having been given the green light to do so. In other words, he has contacted the Twelve to tell them he has been compromised. Their actual intention, however, is to kill him, which they duly do."

"The thing that really clicked for me," Eve says, "was Cradle saying that Kedrin was killed to turn a liability into a martyr. That confirms what we already know, that their methods are completely ruthless, but it also tells us that Kedrin's vision was basically the same as theirs. A world dominated by an alliance of hard-right -- or as they prefer to put it, 'traditionalist' -- Eurasian powers led by Russia."

"Are we talking official Kremlin policy?" Billy asks, wiping his fingers on his jeans and stuffing the wrapper of his pasty in his pocket.

"I think Eve's right," says Richard. "Dennis was always a pragmatist, never an idealist. They recruited him because they needed a senior desk officer in MI5, and whatever he might have told Eve, it would have been the money that he went for, not the ideology. People like Dennis don't change horses at this stage of their career."

"I agree," says Richard. "And that squares with what we know about the rise of nationalism and identity politics in Europe. That it's being skilfully mobilised and massively funded by parties we can't identify, but suspect to be Russian."

"Going in to land now," the pilot tells her, and she gives him a thumbs-up, removes her headset, and grabs her rucksack.

"Unlikely. In today's Russia, the people you read about in the papers and see on TV are mostly figureheads. The real power-players move in the shadows."

Villanelle hunches into her down jacket as the Super Puma helicopter circles the marine platform. Rain flurries wash the windscreen and, in the sea below, heavy waves rear and fall.

They touch down, the helicopter rocking in the gale-force wind, and Villanelle jumps out and swings her pack onto her back. The rain lashes her face, and she has to lean into the wind as she runs head-down across the platform deck. Anton, a lean figure in a reefer jacket and submariner's sweater, gives her a cursory glance and beckons her through a white-painted steel door. As he swings it shut behind her the sound of the roaring wind is muted a degree or two. Villanelle stands there, expectant, rain dripping from her nose.

The platform, some ten miles east of the Essex coast, is one of five built in the Second World War to protect the North Sea shipping lanes. Known as Knock Tom, it originally consisted of an anti-aircraft emplacement supported by reinforced concrete towers. After the war the anti-aircraft platforms were allowed to fall into disrepair. Three of the five were eventually demolished, but Knock Tom passed into private hands. Its present owner is the Sverdlovsk-Futura Group, a company registered in Moscow. SFG have undertaken extensive reconstruction of Knock Tom, and the former gun deck now holds three freight containers that have been converted into offices and a dining unit. The support towers have been divided into living quarters accessed by a vertical steel ladder. Following Anton, Villanelle climbs downward past a humming generator room and into a concrete-walled cell furnished with a bunk bed and a single chair.

"I like this view," Anton tells her. "It's so indifferent to human activity."

Villanelle nods, drops her pack, and hears the door close behind her. The room smells of corrosion, and the bedclothes are damp, but of the sea beyond the windowless concrete walls she can hear nothing. Somehow, Knock Tom is perfect for Anton. It's exactly the sort of remote and brutally functional setting in which she's always imagined him, and for a moment she wishes she'd brought something wildly inappropriate to wear -- a hot pink Dior tulle dress, perhaps -- just to annoy him.

"In the office in ten?" Anton says.

"There's no one here except you and me, if that's what you mean."

"Are we alone?"

He's waiting for her at the top of the ladder. As they cross the platform deck to the containers, Villanelle looks out over the churning grey sea. The desolation of it makes her think, unexpectedly, of Anna Leonova. She hasn't seen or spoken to her former teacher for a decade, but when she remembers her it's with a sadness that nothing and no one else has ever made her feel.

Anton motions Villanelle to a leather-upholstered chair, pours them both coffee from a cafetière, and seats himself behind the desk.

"You're bored of routine actions like the Yevtukh and Cradle jobs. You feel it's time you moved to the next level."

"So, Anton."

The shipping container housing the office is surmounted by a steerable microwave antenna. The only link, Villanelle guesses, to the world beyond the waves. The interior is frugal but well-appointed. On a metal desk are a laptop, a satphone and an anglepoise lamp. A wall-mounted unit holds electronic hardware and several shelves of charts and maps.

Villanelle nods.

