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

parchment-like skin.
'It was just a rat, mamma.'
The best way of dispelling her formless, childish fears
was by giving her a specific unpleasantness to focus on.
'But it sounded like metal.'
'The skirting's lined with zinc,' he improvised. 'To stop
them gnawing through. I'll speak to Giuseppe in the
morning and we'll get the exterminators in. You try and
get sorne sleep now.'
Back in the living room, he turned off the television and
reound the video tape, trying to dispel his vague sense of
unease by thinking about the report which he had to write
the next day. It was the lateness of the hour that made
everything seem strange and threatening now, the time
when -- according to what his uncle had once told him --
a house belongs not to the people who happen to live
there now, but to all those who have preceded them over
the centuries. Tomorrow morning everything would have
snapped back into proportion and the uncanny aspects of
the Burolo case would seem mere freakish curiosities. The
only real question was whether to mention them at all. It
wasn't that he wanted or needed to conceal anything. For
that matter he wouldn't have known where to begin, since
he had no idea who the report was destined for. The
problem was that there were certain aspects of the Burolo
case which were very difficult to mention without laying
yourself open to the charge of being a credulous nin-
compoop. For example, the statement made by the seven-
year-old daughter of Oscar Burolo's lawyer, who had
visited the villa in late July. As a special treat she had been
allowed to stay up for dinner with the adults, and in the
excitement of the moment had sneaked some of her
father's coffee, with the result that she couldn't sleep. It
was a luminous summer night, and eventually the child
left her room and set out to explore the house. According
to her statement, in one of the rooms in the older part of
the villa she saw a figure moving about. 'At first I was
pleased,' she said. 'I thought it was a child, and I was
lonely for someone to play with. But then i remembered
that there were no children at the villa. I got scared and ran
back to my room.'
Including things like that could easily make him the
laughing-stock of the department, while if he left them out
he laid himself open to the charge of suppressing evi-
dence. Fortunately, it was no part of Zen's brief to draw
conclusions or offer opinions. All that was needed as a
concise report describing the various lines of investigation
which had been conducted by the police and the Cara-
binieri and outlining the evidence against the various sus-
pects. A clerical chore, in short, to which he was bringing