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

they were repeated that Alfonso went to investigate.
'The evidence against the Binis never amounted to more
than the fact of their presence at the villa at the relevant
time, but since the only other people present were all
dead, and it was apparently impossible for any intruder to
have entered the property, it is understandable that the
couple came under suspicion. However, the case against
them, which already lacked any viable motive, was further
weakened by the discovery of the video tape recording
Alfonso Bini's evidently genuine shock on discovering the
bodies, and by the fact that a meticulous search failed to
uncover any trace of the murder weapon at the villa,
where the couple had remained throughout.'
Zen paused to give his numbed fingers a chance to
xecover. Next on his list was the vendetta theory, which
involved filling in the background about the attempted
kidnapping of Oscar Burolo. This had surprised no one,
except for the fact that the intended victim had got away
with nothing but a scratch on his shoulder. God damn it,
peopie had murmured in tones of exasperated admiration,
how does he do it? Kidnapping was notoriously a way of
life in Sardinia, and what had Burolo done but choose a
property on the very edge of the Barbagia massif itself, the
heartland of the kidnapping gangs and the location of the
underground lairs where they hid their victims? He was
asking for it!
And he duly got it. Fortunately for Oscar, the Lincoln
Continental he had been driving at the time was a rather
special model, built for the African president who figured
in the fictitious 'slave' story. Oscar did a lot of work in
Africa, which he liked to describe as 'a land of oppor-
tunity', rolling his eyes comically to suggest what kind of
opportunities he had in mind. The president in question
was unfortunately toppled from power just after taking
delivery of the vehicle and just before Oscar could collect
on the contract the president had signed for the construc-
tiov, of a new airport in the country's second-largest city, a
job which had promised to be even more lucrative than
most of those which Oscar was involved in.
Where other companies might reckon on a profit margin
of 2o or 3o per cent, regarding anything above that as an
extraordinary windfall, the projects which Burolo Con-
struction undertook seemed able to generate profits that
were often in excess of the total original budget. Oscar had
earned the sobriquet 'King Midas' for his ability to turn the
hardest rock, the most arid soil and the foulest marshland
into pure gold. In the case of the African airport, his bill
had already soared to a sum amounting to almost 4 per-
cent of the country's gross national product, but on this
occasion Oscar was constrained to realism. Even if the new