"Who could do this?"
Elena leans forward to her screen and tries to make sense of the image slowly depixelating. Her nose almost touches the warm display and the colours spread out from their singular boxes, bleeding out into shapes and forming the image the crime scene photographer had sought to capture and preserve.
Once it becomes sharper, she leans back into her chair and covers her eyes with one of her hands, peeking out from between the fingers. The photo displayed shows a man splayed out on his back with deep gouges carved into his face dragged down his cheeks. His cheekbones peak out from beneath the torn skin as little dips of white. His dislocated arms stick out at impossible angles and Elena tries to cover her eyes again when she sees his bare legs have shattered knees with bits of bone sticking out from the congealed blood.
"Oh, that's gross. That's really, really gross."
Kenny rolls over from his computer screens to take a look and immediately regrets it. "Wow. Okay."
Elena grimaces as he rolls away quickly and minimises the screen. She reaches for her notepad to compare her notes of the data gathered from other unique murders. There were pages and pages, and she was slowly compiling the numbers into a database. Already she had worked out an algorithm to search European shared databases for specific markers in reported murders because their unofficial-official team needed leads and any organisation with a murder list as long as the Twelve's would hire assassins who would have a method to their madness.
Another silence descends in the room, bobbed along by the occasional keyboard clacking and Eve's humming. Their office was a quieter one compared to her old department where the open plan layout had her bumping into twenty people before she had even made it to her desk in the mornings. She flicks through her notes, highlighting away where there were matches and setting aside key differences to be picked apart later on.
Then she makes her announcement, "That's the third murder this week in Rome. The exact same pattern according to the police reports. With one of those postcards left behind."
"And vicious." Kenny gives a little shudder from behind his screens.
"It's just really strange. It's not that we can't find anything to connect them to each other, it's that there's too many connections." She braces herself, maximises the window again and takes another look.
"Uh-huh." Eve mutters from the other side of the room, flipping between papers.
Carolyn looks up from next to her and purses her lips, "First Palacios, then Lavinson, and O'Connor. What have you got?"
"All are linked to the Twelve." Eve chimes in, "Most likely they were employed as hitmen. But they operated individually and weren't likely to have crossed paths."
Elena carries on, scribbling on her notepad. "They're methodically carried out, almost like whoever it is, they're ticking off a list, staging the scene." She pauses and leans back to look at Eve with her lips pressed thin, "And with the postcard and level of violence to the bodies, it's clear they're sending a message. I mean, look at his knees."
"She's awful." Kenny agrees and the room falls silent. "Oh. Oh no."
"What?" Elena twists her head. " She's awful?"
"Yes...she." Kenny replies haltingly. "I- er…"
" Kenny. "
Elena kicks her chair back and away from her desk so that she can eye each of them in turn. Carolyn has a dispassionate look on her face, while Eve and Kenny both look at each other shiftly. Ever since they had returned from their Russia trip with Carolyn to find Nadia, they had been exchanging odd looks or comments that didn't make sense.
It makes her stomach lurch more than the photographic evidence on her computer screen. There were secrets in the room, and no one had shared them with her.
"We know who's been doing the murders." Kenny blurts out.
His fingers fall silent on the keyboard and there's the stillness in the room that echoes back on them. Carolyn clears her throat and stoops to collect her bag while eying the three of them in turn. The coming fallout is exactly the sort of thing that she avoids; the internal dynamics of a team are of little consequence to her so long as the work is done by the end of the day. The look she shoots at Eve puts any future blame squarely on her slumped shoulders.
She speaks in her usual clipped tone and it's even more perfunctory than normal, "Eve, sort out your team and send me your report by the end of today."
Kenny returns the nod his mother gives and watches her leave, looking at the wistfully at the door before turning back to Elena's expectant face. "Yeah. It's her. Oksana. Villanelle. Whatever you want to call her."
"How?"
"She's working as an informant." He pulls a face, unsure of how much to say.
"Is this because I didn't go to Russia?" Elena turns to Eve, looking for a better answer.
"What, no?" Eve looks at her computer and then at the floor before finally looking back at Elena. "No, I didn't tell you because you hate her. You'd hate working with her, or well, knowing that we're working with her."
"So you thought you'd lie to me instead." She states bluntly. "I thought we were better than that. I jumped ship with you because I thought you were my friend."
"We were trying to protect you. The less you know, the better." Eve's voice was steady, the American tinge to her voice leaks out as she turns defensive.
"People? I work here. Or at least I'm supposed to." Elena puts her head in her hands and groans, unsure of what to think. Then she grips the arm rests of her chair, ready to stand, "I need some air.
"That's not exactly all of it." Kenny shifts uneasily in his seat, before rolling himself in front of the door to block her potential exit. "I think we should tell her the rest."
"I know." Eve sighs and reaches into her handbag for a slightly grubby, well used notebook.