The Art of Waiting (30 page)

‘Do what, Fausto? Do what?'

‘She knew, you know, she knew. I begged her so often to come back, for years I begged her, but I knew she never would. Once she'd found Luca, I never stood a chance.'

Aldo sat down on the deck and held his head in his hands as Fausto went on and on, his voice unhinged and croaking as he tumbled out the words.

‘I loved her, Aldo. Oh, Maria, I loved her so much! I waited all those years for her to come back to me, but I knew she never would.'

A look of deepest suffering traversed the face of Fausto Pozzi and he looked into the well of the boat. ‘She would never have left Luca the way she left me . . .'

‘No, Fausto!' Aldo bellowed. ‘No, it can't be! She would never have had anything to do with a shit like you!'

‘Oh, she had a lot to do with me, Aldo. We were close then, and you kept us close after that – our son, joining us forever – and you held us together even if she ignored and despised me, and I had to make do with watching from a distance and following your progress from there, trying to provide for you both, doing my best to make sure that idiot Luca kept you as well as I would have done if she'd let me. Did you never hear my footsteps behind you in the street? Didn't you ever turn around and wonder who was there, whose footsteps mirrored your own so precisely? Didn't you ever notice the way we walked, you and I, the same stride? Didn't you ever notice when you looked into my eyes that you were looking into your own? The nose, the mouth? We're both the same, Aldo, and you're a part of me. Like it or not, you are mine.'

‘But it can't be true!'

‘It is.'

‘It can't be!'

‘The way I protected you, tried to stop them from sending you
away to the war. There were others who wanted you out of the way sooner. It would have been so easy for me to have you sent away, with the connections I had, to get you out of my hair, to stop your accusations about Luca's death.'

‘My father's death! My father's!'

‘No, Aldo! Your father is not dead. He's sitting with you here in this boat. Look at me, Aldo, look at me. Can't you see we're the same?'

Aldo looked into the little black eyes looking back at him, boring into his own, like looking down a coalmine at night. He saw Fausto's tears, the blood and the rain, streaming down the wild desolate face, the coarse hair around the snout matted with the dirt and filth of a lifetime at the trough, and it was as much as he could do to prevent himself from crossing over to embrace the broken man.

‘Aldo, I swear to you, I swear it's all true. And there's more . . . that night in the woods, the gunshot – there was another one. Not just an echo, another man, another shot. You're right, have been all along, the bullet that killed Luca didn't come from your gun. How could it? How could anyone have believed that was possible, a freak shot in the dark like that? Your bullet's probably still stuck in a tree out there in the forest. Of course there was another shot, there had to be, someone with a clear view and a trained eye. The plan would never have worked otherwise. They sent us up there, they set it all up.'

‘Who set it up?'

‘They did. The ones who've been behind it all the whole time, behind everything. Behind Casa Luca, behind my other businesses. Where do you think I got all the money? I was a nobody, Aldo, just like Luca. I was a nobody from the shitty grey suburbs of Milan. But they took me on . . .'

‘Who?'

‘I can't tell you that.'

‘Who Fausto, who? Tell me, for God's sake!' He raised the oar high above his head again.

‘The police.'

‘What do you mean
the police?'

‘The Chief Inspector. And the others, but the Chief Inspector
was the big boss. He told me to sort it all out, to find someone who would work for me, who we could exploit. But he was always there in the background, the money was siphoned off. I got my share, of course I did, so did Luca. I'd have given him more, but it wasn't up to me. I'd have given him more just so you and your mother could benefit, so that you could be kept the way I'd have kept you. But it wasn't my decision.'

He smeared the blood across his face again and tried to wipe it from his eyes.

