The Reader on the 6.27 Read Online Free PDF

that was the upshot of the investigation carried out by TERN less than three weeks after the accident. No more and no less than those final brief words. Guylain knew the phrase by heart from having turned it over and over in his mind: ‘The unfortunate accident suffered by Giuseppe Carminetti, chief operator for twenty-eight years at the TERN treatment and recycling company, was the result of gross negligence on the part of the said operator, whose blood alcohol level was shown to be more than two grammes per litre of blood at the time of the accident of which he was the victim.’ Alcohol, that’s what had done for Giuseppe, Guylain was convinced. The army of lawyers and experts hired by TERN had simply pointed the finger without looking any further for the true causes of that whole shambolic incident. Those vultures only just stopped short of billing him for the tattered boiler suit and the forty-five minutes lost production time while the Zerstor was halted. Forty-five brief minutes, not a minute more; just the time it took for the firemen to free Giuseppe, who was howling with pain and writhing at the bottom of the tank like a man condemned, surrounded by books that were drinking his blood, his entire mind sucked into the two wells of suffering that had taken the place of his legs. He had just replaced one of the lateral nozzles and was about to climb out of the funnel when the Thing had devoured his lower limbs, right up to his mid-thighs. The ambulance doors were barely shut before Kowalski himself started the machine up again while Guylain puked his guts out, clutching the toilet bowl with both hands. That bastard had set the machine in motion with Giuseppe’s screams still echoing through the works. Guylain had not forgiven Fatso for this. Starting up again with the sole aim of finishing what had been begun, in other words reducing the contents of a thirty-eight-tonne tipper to a paste. Into the guts of the Zerstor it all went, where it was mixed with the formless pulp that was all that remained of chief operator Carminetti’s pins. The show must go on and God rest his legs!
    Alcohol did not explain everything. Guylain had believed Giuseppe when he’d sworn that he’d carried out the safety procedures, that, of course, that day he’d knocked back his habitual little tipple, as he did every God-given day, but that he would never have gone down into the tank without taking the usual safety precautions. Guylain knew Giuseppe and his general mistrust of the Thing. ‘Beware of it, kiddo! It’s vicious and could very well do to us one day what it does to the rats!’ he was always saying. He too had noticed. They had never really discussed the rat problem. Not easy to raise things that defied reason. Each knew that the other knew, that was all. Just once, Giuseppe had had a word with Kowalski about it. That had been a long time before the disaster. After coming across an umpteenth victim one morning, Giuseppe had gone to see Fatso to tell him of his concerns, but nothing had happened as a result. The boss must have taken the piss out of him as he always did and sent him packing with his customary charm, presumed Guylain. Giuseppe had come out of the office as white as a sheet, looking solemn. Guylain hadn’t said anything. He still regretted it. Perhaps if he had backed Giuseppe up, the company would have investigated the matter properly and tried to find an explanation for the presence of mutilated rats in the vat stuck to the Zerstor 500’s arse first thing in the morning, whereas it had been empty the previous evening. Guylain had conducted his own investigation, following every possible lead, eliminating them one by one until there was only one plausible explanation, the most difficult to accept, the most improbable and yet the only one that held water. In other words, the Thing was possibly more than just a machine, sometimes starting up of its own accord in the middle of the night when one of those wretched