Read Online Blood Rain - 7 by Michael Dibdin - Free Book Online Page A

high places.’
    ‘You’ve always done that, then?’ asked Carla.
    ‘Sometimes. But it didn’t do me any good.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I made an even greater number of highly placed enemies.’
    He gave her an odd smile, like a crumpled photocopy of the original.
    ‘Anyway, it sounds as if you might be in for an interesting evening,’ he said, swigging the pungent black coffee down in one go. ‘Let me know how it turns out.’
     

 

     
     

     
     
    They came for Corinna Nunziatella just after she arrived for work the next day. There were two of them, in their twenties, both dressed in the all-purpose leisure uniforms of the trendy young: leather baseball caps, synthetic jackets, jeans and gigantic boot-style shoes. One was thin and ingratiating, the other squat and silent. Corinna instantly dubbed them Laurel and Hardy. She had never seen either of them before.
    ‘Sorry to disturb you, dottoressa,’ said Laurel with a charming smile. ‘We’ve been told to come and pick up the file on the Limina case.’
    Corinna got up from her desk and turned to face them.
    ‘And who are you?’
    Laurel removed his small oval-lensed sunglasses and produced a plastic card identifying him as Roberto Lessi, a corporal of the Carabinieri. The card was overstamped ROS in large red letters.
    Corinna indicated Hardy, who was chewing gum and staring overtly at her in a way that she found extremely disturbing, all the more so in that there was nothing remotely sexual about his attentions.
    ‘My partner, Alfredo Ferraro,’ said Laurel, with an even more winning grin. ‘We work together.’
    ‘On what?’ Corinna demanded pointedly
    ‘Security.’
    ‘What kind of security?’
    Laurel paused, as though unsure how to answer.
    ‘Internal,’ he said at length.
    ‘And you are responsible to whom?’ demanded Corinna.
    ‘To the director, Dottor Tondo,’ was the reply, delivered with a definite taunting edge, as though to say, ‘Trump that!’
    Corinna picked up the phone and dialled.
    ‘Nunziatella,’ she replied when Sergio Tondo’s secretary answered. ‘I need to speak urgently to the director.’
    After a silence broken only by the distant sound of a siren, Tondo came on the line.
    ‘I have two men in my office,’ Corinna told him. ‘They have identified themselves as Lessi, Roberto, and Ferraro, Alfredo. They claim to be working under your supervision on, quote, internal security, unquote, and want me to hand over the Limina papers to them. Can you verify that you are aware of this?’
    ‘My dear Corinna,’ the director replied in his most smarmy voice, ‘a woman as beautiful as you should never allow herself to lose her poise because the company is disagreeable. I apologize if these two young men have failed to make a favourable impression. But what they lack in charm, they make up for in efficiency.’
    ‘They are working for you, then.’
    ‘They’re working for all of us, my dear, as part of my constant attempts to make the lives of you and your colleagues safer and more productive. Speaking of which, I mustn’t detain you any longer. Just give your visitors the file relating to the matter which we discussed yesterday, and then you can get back to work.’
    Sergio Tondo hung up. After a moment, so did Corinna. The gum-chewing man was still staring at her, his eyes moving at intervals to another part of her body as if taking exposures for a composite photograph. Corinna stepped over to the tower of box files in the corner. She grasped one with her right hand, steadied the pile above with her left, and in one decisive movement yanked the file free. The tower teetered for a moment, then settled back into place. Corinna returned to the two men, holding the file against her bosom.
    ‘I’ll need a receipt,’ she said.
    Laurel frowned, as though Corinna had committed a minor lapse of good manners.
    ‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that,’ he said.
    ‘Then write one. “We, the undersigned,