Killing Eve: Bloodline (17)

The seventeenth episode of a new Killing Eve adventure, published exclusively on Substack

'Babe?'

            Eve groans. 'What?'

            'Do you love me?'

            'No.'

            'Seriously.'

            'I am serious.'

            'Babe, please.'

            'Stop babe-ing me. It's three in the morning. Why are you even awake?'

            'I'm hungry.'

            'Oxana, really.'

            'There's some pork pie in the kitchen. With cranberry topping. I can't stop thinking about it.'

            'So have some.'

            'I might just get myself a tiny slice. A sliver. To keep me going till breakfast.'

            'You're a big girl. You don't need my permission.'

            'You do love me, though.'

            'God, Oxana. Yes. Now let me get back to sleep.' Eve turns over, and determinedly closes her eyes. She's just dozing off when her phone rings. Pushing herself up on one elbow she reaches for it, knocking over a glass of water in the process. 'What?'

            'You have to come.' Oxana's voice is low, barely audible.

            'Come where?'

            'Downstairs. I'm trapped.'

            'What are you talking about?'

            'The rat's back. And it's threatening me.'

            'In what language?'

            'Eve, please.'

            'All right. Wait a minute.' Grumpily, Eve shrugs on her dressing gown, leaves the bedroom and starts to descend the stairs. Below her, the hall lights are switched on, illuminating the frozen figure of Oxana. She's standing there in her pyjamas, holding her phone in one hand and a plate of pork pie in the other. Opposite her, sitting inquisitively on its haunches, is a rat. Either the same rat Eve encountered, or an even bigger one.

            As Eve watches, the clawless cat stalks into the hall, hissing furiously. Its teeth are bared and the hair on its back is standing stiffly upright. The rat, eyes gleaming, notes this development with interest.

            'Don't do it Mishka,' Eve murmurs, but the cat, with reckless bravado, launches itself at the rat. There's a spitting, writhing flurry as the two animals engage, then a high-pitched yowling as the rat sinks its teeth into the cat's ear.

            As Pavel and Dmitri burst into the hall from adjoining rooms, their guns drawn, Valentin appears at the top of the stairs, knotting the sash of his dressing gown. 'What the actual fuck?' he begins, taking a downward step just as the cat, having ripped its ear free of the rat's teeth, bolts up the staircase.

            It cannons into him. Valentin slips, falls headlong down the stairs, and strikes his head with a thump on the oak parquet floor. He comes to rest, face upwards and very still, amongst the crumpled silk folds of his dressing gown. Pavel and Dmitri reach him first, then Villanelle, then Eve. They can all see the dark bruise spreading, shadow-like, beneath the skin of his forehead.

            Villanelle, still holding her phone, calls the emergency services. The others are silent, glancing at each other fearfully as she describes what has happened, and explains that the injured man is a haemophiliac. On the other side of the hall, the rat is eating the pork pie.

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          Somehow, Bili and I are an item. She tells me that she'll be good for me, and that she wants to make me happy, and I'm coming round to the idea. She knows the most extraordinary amount about me and my affairs, all compiled by the snake-like Johnny Fernandes. Naturally I've considered the idea that she's been sent by him to entrap me, but her explanation of why she's here does actually make pretty good sense. Bili wants British citizenship, and while the Twelve have certainly penetrated the Home Office to the point where they could engineer this, she's smart enough to see that any such outcome is likely to be endlessly deferred, because the moment they grant her citizenship they lose any traction they might have with her. I, on the other hand, have everything to gain from expediting it. Her gratitude and perhaps more. Weirdly, she really seems to like me. I can’t remember when I last felt that.

            So here she is, my Bulgarian warrior princess, and I have to admit that we're well suited, and that since she's re-entered my life, things have started to calm down. My Villanelle obsession has receded, and with it the need to visit violent harm on Eve Polastri, who when all is said and done is just a boring, speccy, big-bummed ex-MI5 wonk, and of no lasting interest to me. Working for Fernandes and the Twelve makes her a traitor in my eyes, but trying to have her killed was, I do admit, slightly OTT. Let it go babe, as Bili says in her serene way. Villanelle, of course, is something else. Mad, dangerous and unbalanced, but undeniably exciting. Perhaps too exciting. She'll devour Polastri in the end, just as she would have devoured me. I know that now.

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            Balice's phone rings at 6:45 am, waking her and Bili. It's the leader of the A4 watcher team at Kensington Palace Gardens. He reports that an ambulance called at the Nikolai house in the early hours of the morning and took a patient, as yet unidentified, to St Mary's hospital in Paddington. 'Stay on it,' Balice tells him. 'Find out everything you can.'

            'Is everything all right?' Bili asks sleepily, her face muffled by a pillow.

            'Everything's fine,' Balice tells her. Raising herself on one elbow she regards her bedmate critically. 'But there's something I want you to do. Something I need you to do.'

            'Mmm.'

            'I want to get you into the house where Villanelle and Eve are staying. And I need you to find out what they're up to. Specifically, I want you to find out the details of an operation called Sanctify.'

            'Balice, I'm not a spy. Everyone wants me to be one, but I'm not. I haven't been trained or anything. I'm just from Bulgaria.'

            'You'll be fine. I need to figure a way to get you into the house when Johnny Fernandes isn't around, obviously. But if I can do that... you're a natural, Bili.'

            'Mmm... Really?'

            'Do this for me and we're even, OK? I like you, I really like you, but you did a shitty thing to me. You owe me, Bili.'

            Bili sits up, her hair tousled. She smiles ruefully. 'I guess I do.'