‘Luca didn't deserve it, though, with his attitude. Call that love? He didn't do all he could for you, you know. And he wasn't even running the risks I was. If I hadn't earned enough for them they would have done me in, like they did Luca in – they still would do me in, I have to look over my shoulder all the time these days. But Luca was just too stubborn, that was the problem with him – too fucking stubborn, too fucking proud, and in the end they lost patience. I pleaded with him to see sense but he wouldn't, so I pleaded with them too, but they wouldn't change their minds. They never do. And so he paid the price for being stupid and stubborn and . . . honest.'

‘But you didn't have to help them, did you, up there in the forest?'

‘They'd have got him some other way if I hadn't helped them, and they'd probably have done the same to me too for not playing ball. Not that I was too distraught about his death, I admit that. But I know what it must have done to you, and to your mother. So after that I tried to ease off a bit, tried to protect you all, to make the business work better so that it would provide for you in a way it never could when Luca was involved. But they got greedier and greedier, they always do. They wanted more and more profit, they thought Maria would be a pushover, but she was even more stubborn than Luca. She said it would insult Luca's memory to change the way the place was run. So they sorted her out too.'

‘Sorted her out? What the hell do you mean by that?'

‘They're not in Rome, your mother and Elena. They're dead. They had them killed two years ago. And they'd have done the same to you too if you'd been around.'

‘Oh my God, this is too much . . .'

Fausto stood up and shuffled across towards Aldo and pulled him into his arms. Aldo pushed him away and sat back down on the deck.

‘I'm so sorry, Aldo. Your mother wouldn't sign over the restaurant, so they got rid of her. And Elena had to go too, or else she would have known. I tried to persuade them to go away for a while, to get out of the way, but she said I was just trying to get my hands on Casa Luca.'

‘And the house? The people there said they bought the house from my mother. How did that happen, or did they take that too?'

‘She sold the house first, nearly three years ago. She needed the money to keep Casa Luca going. They lived in the house on Burano after that, until . . . well, now you know. They're buried in the garden there, round the back, by the edge of the lagoon.'

‘And you didn't even try to stop all of this?'

‘I couldn't have, Aldo, I told you. They're too powerful. Once you're in, you're in, and they never let you out. There's no escape, and then one day they do you in, like they did Luca in, like they wanted to do you in if I hadn't talked them out of it, before the war and again when you got back – you gave everyone quite a shock when you turned up out of the blue, causing trouble again like that. And they'll do me in too. One day they'll come for me for sure and you won't see me any more, and you at least will know what's become of me.'

‘And you think I'll care?' Aldo stood up and dipped the oar in the water.

‘So what are you going to do with me now, Aldo?'

Then something scraped across the underside of the gondola and a small low island emerged, just twenty yards across, little more than an elevation suspended above the water, deserted but for a single windswept crooked tree.

‘Get out, Fausto, before I change my mind.'

Fausto hesitated, then stumbled into the water and up onto the mudflat. ‘You're leaving me here? But Aldo . . .'

‘I don't want to take you with me.'

‘Aldo, you think you've been wronged, but what about me? We've both been wronged, and we've both done wrong, and that makes us just the same. You're just the same as me, Aldo, just the same.'

‘You know, Fausto, for so long I wanted to kill you, ever since that day in the woods. But before the war I couldn't bring myself to do it, and then for a long time I was simply too far away, and when I got back I was so confused. I lost count of the number of times I followed you through the streets at night, but for some reason I just couldn't do it. And now that I finally can, it just doesn't seem the right thing to do any more.'

He lowered the oar and began to turn the boat around. ‘And one last thing. Why did you have to tell the Chief Inspector to stop me the other night at the theatre?'

‘At the theatre?'

‘Yes, at the theatre. There was someone there I needed to see backstage, someone who might have turned my life around. The Inspector said you'd drawn me to his attention, you told him I was up to no good.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Aldo. He did that of his own volition. Honestly, Aldo, I swear to you it's true.'

Aldo paused for a moment, then started to row away. ‘Farewell, Fausto!'

‘Aldo, wait! Where are you going? Take me back with you and we'll forget all this ever happened.'

‘How could we forget?'

‘But what am I going to do here?

