Killing Eve: Bloodline (23)

The twenty-third episode of a new Killing Eve adventure, published exclusively on Substack

            Eve and Bili arrange themselves at the top of the stairs. 'Nice cushions,' Bili says. 'Very good quality. Quality's important, don't you think?'

            'Mmm.'

            'Where would I find cushions like this?'

            'Harrods?' says Eve vaguely.

            Bili frowns. 'How exactly does a wedding list work?'

            'You go to a shop, and choose the stuff you want. Then you send your friends there to pay for it. It's not complicated.'

            'Can you do this at Harrods?'

            'I'm sure you can.'

            Bili nods thoughtfully.

            'Have you got a picture of her?' Eve asks. 'Your fiancée?'

            Bili takes out her phone, thumbs through the photos, and hands the phone to Eve. The picture is of a bravely smiling woman in a hospital bed. Despite the facial bruising and the moulded plastic nasal splint, Balice is easily recognisable.

            'Ah,' Eve says. 'Right. I see. That's who you are. When you’re not catching rats.'

            'I know you two had your differences-' Bili begins.

            'Differences?' Eve says. 'She slept with my girlfriend and then tried to kill me. Differences?'

            'I'm just saying, Eve. You did what you did, and I understand why. But now you need to back off, and leave her to me.'

            'You're seriously marrying Balice? She's a monster.'

            'She's not. She just needs-'

            'The love of a good woman?'

            'Something like that.'

            'And you think that's you, Bili? Seriously?'

            'She needs me, Eve. I understand her.'

            'That's not love, Bili, and all the Harrods silk cushions in the world won't-'

            'Love? Bozhe moĭ! Look in a mirror, Eve.'

            'Oxana loves me.'

            Bili shrugs. 'If you say so.'

            Eve glares at her.

---

---

            Bili becomes very still. 'Look.' The rat is on the landing, sniffing the air, darting suspicious glances at the peanut butter. Slowly it approaches the saucer, and sits up on its haunches. For a moment it looks straight at Bili and Eve.

            Bili moves unhurriedly, attaching the cylinder to the drone, and turning a small stopcock. Laying the device on the floor, she takes up the remote control, presses the power switch, and waits. A minute passes, then two. The rat is eating confidently now, its front paws on the edge of the saucer. Noiselessly, the drone lifts off, hovers over the stairwell, and slips through the air towards the rat. Engrossed, the rat feeds on.

            Eve watches, fascinated, as Bili's fingers move over the remote control. The drone hovers over the rat. Only the faintest of hisses, and a slight blurring of the air, indicates the discharge of gas from the cylinder. The rat ignores it, and then, quite suddenly, twitches onto its back, paws flailing. A heartbeat later it's lying motionless, its head resting in the peanut butter, and the drone is  climbing back towards Bili and Eve.

            'Come,' Bili orders.

            They descend the stairs, Bili carrying the pet carrier. Carefully she lifts the rat's head, takes a tissue from the pocket of her overalls, and wipes the peanut butter from its face and whiskers. Gently, she slips it into the pet carrier. Close up the rat is enormous, with a body length of about forty centimetres, and a tail as thick as Eve's middle finger.

            'Will it be OK?' Eve asks.

            'Slight headache, probably. I used a rapid onset anaesthetic; it'll wake up any minute.'

            'What are you going to do with it?'

            'Take it home to my fiancée. It will be our pet.'

            'Does Balice know this?'

            'It's going to be be a surprise.'

            'I bet it is.'

            'The rat will love us, and we will love the rat. It will help us to grow as a couple.'

            'But Bili, you're spying on her.'

            'Eve, you of all people should know that no relationship is perfect.' She looks into the pet carrier up as the rat begins to stir. 'You know what Balice calls you?'

            'Tell me.'

            'Big bum.'

            'Then I wish I'd hit her harder.'

            Five minutes later the drone is packed away. Bili is about to leave, when Anastasia appears at the head of the stairs. 'Did you get it?' she asks.

            Bili holds up the carrier, in which the rat is now agitatedly scurrying around. 'Yes,' she says. 'Mission accomplished.'

            'Thank God. And thank you.'

            'No problem.' Bili turns to Eve. 'I think you have a very nice bum.'

            Anastasia stares as Bili leaves with the rat. 'What a strange young woman,' she says to Eve. 'You really shouldn't let tradespeople speak to you like that.'

            'No,' Eve smiles. 'I probably shouldn't.'

---

 

---

           Where is Oxana? Why hasn't she contacted me? Is she safe? Is Valentin safe? What's happening? I keep telling myself that Oxana can cope with anything, but she can't, really. She's a human being with limits like anyone else. And the closer we get, and the more the two of us become one, the easier it is to see the hairline cracks in that unbreakable shell. I make her vulnerable, I know that, just as I know that it was her apparent invulnerability that first drew me to her. We speak to each other in English most of the time, and in English, she says (she never got her linguistics degree, but is always happy to lecture me on the subject, and can be, in her own sweet way, incredibly pompous and full of herself) words change their meaning, depending who's saying them. Your love might not be my love, etcetera. But Russian, she tells me, is less slippery, less shape-shifting. Lyubov' yest' lyubov'. Love is love. It just is, like winter. So when we're lying there in the dark, with our bodies folded into each other, she tells me what she feels for me in Russian, because it's safer. The English word is an eel which will end up squirming out of both of our grasps.

            So where is she? Where’s my girl? I hate going to sleep not knowing.