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

interest in anything but the television serials she watched,
whose plots and characters were gradually becoming con-
fused in her mind. Such motherhood as she had known
was like those industrial jobs that leave workers crippled
and broken, the only difference being that there was no
one mothers could sue for damages.
Zen led her back into the musty bedroom she occupied
at the back of the apartment, filled with the furniture she
had brought with her from their home in Venice. The
pieces were all elaborately carved from some wood as
hard, dark and heavy as iron. They covered every inch of
wall space, blocking up the fire escape as well as most of
the window, which anyway she always kept tightly
shuttered.
'Are you going to stay up and watch the rest of that
film?' she asked as he tucked her in.
'Yes, mamma, don't worry, I'll be just in there. If you
hear anything, it's only me.'
'It didn't come from in there! Anyway, I told you who
did it. The skinny one in the swimming costume.'
'I know, mamma,' he murmured wearily. 'That's what
everyone thinks.'
He wandered back to the living room just as two o'clock
began to strike from the churches in the Vatican. Zen
stood surveying the familiar faces locked up on the flick-
ering screen. They were familiar not just to him, but to
everyone who had watched television or looked at the
papers that autumn. For months the news had been domi-
nated by the dramatic events and still more sensational
implications of the 'Burolo affair'.
In a way it was quite understandable that Zen's mother
had confused the characters involved with the cast of a
film she had seen. Indeed, it was a film that Zen was
watching, but a film of a special kind, not intended for
commercial release and only available to him, as an
officer of the Criminalpol section of the Ministry of the
Interior, in connection with the report he had been asked
to prepare, summarizing the case to date. He wasn't
really supposed to take it home, but the Ministry didn't
run to video machines for its employees, even those of
Vice-Questorial rank. So what was he supposed to do --
Zen had demanded, in his ignorance of the nature of
video tape -- hold it up to the window, frame by frame?
He sat down on the sofa again, groped for the remote
control unit and pressed the play button, releasing the
blurred figures to laugh, chat and generally ham it up for
the camera. They knew it was there, of course. Oscar
Burolo made no secret of his mania for recording the
highpoints of his life. On the contrary, every visitor to the
entrepreneur's Sardinian hideaway had been impressed