Labarre was a good fifteen years older than the woman he’d christened Fantine. He knew he wasn’t particularly attractive. His thin hair and sallow face had never naturally drawn gazes from the opposite sex. But he also knew that money was just as alluring as looks, and he’d always made it clear to anyone who might be interested that he had plenty of that.

He removed his jacket, tie, and shoes as Anna slipped into the bathroom to freshen up, and lay back on his large bed, propped up on the thick goose-feather pillows. When Anna emerged a few minutes later, Labarre was faintly disappointed that she was still wearing her dress. But that feeling quickly evaporated as she climbed onto the bed, straddled him, pulled off one of her gloves and tied it over his eyes.

Labarre’s excitement grew visibly as Anna slowly dragged her fingers down his chest and along his legs before she gently climbed back off the bed, reached her gloved hand under the end of it, pulled out the silencer-tipped pistol that she’d hidden there an hour earlier, and put a bullet in his crotch and another in his neck.

Pain and shock ripped through Labarre. His mind couldn’t process what had just happened to him. His arms flailed wildly at his throat and face as blood spurted out of his neck, staining the white pillows red, and into his lungs, slowly drowning him.

As the last embers of life drained out of Labarre, and two blooms of dark red spread across the bed, Anna quickly opened the wardrobe, retrieved the large leather holdall she’d planted there along with the pistol, and changed into the beige cashmere jumper and dark trousers that were folded inside. She also removed the small black patent-leather and gold-chain Chanel handbag that had been hidden under her new outfit before repacking the holdall with her dress, the glove that she’d kept on, and the gun. She untied the other glove, which had slipped down round Labarre’s neck and was now soaked. She looked at his dead, blank eyes for a moment before she pushed his head to the side with the tip of her finger, prompting another weak gurgle of blood to seep out of his neck. Then she dropped the wet glove into the holdall, put it back in the wardrobe, and left the suite.

Anna didn’t know who Patrice Labarre was, or why he had to die, only that he must, because her superiors at Line Z had decreed it.