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

He turned away with a sickly smile. He had just given
himself away in the worst possible fashion, voicing what
everyone no doubt suspected but no Ministry employee
who wanted to succeed could afford to say out loud. But
that didn't matter, not now. All that mattered was that the
video cassette of the Burolo killings was missing from his
pocket.
Zen walked through the gap in the hessian-clad screens
which divided off the space allotted to each official,
slumped down behind his desk and lit a cigarette. He
recalled with horrible clarity what had happened as he
boarded the bus. It was a classic pickpocket's technique,
using heavy blows in a 'safe' area like the back and
shoulders to cover the light disturbance as a wallet or
pocket-book was removed. The thief must have spotted
the bulge in Zen's coat pocket and thought it looked
promising.
Looking on the bright side, there was a good chance --
well, a chance, anyway -- that when the thief saw that he'd
made a mistake he would simply throw the tape away.
Even if he was curious enough to watch it, the first scenes
were not particularly interesting. Unless you happened to
recognize Burolo and the others, it looked much like any
o~her home video, a souvenir of someone's summer holi-
day. Everything depended on whether the thief realized
that his 'mistake' had netted him something worth more
than all the wallets he could steal in a lifetime. He might,
or he might not. The only sure thing was that Zen could do
absolutely nothing to influence the outcome one way or
the other.
He had expected writing the report to be a chore, but
after what had just happened it was a positive relief to pull
the typewriter over, insert a sheet of paper and immerse
himself in work. The first section, summarizing the scene-
of-crime findings, went very fast. Owing to the evidence
of the video recording and the caretaker's prompt arrival,
there was no dispute about the method or timing of the
killings. The murder weapon had not been recovered, but
was assumed to have been the Remington shotgun that
was missing from the collection Oscar kept in a rack next
door to the dining room. The spent cartridges found at the
scene were of the same make, type and batch as those
stored in the drawers beneath this rack. Unidentified
fingerprints had been found on the rack and elsewhere in
the house. The nature of the victims' wounds indicated
that the shots had been angled upwards, suggesting that
the weapon had apparently been fired from the hip. At
that range it was unnecessary to take precise aim, as the
video all too vividly demonstrated.
The two pistol bullets fired by Vianello had been