[Aurelio Zen 07] Blood Rain by Michael Dibdin

Author:Michael Dibdin [Dibdin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780571248612
Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
Published: 2008-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

KEYS IN GLOVE COMPARTMENT.

DRIVE TO END OF STREET, TURN LEFT.

STOP OPPOSITE SPAR GROCERY.

KEEP ENGINE RUNNING.

Carla sighed sourly. If she’d had any idea what was involved, she would never have agreed to accompany Corinna on this stupid weekend outing to Taormina. All this games-playing was beginning to get on her nerves. But it was too late to back out now. She put her suitcase in the back of the car, moved over to the driver’s seat and drove off.

The grocery store, one of the ubiquitous Spar chain, was easy enough to find, but there was no space to park anywhere on the narrow street. Carla drew up opposite the store, blasted the horn and consulted her watch. All right, Corinna, she thought. You’ve got sixty seconds exactly, then I dump the car and get the next bus back to Catania. She had laundry to do and several long-overdue letters to write, and there was the new Nanni Moretti film which she’d been meaning to see for some time. She’d loved Caro Diario, and even if this one wasn’t as good, the prospect of a few hours in an air-conditioned cinema was a powerful inducement.

The passenger door opened and Corinna Nunziatella got in, barely recognizable in a man’s suit, shirt and tie. Her face was obscured as before by her aviator sunglasses, while her cropped hair was almost invisible beneath a large straw hat.

‘Go!’ she said urgently.

‘Go where?’

‘Just go! I’ll give you directions later.’

Carla put the Nissan in gear and drove to the end of the street.

‘Left here,’ Corinna Nunziatella told her. ‘Now right. Do a U-turn in the middle of the block, then right again at the lights. Run the red, there are no traffic police round here. Do you like my outfit?’

Carla smiled distractedly.

‘It’s, er … interesting.’

‘This car belongs to a friend. They have four altogether, so she won’t miss it. The hardest part was getting out of the house without my escort spotting me. Hence the disguise.’

‘Won’t it raise a few eyebrows at the hotel?’

Corinna laughed.

‘Not in Taormina! They’ve seen everything there. It’s always been a sort of extra-territorial enclave here in Sicily, a place where none of the usual rules apply. As long as your money holds out, no one cares what you do. Left here across the railway tracks, then sharp right and follow the signs to the motorway.’

She glanced playfully at Carla.

‘Anyway, I happen to think I look rather fetching, so there. And you? No problems?’

Carla swayed her head slowly from side to side, indicating that this was not precisely the case.

‘I was followed. But I’m pretty sure it was just some creep who lives with his mother and wanted to look at my legs. He was much too obvious to be a professional. Anyway, this old man who was out watching birds along the coast got rid of him for me.’

To Carla’s surprise, Corinna insisted on her recounting the entire story, detail by detail. The older woman’s face grew grimmer and grimmer.

‘A classic sacrifice,’ she remarked when Carla had finished.

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