"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

went to bed. That was why the air seemed stiff with cold,
and why the sound of the bells had wakened him. He
didn't feel cold in bed, though, probably because he was
still fully dressed apart from his shoes and jacket. He
laboriously transferred his gaze to the floor, a chilly
expanse of speckled black and white aggregate polished
to a hard shine. There they were, the two shoes on their
sides and the discarded jacket on its back above them,
like the outline drawing of a murder victim.
He lay back, exhausted by this effort, trying to piece
together the events of the previous evening. Quite apart
from resulting in the worst hangover he had ever experi-
enced, he knew that what had happened hadn't been
good news. But what had happened?
He remembered arriving back at the hotel. The bar was
empty except for the old man called Tommaso and a
younger man playing the pinball machine in the corner.
The proprietor called Zen over and handed him his
identity card and a bill.
'The hotel's closing for repairs.'
'You didn't tell me when I checked in.'
'I'm telling you now.'
The pinball player had turned to watch them, and Zen
recognized him. He even knew his name -- Patrizio --
although he had no recollection of how or where they had
met. What had he been doing all evening?
Abandoning this intractable problem, Zen swung his
feet down on to the icy fioor and stood up. This was a
mistake. Previously he had had to deal with the electrical
storm in his head, a stomach badly corroded by the toxic
waste swilling around inside it, limbs that twitched, joints
that ached and a mouth that seemed to have been replaced
by a plaster replica. The only good news, in fact, had been
that the room wasn't spinning round and round like a
fairground ride. That was why it had been a mistake
standing up.
Washing, shaving, dressing and packing were so man ~.
stations of the cross for Aurelio Zen that morning. But it
wasn't until he lit a cigarette in the mistaken belief that it
might make him feel better, and found tucked inside thc
packet of Marlboros a book of matches whose cover reaa
'Pizzeria II Nuraghe', that the merciful fog obscuring the
events of the previous evening suddenly lifted.
He collapsed on one of the rickety wooden chairs, its
feet scraping atrociously on the polished floor slabs. Ze n
didn't notice. He wasn't in his hotel room any longer. He
was sitting at the table in the pizzeria, drunker than he had
ever been in his life; horribly, monstrously, terminally
drunk. Five men, three seated and two standing, were
staring at him with expressions of pure, malignant hos-