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

killings themselves. The missing tape would immediately
be traced to Zen, who had signed it out from Archives.
Everyone would assume that Zen himself had sold the
tape, and the denials of the magazine or TV station -- if
they bothered to deny it -- would be discounted as part of
the deal. Vincenzo Fabri had been waiting for months for
just such an opportunity to present itself. He wouldn't let
it go to waste!
Zen now knew that he had badly bungled his
unexpected promotion from his previous menial duties to
the ranks of the Ministry's prestigious Criminalpol divi-
sion. This had been due to a widespread but mistaken idea
of the work which this group did. The press, intoxicated
by the allure of elite units, portrayed it as a team of high-
powered 'supercops' who sped about the peninsula crack-
ing the cases which proved too difficult for the local offi-
cials. Zen, as he had ruefully reflected many times since,
should have known better. He of all people should have
realized that police work never took any account of indivi-
dual abilities. It was a question of carrying out certain
procedures, that was all. Occasionally these procedures
resulted in crimes being solved, but that was incidental to
their real purpose, which was to maintain or adjust the
balance of power within the organization itself. The result
was a continual shuffling and fidgeting, a ceaseless and
frenetic activity which it was easy to mistake for pur-
poseful action.
Nevertheless, it was a mistake which Zen should never
have made, and which had cost him dearly. When dis-
patched to Bari or Bergamo or wherever it might be, he
had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the cases he had
been assigned, asking probing questions, dishing out criti-
cism, reorganizing the investigation and generally stirring
things up as much as possible. This was the quickest way
to get results, he fondly imagined, not having realized that
the results desired by the Ministry flowed automatically
from his having been sent. He didn't have to lift a finger,
in fact it was important that he didn't. Far from being the
'oop from the Ministry' which the press liked to portray,
Criminalpol personnel were comparable to inspectors of
schools or airports. Their visits provided a chance for the
mistry to get a reasonably reliable picture of what was
happening, a reminder to the local authorities that all
power ultimately lay with Rome, and a signal to concerned
pressure groups that something was being done. No one
wanted Zen to solve the case he had been sent to look into.
Not the local police, who would then be asked why they
had failed to achieve similar results unaided, nor the
Ministry, to whom any solution would merely pose a fresh
set of problems. All he needed to do in order to keep