Blood Rain - 7 Read Online Free

Blood Rain - 7
Book: Blood Rain - 7 Read Online Free
Author: Michael Dibdin
Pages:
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on display — such as women, or AK-47S in their original packing cases — were available more discreetly in the surrounding streets. Zen and Carla walked through the meat section of the market, a shameless display which said, in effect, ‘These are dead animals. We raise them, we kill them, then we eat them. If they’re furry or have nice skin, we also wear them, but that’s at the other end of the piazza.’
    And it was this end that they had now entered, away from the specialist sellers of olives and peppers, fennel and cauliflowers, tomatoes and lettuce. Here it was all clothing, household goods and general kitsch and bric-à-brac, and a significant number of the traders were illegal extracommunitari immigrants from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. An understood and accepted form of racism was in force: the locals wouldn’t accept food from black hands, but they were perfectly happy to buy socks and tin-openers and screwdrivers from them, as long as the price was right.
    ‘What were you saying about the body in the train?’ asked Aurelio Zen as he and his companion passed the fringes of the market and emerged into the startlingly empty street beyond.
    Carla glanced around before replying.
    ‘The buzz in the women’s toilet is that it wasn’t the Limina boy at all.’
    They walked in silence until they came to Via Umberto, their traditional parting place.
    ‘Which judge is handling the case?’ asked Zen.
    ‘A woman called Nunziatella. First name Corinna.’
    ‘Do you know her?’
    ‘We’ve met a few times, and she seems to like me, but obviously I try to keep out of her way. A humble technician like me is not supposed to interfere with the work of the judges any more than is strictly necessary.’
    Zen smiled, then kissed the woman briefly on both cheeks.
    ‘Buon lavoro, Carla.’
    ‘You too, Dad.’
    Zen walked down Via Umberto to the corner, then turned into Via Etnea, the town’s main street. As he crossed, he glanced as always at the snow-capped mass of Etna to the right, looming up over the city like a nightmare acne pimple. After that, it was a short and pleasant walk along a hushed back-street to the little piazza where the Questura was situated.
    With a nod to the armed guard in his bullet-proof booth at the door, Zen entered the building and went upstairs to his office: a cool, spacious room on the second floor of the elegant eighteenth-century palazzo , formerly a bank, which now housed the Catania police headquarters. Floor-length windows gave on to a balcony commanding a view of the street below. The walls were adorned with photographs of Carla Arduini and Signora Zen, as well as a framed poster entitled Venezia forma urbis , a large collage of aerial photographs forming a precise and evocative map of Zen’s native city.
    He had never bothered to personalize his temporary quarters like this before, and if he had now, it was because he had reluctantly accepted that these were not temporary. On the contrary, Zen had every reason to suppose that he would be stuck in Catania for the rest of his career.
    The proposition which had been made to him in Rome by the famous film director known as Giulio, prior to Zen’s visit to Piedmont, had turned out to be as false as it was flattering. Zen had been privately advised that an élite corps was being put together to smash the Mafia once and for all, and that following Zen’s ‘anti-terrorist triumph’ in Naples he had been chosen to join this select group, despite the notorious inconveniences and risks, occasionally fatal, of a posting to Sicily. The deal had been that in return for Zen’s assistance in the Aldo Vincenzo affair, Giulio’s contacts at the Interior Ministry would arrange for him to be sent not to one of the island’s hot spots but to an attractive backwater on the fringes of the real action. Syracuse had been mentioned as one possibility: a city ‘possessing all the charm and beauty of Sicily without being tiresomely Sicilian’, as
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