"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

Having reached the age at which women begin to employ
clothing for purposes of concealment rather than display,
Signora Burolo discreetly retained a flowing wrap of some
material that was a good deal less transparent than it first
appeared.
A sense of revulsion suddenly overcame Zen at the
thought of what was shortly to happen to that pampered,
veiled flesh. Vanity, lust, jealousy, boredom, bitchiness,
beauty, wit -- what did any of it matter? As the doomed
faces glanced flirtatiously at the camera, wondering how
they were coming across, Zen felt like screaming at them,
'Go away! Get out of that house now!'
The Favellonis had done precisely that, of course, which
was one reason why everyone in Italy from the magistrate
investigating the case to the know-all in your local bar
agreed with Zen's mother that Renato Favelloni was 'the
one who did it'. With the seedy fixer and his disturbingly
bare-breasted wife out of the way, the two maturer
couples had settled down to a quiet dinner in the villa's
dining room, with its rough tiled floor and huge trestle
table which had originally graced the refectory of a Fran-
ciscan monastery. The meal had been eaten and coffee and
liqueurs served when Oscar once again switched on the
camera to record the after-dinner talk, dominated as
always by his booming, emphatic voice, punctuated by
blows of his hairy fist on the table-top.
Apart from a distant metallic crash whose source and
relevance were in dispute, the first sign of what was about
to happen appeared in Signora Vianello's nervous eyes.
The architect's wife was sitting next to their host, who was
in the middle of a bawdy tale concerning a well-known TV
presenter and a stripper turned member of parliament
who had appeared on his talk show, and what they had
reputedly got up to during the commercial break. Maria
Pia Vianello had been listening with a vague, blurry smile,
as though she wasn't quite sure whether it was proper for
her to appear to understand. Then her eyes were attracted
by something on the other side of the room, something
which made such considerations irrelevant. The vague
smile abruptly vanished, leaving her features completely
blank.
No one else had noticed anything. The only sound in
the room was Oscar's voice. Whatever Signora Vianello
had seen was on the move, and her eyes tracked it across
the room until Oscar saw it too. He broke off in mid-
sentence, threw his napkin on the table and stood up.
'What do you want?'
There was no answer, no sound whatever. Oscar's wife
and Dottor Vianello, who were sitting with their backs to
the camera, looked round. Rita Burolo emitted a scream of