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

cut and run. But he had invested all his self-esteem in the
villa, to say nothing of several billion lira, and it would
take more than some bunch of small-time sheep-shaggers,
as he jeeringly referred to them, to see him off.
Nevertheless, someone had seen him off, and the friends
and relatives of the late Antonio Melega naturally came
under suspicion. Apart from the sheer ferocity of the kill-
ings, some of the physical evidence seemed to support this
hypothesis. Sardinians, particularly those from the
poorer mountain areas, are the shortest of all Mediter-
ranean peoples. The fingerprints found on the ejected
shotgun cartridges were exceptionally small -- 'like a
child's', the Carabinieri's expert had remarked, an unfor-
tunate phrase which had provoked much mirth in the rival
force. But an adult gunman of small statur was another
matter, and would also explain the low angle of fire which
had previously been attributed to the gun being held at hip
level. Moreover, sheep rustlers would necessarily be
skilled in moving and acting soundlessly, hence the eerie
silence which had so impressed everyone who had seen
the video tape.
'Unfortunately,.' Zen typed, 'there was an insurn;oun-
table problem about this attractive hypothesis, namely the
question of access. The defences of the Villa Burolo had
been specifically designed to prevent an incursion of pre-
cisely this kind. It is true that the control room itself was
not manned at the time of the murders, but the system
was designed to set off alarms all over the villa in the event
of any intrusion. In order to test the effectiveness of these
alarms, a specialist alpine unit of the Carabinieri attempted
to break into the villa by a variety of means, including the
use of parachutes and hang-gliders. In every case, the
alarms were activated. Any direct assault of the premises,
whether by local kidnappers or any other group, thus had
to be ruled out.'
Placing an asterisk after 'group', Zen added at the foot of
the page: 'Subsequent to an assessment of the situation
undertaken by this department in late September, Dottor
Vincenzo Fabri suggested that the intended victim of the
killings might not have been Oscar Burolo, who was
unarmed and whose demeanour throughout the video
recording showed him to be unafraid of the intruder, but
his guest Edoardo Vianello. Fabri pointed out that the fact
that the architect was carrying a pistol showed that he
feared for his safety, and raised the possibility that an
investigation into Vianello's professional affairs might
reveal an involvement with the organized crime for which
his native Sicily is notorious. To overcome the problem of
access, Fabri suggested that Giuseppina Bini was secretly
working for the Mafia, drawing attention to the fact that in