"Well, I applaud your keenness, but I'm not sure that I agree. You're technically adept, and your weapons skills are good, but you're reckless, and your judgement's often questionable. You're sexually profligate, which I don't give a shit about, but you're indiscreet, which I do. Your fixation on the MI6 agent Eve Polastri, in particular, leads you to ignore the very real problems that she and her team could cause us. And cause you."

"So, Villanelle."

"You've contacted me to request more complex and demanding work. You think you've earned it."

"Exactly."

"You think you are. I'm not so sure."

"Villanelle, I warn you. You've already killed her deputy. You threaten her husband, and she will unleash hell. She won't rest until you're laid out on a mortuary slab."

"I'm the cat."

"It's important, but it's dangerous. You won't be able to afford any mistakes."

"Whatever indeed. As you will have calculated, I haven't brought you here for the pleasure of your company. I have a mission for you, if you want it."

"OK."

The tip of her tongue touches the scar on her upper lip. "I said OK."

"She won't give us any problems. I keep an eye on her so that I can keep up with what she knows, but she really doesn't have any idea what's going on."

Villanelle looks up, considers a facetious response, meets Anton's level gaze, and decides against it. "Whatever."

"She found out about Dennis Cradle. And she's not going to go away. I know her type. On the outside disorganised, but inside sharp. And patient. Like a cat watching a bird."

"She's vulnerable, because of the asshole husband. I can manipulate her."

"Any joy with the perfume?"

Eve's phone rings when she's walking out of the office to pick up a sandwich for lunch. It's Abby, her contact at the Metropolitan Police Forensics Laboratory in Lambeth. With encouragement from Richard, Abby has fast-tracked the analysis of the Van Diest bracelet.

"OK. We performed a tape-lift on the bracelet and the card, but found no extractable DNA. No hairs, no epithelial cells, nothing we could use."

"Not even that. Sorry."

"Shit."

"Do you want the good news or the bad?" Abby asks.

"Again, nothing. Gloves worn, I'd guess. I sent a copy on to graphology."

"I thought you said there was some good news."

Villanelle frowns. "Should I care?"

"The card?"

"We tried. It's possible to identify the compounds in commercially produced fragrances using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, but you have to have an adequate sample, which we didn't here. So no joy."

"Bad."

He regards her with fastidious distaste. "Just for the record, I'm not attracted to promiscuous women."

"You're on."

"The target," says Anton, "is Max Linder. Have you heard of him?"

"That Italian firewater? Like brandy?"

"You do. But bring me back a box of galani from Zucchetti and we're square."

"Go on."

"Well." Abby pauses. "I did find one interesting thing."

"Oh my God, thank you. Thank you."

"What kind of pastry?"

"There's more. The Van Diest jewellery boutique in Venice is in Calle Vallaresso, at the eastern end of Piazza San Marco. Three doors down is a small, very expensive pasticceria called Zucchetti, specialising in guess what?"

"Exactly. So I put all these ingredients together and did a search. And came up with something called galani. They're fried pastries, flavoured with grappa and vanilla and dusted with confectioner's sugar. A speciality of Venice."

"I sent it for analysis. There were traces of vegetable oil, vanilla essence, confectioner's sugar. But there was something else, too. Grappa."

"Abby, you are a fucking genius. I owe you so massively."

"A flake of pastry, almost invisible, caught in a fold of the tissue paper."

"Yes. I've read a couple of profiles."

"Franco-Dutch political activist and media celebrity, twenty-nine. Gay, but nevertheless a figurehead for the extreme right, with a huge following in Europe, especially among young people. Looks like a pop star, and believes, among other things, that the obese should be put in labour camps and sex offenders guillotined."

"And why exactly do you want me to kill him?"

"Some of what he says makes sense. His worldview is, overall, not so very different from ours. But Linder is also a Nazi, and Nazism is a problematic brand, discredited on so many levels, and that's an association we do not need. In fact it could really damage us."

"You said the job would be dangerous."

"Linder is aware that he has enemies. He's accompanied, everywhere he goes, by a praetorian guard of ex-military types. Security is always tight, and there's invariably a heavy police presence at events he attends. That's not to say that it's impossible to kill him. It's never impossible, there's always a way. The problem is getting away with it."

"Have you got any ideas? I assume you've been thinking about this for some time."

