Killing Eve: Bloodline (3)

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

            Balice allows herself a smile of triumph. In was instinct, nothing more, that led her to investigate Johnny Fernandes. Something about the elaborate nonchalence with which he and Villanelle treated each other on the French trip - avoiding eye contact most of the time, but then suddenly complicit - tripped a switch in the MI6 officer's suspicious mind. No one else would have noticed it, but Balice was watching Villanelle very closely in France. She sensed something else, too. That Johnny knew about, and disapproved of, her and Villanelle's brief fling. Why would that have been? Was he more than the dapper man-about-town that he appeared?

            Information about Fernades proved surprisingly hard to find. A career soldier in the Indian army, he appeared to have progressed from senior rank to a series of international research and liaison jobs, all highly classified, and then, for the best part of a decade, he effectively disappeared. When he surfaced it was as a retired single man, living quietly in Surrey. 'Like hell,' Balice murmured to herself.

            The only fact about Fernandes that any of her people could come up with was that he was a member of the Indian Military and Sporting Club. It wasn't easy to insert an agent into the club, but Balice managed it. Uttara Khedkar, the daughter of a successful Bollywood film producer, was a student at a culinary school in South Kensington when she was stopped outside a Park Lane nightclub, and found to be in possession of two dozen wraps of cocaine. When Balice visited her in police custody, Uttara was terrified. It didn't take long to persuade her of the advantages of waitressing in a smart West End gentleman's club over several years' hard time in a women's prison.

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And today, exactly a month after I put Uttara in place, bingo! Johnny Fernandes marches into the club, and an hour later he's joined by none other than Polastri and Villanelle. Quite a result. As instructed, Uttara rings the number she's been given, I dispatch a surveillance team to St James's, and when the three leave the club after lunch, my people latch on to them. Johnny Fernandes strolls up to Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly, where he buys a three-volume set of Pierre-Joseph Redouté's 'Roses' and then seemingly vanishes. Villanelle and big-bum Polastri go shopping.

            The surveillance report is not a fun read. The two women walk hand-in-hand to Dover Street Market, where they spend forty minutes, leaving with several large shopping bags. They then proceed to N Peal in the Burlington Arcade, where they buy more than a dozen sweaters and cardigans (helpfully described in the report as being 'in shades of fawn, ecru and dusty pink') before moving on to Dior and Chanel. I feel a tightness in my chest. The thought of Polastri decked out in this finery is just too much, and when I discover that she then had her hair done in Berkeley Square while Villanelle read a book (Anna Akhmatova? No, me neither) under the plane trees outside, I close my eyes. That should have been me, and if I have anything to do with it, it will be. On the plus side, the two of them lead my watchers straight from the hairdresser to the Mount Street apartment where they're staying. Is Villanelle's tradecraft getting rusty? Is she so besotted with that woman she can't think straight?

            It's 11 pm. In an unlit room in the apartment, Villanelle is sitting cross-legged on the floor, scanning the street with binoculars. 'They're in the white Flaxman Catering van,' she says. 'They picked us up in Berkeley Square and followed us here on foot. They called up the van as soon we were inside.'

            'Who are they, do you think?' Eve asks. 'Balice's people?'

            'I'm guessing so. We'll lose them tomorrow, but for now, it's a good thing that they're there.'

            Why?'

            'If they're watching us, they're not doing anything worse.'

            'S’pose so. How do you know the van's theirs?'

            'I saw it circling the square when you were having your hair done.'

            'But you must have seen hundreds of cars and vans in that time.'

            'Probably.'

            'So...?'

            Villanelle puts down the binoculars. 'I love your hair like that.'

            'Don't change the subject.'

            'Have you had that feeling that you're being stared at?'

            'Mmm. Sort of.'

            'It's like that. I just... noticed it. But I do love your hair. It looks so...'

            'Expensive?'

            'Exactly.'

            'Well, it should do.' Eve yawns. 'Shall we go to bed?'

            Villanelle stands. 'You know what we forgot to buy. Pyjamas, nighties, robes, all those sleep things. Slippers.'

            'Tomorrow,' Eve says.

            Love is fear. I know that now. I'm afraid of her dying. Being killed, as she so nearly was on London Bridge. The fear is the backbeat to my love. I'm possessed by the idea that I must keep her safe, even though she is so much better equipped to do this than I am. That animal hyper-sense that she has. The sense of being stared at. The sniper must have been staring at her on the bridge, gazing down his telescopic sight at her blonde hair, exhaling, steadily drawing back his trigger finger... Perhaps he was too far away for her to sense him.

            Oxana's asleep, her breathing soft. Our bed is an island surrounded by shopping bags. We've spent so much money today I've lost all sense of the value of anything. I have to keep reminding myself that it's necessary. Costuming for the world into which we are to be inserted. It's not, on the face of it, an especially dangerous world. So why do I have such dark misgivings. Why am I so afraid? I touch Oxana's face, her mouth. I feel her warm breath on my fingers. I remember my mother telling me that when I was a baby, I used to lie so still when I slept that she'd wake me, terrified I was dead.

            'What?' Oxana murmurs.

            'Nothing, angel. Sleep.’

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