No one else had noticed anything. The only sound in the room was Oscar's voice. Whatever Signora Vianello had seen was on the move, and her eyes tracked it across the room until Oscar saw it too. He broke off in midsentence, threw his napkin on the table and stood up.

'What do you want?'

There was no answer, no sound whatever. Oscar's wife and Dottor Vianello, who were sitting with their backs to the camera, looked round. Rita Burolo emitted a scream of terror. Vianello's expression did not change, except to harden slightly.

'What do you want?' Burolo repeated, his brows knitted in puzzlement and annoyance. Abruptly, he pushed his chair aside and strode towards the intruder, staring masterfully downwards as though to cow an unruly child.

You 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, as 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.