"We have. Next month Linder is going to a mountain hotel in Austria called the Felsnadel, high above the snowline in the High Tauern. He goes there every year with a group of friends and political associates. It's a luxury place, designed by some famous architect or other, and you can only get in and out by helicopter. Linder considers it safe enough to stay there without bodyguards. He's booked the whole hotel for his guests for several days."

"So how do I get in?"

"A week from today, one of the hotel's service team is going to contract a vomiting bug that will require her hospitalisation. The agency in Innsbruck that provides their staff will send a replacement."

"Just Linder will be fine. It's a personality cult. Eliminate him, and the movement will wither away."

"Me."

"Correct."

"And do you want me to kill everyone in sight, or just Linder?"

"So what's my exit plan?"

"That'll be up to you to improvise. We can get you in there, but we can't guarantee to get you out."

"I thought you'd like it. In the other office I've got maps, a floor-plan of the hotel, and detailed files on Linder and everyone else we think is going to be there. How you kill him is up to you, but I'll need a full list of supplies and weaponry before you leave here. Bear in mind that you'll be expected to present yourself at the heliport with a single suitcase or bag which will certainly be searched and X-rayed, and cannot exceed ten kilos in weight."

"Understood. And now I'm hungry. Is there any lunch?"

"Waiting for you in the other office. I assume you're not a vegetarian?"

On her way home, Eve picks up half a dozen duck breasts, fennel and a large tiramisu from Sainsbury's in the Tottenham Court Road. New neighbours have moved in opposite them, and, rather wildly, Eve has asked them to dinner, telling Niko that "they look very nice". What this supposed niceness actually boils down to is that the husband, Mark, is moderately good-looking and the wife -- was her name Maeve, Mavis, Maisie? -- has a highly covetable black Whistles coat. To make up numbers, Eve has invited Niko's friends Zbig and Leila. It will be an interesting and sophisticated evening, she tells herself. Six young (well, youngish) professionals from diverse backgrounds and walks of life exchanging informed opinions over home-cooked food and cleverly chosen wine.

"Nice."

"I've fed the girls," he tells her. "I've given them extra hay to keep them busy."

With a flash of apprehension, as she's sitting on the bus, it occurs to Eve that the Maeve, Mavis, Maisie person might be vegetarian. She doesn't look vegetarian. When Eve met her she was wearing court shoes with little gilt snaffles, and surely no one owning shoes like that has ever been vegetarian. And the husband, Mark. He does something in the City, so is surely a carnivore.

Niko's home on time, for once. He tends to hang about at school, giving unofficial coding and hacking classes in the IT room, and teaching the science club how to make miniature volcanoes out of vinegar and baking powder. But today he's busily peeling potatoes at the sink, and leans back to give Eve an over-the-shoulder kiss as she comes in.

"No, potato peel contains solanine, which is harmful to goats."

"Can we give them those potato peelings?"

She puts her arms round his waist. "How do you know these things?"

"Sounds like a porn site to me."

"Urban Goat Forum."

Zbig and Leila arrive at eight o'clock on the dot. Zbig's an old friend of Niko's from Cracow University, and Leila is his girlfriend of several years' standing.

"Walk. Look at seabirds. Eat fish and chips."

"So what's new?" Zbig asks them. "Are you doing anything next week, for half-term?"

"Pervert."

"Catch up on your love life?" Zbig suggests.

"You should see LondonPigOwners. com."

"We were thinking of going up to the Suffolk coast for a couple of days," Niko says. "It's wonderful at this time of year. No crowds. We've even found someone to goat-sit Thelma and Louise."

"Yes. White in the fridge. Red on the table."

When she's put the potatoes and fennel in the oven to roast, Eve goes outside onto the patio, where Thelma and Louise nibble affectionately at her fingers in the fading light. Despite her misgivings, Eve has grown very fond of them.

"What do you do there?" asks Leila.

"Of course it did. Have you got the wine?"

"I wasn't deliberately searching for it. It just came up on the screen."

"Maybe even that."

"You know perfectly well who I mean. It's work, Niko. I have no choice."

"Oh my God" says Eve, her heart plummeting. "The roast potatoes."

Niko follows her to the kitchen. "The potatoes are fine," he tells her, glancing into the oven. "What is it really?"

He stares at her. "You're not serious."

