Vendetta: An Aurelio Zen Mystery Read Online Free Page A

could say what you liked, thought Zen, but the man had guts. Or was he just foolhardy, trying to show off to his guests, to preserve an image of bravado to the last? At all events, it was only in the final moment that any fear entered Oscar’s eyes, and he flung up his hands in an instinctive attempt to protect his face.
    A brutal eruption of noise swamped the soundtrack. Literally disintegrated by the blast, Oscar’s hands disappeared, while bright red blotches appeared all over his face and neck like an instant infection. He reeled away, holding up the stumps of his wrists. Somehow he managed to recover his balance and turn back, only to receive the second discharge, which carried away half his chest and flung him against the corner of the dining table where he collapsed in a bloody heap at his wife’s feet.
    Rita Burolo scrambled desperately away from the corpse as Vianello dived under the table, a pistol appearing in his hand. The ratchet sound of a shotgun being reloaded by pump action mingled with two sharp light cracks from the architect’s pistol. Then the soundtrack was bludgeoned twice more in quick succession. The first barrel scoured the space below the table, gouging splinters out of the wood, shattering plates and glasses, wounding Signora Vianello terribly in the legs, and reducing her husband to a nightmare figure crawling about on the floor like a tormented animal. The second caught Rita Burolo trying desperately to climb out of the window that opened out to the terrace. As she was further away than the others, the wounds she sustained were more dispersed, covering her in a spray as fine and evenly distributed as drizzle on a windscreen. With a despairing cry she fell through the window to the paving stones of the terrace, where she slowly bled to death.
    Even though her legs were lacerated, Maria Pia Vianello somehow struggled to her feet. Despite her own diminutive stature, she too gave the impression of looking down at the intruder.
    “Just a moment, please,” she muttered over the dry, clinical sound of the gun being reloaded. “I’m afraid I’m not quite ready yet. I’m sorry.”
    The shot took her at close range, flaying her so fearfully that loops of intestine protruded through the wall of her abdomen in places. Then the second barrel spun her round. She clutched the wall briefly, then collapsed into a dishevelled heap, leaving a complex pattern of dark streaks on the whitewashed plaster.
    It had taken less than twenty seconds to turn the room into an abattoir. Fifteen seconds later, the caretaker would appear, having run from the two-room service flat where he and his wife had been watching a variety show on television. Until then, apart from wine dripping from a broken bottle at the edge of the table and a swishing caused by the convulsive twitches of the dying Vianello’s arm, there was no sound whatsoever. “If anyone ever manages to break into this place, I’ll believe in ghosts,” the security analyst had assured Oscar Burolo. Nevertheless, someone or something had got in, butchered the inhabitants, and then vanished without trace, all in less than a minute, and in the most perfect silence. Even in broad daylight and the company of others it was difficult to ignore this almost supernatural dimension of the killings. In the eerie doldrums of the night, all alone, it seemed almost impossible to believe that there could be a rational explanation for them.
    The silence of the running tape was broken by a distant scraping sound. Zen felt his skin crawl and the hairs on his head stir. He reached for the remote control unit and stilled the video. The noise continued, a low persistent scraping. “Like old Umberto’s boat,” his mother had said.
    Zen walked quietly across to the inner hallway of the apartment, opened the door to his mother’s bedroom, and looked inside.
    “Can you hear it?” a voice murmured in the darkness.
    “Yes, Mamma.”
    “Oh, good. I thought it might be me