‘Wait, Fausto. Just wait. Someone will come along eventually.'

‘And you?'

‘Me? I'm all done in. But look, do me one last favour, will you? The Chief Inspector, where does he live?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Come on, Fausto. Do this for me. I'll be doing you a favour in return.'

Fausto ran a hand through his dirty thinning hair and told him.

‘Thank you, Fausto. Thank you. Now try to live up to what I'm
about to do for you. Casa Luca is yours now, all yours. Just make sure you run it the way Luca would have wanted.'

Aldo pushed off and looked back at the island, barely higher than the water, just a single crooked tree and a single crooked man, floating on the waves in the dark. Fausto stood up and called out to Aldo, but he was already out of earshot. The storm was coming in off the Adriatic now, the first drops of rain coming down and lightning in the sky, the eastern horizon illuminated by bright flashes, an artillery barrage of memories, and the lagoon, streaked with light, stretched away as vast and cold and empty as the winter steppe.

Aldo found the house with little difficulty, in a narrow street in Castello. He waited in the rain until dawn, the silence in the streets finally disturbed by occasional passing figures, an old woman with a basket and a man with a stick, and then a small girl who wished him good morning and told him she was on her way to buy eggs, her smile making Aldo feel that his heart might break open and spill itself on the ground at her feet as she passed. But his heart was harder than that now, and so he waited outside the Chief Inspector's door and pricked up his ears for the slightest sound from within. Finally, he heard footsteps in the hall and the sound of the lock being undone and the door was pulled open. Aldo crashed inside, smashed the Chief Inspector's head against the wall, pulled him to the ground and slammed the door shut with his foot. Aldo knelt on top of the Chief Inspector, pinning him to the floor with his forearm so that when he spoke his words had to squeeze themselves out through the narrow gap that was left to them.

‘Come to tell me something, have you, Aldo? Come to confess?'

‘You were right,' said Aldo. ‘The dead
do
have a voice, but I don't believe you can hear them. So I'll speak for them instead. I did it. I killed him, the musician, the old man. The
old
man. You were right all along.'

‘I knew that already. I knew you were the one I was looking for.'

‘And I was looking for you, I just didn't know it. But I know everything now, Fausto told me, the whole thing. Luca, and my mother and Elena – the whole lot!'

‘What the fuck are you talking about?'

‘Casa Luca, you and your mob, everything.'

‘You stupid bastard! It's a trick, don't you realise? A trick!'

‘I don't believe you, my sly cunning friend. Fausto has told me everything, the marksman in the forest, the second shot, from a police gun, not mine, the shot that killed Luca.'

‘Ha! And you believe him, you believe Fausto Pozzi? Of course he would say that. He's a liar.'

‘You're the liar. There was a second shot, I heard it.'

‘Of course there was a second shot, of course there was, but not from this fantasy, not from this marksman lurking in the trees. How could that ever have worked? Not even I could have pulled off that one. The second shot came from Fausto's gun, that's obvious, always has been. But people believe whatever you tell them, and we covered it up – we covered it up, that's all. And the bullet
was
his, ballistics confirmed it, just as I thought. It was a personal thing, not business, he just took the opportunity when it came, a spur of the moment thing, nothing he had planned.'

‘I still don't believe you.'

‘And you think I care?'

But Aldo was doubting himself now. How could he have got it so wrong, leaving Fausto alive out there in the lagoon just when he had the chance to see to him, to see that justice for Luca was done?

‘So you covered it up, then, Chief Inspector? You let me take the blame, left me to carry the burden all these years. Do you realise what that's done to me, how it's marked my life ever since? And more than that, you let Fausto off the hook. So you're just as much to blame, you're as guilty as he is.'

‘It goes with the job . . .'

Aldo drew the knife from his pocket and held its point against the Chief Inspector's chest. Then he slid it into him, and as the blade went in, the fire in Aldo's eyes went out, and the Chief Inspector looked back at him as he held it there.