She closes her eyes. "I promise you, I…"

"I am serious. It's already booked."

He turns away. "Jesus, Eve. Couldn't you, just once, just fucking once…"

"So could I come too?"

"Lance? Human cockroach Lance?"

"Er, yes, I guess." She feels her eyelids flutter. "I mean, Lance will be there, but we can still --"

"Next week. I'm really sorry, Niko. I have to go to Venice."

"You do have a choice, Eve." His voice is almost inaudible. "You can choose to spend your life chasing shadows, or you can choose to have a real life, here, with me."

They're staring at each other, beyond words, when the doorbell sounds. Mark precedes his wife. He's wearing strawberry-coloured trousers and a Guernsey sweater and carrying an enormous bottle of wine. A magnum, at least.

"Fiona," she says, with a mirthless flash of teeth, shrugging off the Whistles coat.

Eve recovers first. "Mark, how lovely. Thank you. And Maeve… Maisie… I'm terribly sorry, I've forgotten your --"

As Niko introduces them to the others, Eve feels a sick sense of things left unresolved. Leila raises an eyebrow, detecting that something is amiss, and Eve beckons her into the kitchen and gives her an abridged version of events as she takes the duck breasts out of the marinade and lays them, hissing, in a heated pan.

"Hi, guys, sorry, got lost crossing the street." He pushes the bottle at Niko. "Ritual offering. Think you'll find it's fairly decent."

"Tell me about it," says Leila, who knows what Eve does, although not in detail. "I'm constantly pulled in two directions. Justifying my work to Zbig is more stressful than actually doing it."

"I've been ordered to go to Venice," she says untruthfully. "It's an important short-notice thing I can't get out of, half-term or no half-term. Niko seems to think that I can just tell my bosses to go to hell, but I can't."

"Yup, the enfant terrible of regulatory compliance." Mark swings round to face her. "So where do you hail from?"

"Totteridge," says Leila. "Although I grew up in Wembley."

"No, but where do you come from?"

"My grandparents were born in Jamaica, if that's what you mean."

"That's exactly what I feel," says Eve, giving the pan an irritable shake.

Dizzy with the ghastliness of it all, Eve introduces Zbig, more or less forcefully, to Fiona. "Zbig lectures at King's," she tells her.

"That's nice. What about?"

"Yes, darling." Fiona flashes her teeth again.

"No," says Leila.

"That's amazing. We went there on holiday two years ago, didn't we, darling?"

Mark, they discover when they rejoin the others, is a compliance manager. "The youngest the bank's ever had," says Fiona. "Top of his training cohort."

"Gosh," says Leila faintly.

"A resort called Sandals. Do you know it?"

"Did you see Gladiator? We've got the DVD at home. Mark loves the bit where Russell Crowe chops the guy's head off with the two swords."

"Roman history," says Zbig. "Augustus to Nero, basically."

"Who?"

"Oh, that was blown out of all proportion."

"Yes," says Zbig. "That certainly is a good bit."

"What about that expenses scandal?" asks Zbig.

"That's very much a glass-half-empty perspective," Fiona says.

"How do you mean?"

"So do you get asked on TV programmes and stuff?"

"Like Wolf's girlfriend, after the boob-job he claimed as a legitimate parliamentary expense," says Leila, and Niko laughs.

"PR. Mostly political."

"Well, I'm basically working full-time with the MP Gareth Wolf."

"I'm impressed. Quite a challenge."

"I shit you not. Septimius was the man. But tell me about yourself."

"You're shitting me."

"Septimius Severus, the first African Roman emperor. He invaded Scotland, among other good works."

Frowning, Niko holds his wine glass up to the window. "He means in light of Wolf's persistent lying, his rapacious self-interest, his open contempt for those less fortunate than himself, and his all-round moral vacuity."

"Interesting. What sort of people are your clients?"

"I get the odd request, yes. If they need someone to compare the US president to Nero, or to talk about Severus."

"I bet you're good at your job." Eve smiles at her.

"He's done amazing things for trade with Saudi Arabia," Fiona says, dropping her handbag onto the sofa, and pouring herself another glass of wine.

Eve scans the room. Why do we put ourselves through this torture? she wonders. Dinner parties bring out the worst in everyone. Niko, usually the gentlest of men, is looking positively vengeful, although obviously this has got a lot to do with her going to Venice for half-term week, rather than spending it on the windy Suffolk coast with him. Mark, meanwhile, is explaining at extraordinary length to Leila, whose jaw is set rigid with boredom, exactly what it is that a regulatory compliance manager does.

"I am," says Fiona. "Very."

"You had that break-in, didn't you?" Fiona asks. "Did they take anything?"

"Nothing, as far as we can find."

"Did they catch them?"

"Was this woman Caucasian?" asks Mark.

From the corner of her eye, Eve sees Zbig lay a hand on Leila's arm. "According to Mrs Khan… have you met the Khans?"

"It was a her. And no, not yet."

Mark grins. "In that case, I'll leave my windows open."

"The Asian family? No."

"Well, according to her, it was an athletic young woman with dark blonde hair."

Feeling a vestige of sympathy for Fiona, Eve is just about to speak to her when she sees Leila pointing urgently. Pushing through the guests and into the kitchen, she grabs the smoking pan containing the duck breasts, and to a crescendo of sizzling, balances it on the sink.

"The duck's burned to buggery," says Eve, levering up one of the blackened breasts with a spatula.

"Is everything OK?" asks Leila.

"Edible?"

"No, and I honestly have no idea why I asked them tonight. I saw them leaving their house one morning, just after they'd moved in, and felt I should say something friendly. But then my mind went blank, and I panicked, and before I knew it, I heard myself asking them to dinner."

"Barely."

"Well, don't worry. Zbig and Niko and I already know you can't cook to save your life, and you're never going to see that dreadful couple again. At least I hope you aren't."

"Right. Heat it up and pour it on. The duck'll still be like shoe leather but at least it'll taste of something."

"There's this sort of creosote stuff in the pan."

"Both true," says Niko, putting down his glass, placing an arm round her shoulder, and drawing her to him. "Your hair smells of frazzled duck."

"I'm sorry," Eve tells him. "I'm a terrible wife. And a worse cook."

Moving from the kitchen to the dining table, a loaded plate in each hand, Eve and Leila discover the others arranged as if in a classic film-still. Beyond them, framed by the open patio door, stands the diminutive figure of Thelma. On the sofa, very much aware that the eyes of all present are upon her, Louise is nervously evacuating her bladder into Fiona's handbag.

"I'm sure we have."

"No good. Have you got any jam? Marmalade?"

"Eve, honestly."

"I know. But right now I need you to help me make this duck look presentable. Charred side down, I guess, and surrounded with vegetables."

"Well, that went well," says Niko a couple of hours later, pouring the last of the Romanian red wine into his glass and downing it in a single swallow.

"Is there some gravy?"

"Niko, please. Surely you don't think --"

"I know. And Lance, I'm sure, will prove the ideal travelling companion."

"What ends?"

"It's not a fantasy, Niko, it's real. People are being killed."

"What do you mean, 'get her'?"

"All of it. The conspiracy theories, the chasing after imaginary assassins, the whole fantasy."

"They need me. The person we're after, Niko. This woman. The only person who's begun to figure her out is me. It'll take time, but I'll get her."

He lets his arm drop. "If that's true, all the more reason to leave it to those who are trained to deal with that kind of stuff. Which, by your own admission, you're not."

"I'm sorry, but that's the reality of the situation."

"I don't think anything. But when you get back, it ends."

"I quite like it." He holds her for a moment. "Go to Venice next week, if you really have to."

"Kill her?"

"I really have to, Niko. I have no choice."

"If necessary."

"Eve, do you have any idea what you're saying? You sound completely deranged."

"Stop her. Take her out."

"Don't remind me."

"What are you saying?"

"That you go to Venice, and then draw a line under the whole thing. Resign, leave, whatever. And we make a whole new start."

She looks round the room. At the detritus of the dinner party, the half-empty wine glasses, the remains of the tiramisu. From the sofa, Louise gives an encouraging bleat.

"The reality of the situation is that there's a loaded handgun in your bag and people from the security forces watching this house. And that's not the life I want for us. I want a life where we do things together, like a normal married couple. Where we talk to each other, and I mean really talk. Where we trust each other. I can't carry on like this."

"Yes," she says. "I do."

"OK," she says, and allows her head to fall forward onto Niko's chest. He puts both arms around her and holds her tight.

"You know I love you," he says.