The Child by Sebastian Fitzek Page B

signs of wear not an optical illusion after all?
    ‘What was all there?’ Borchert asked.
    ‘Everything. The disguised voice, the neonatal ward …’ Stern felt feverish, overwhelmed by a rising tide of panic. ‘The shots of Felix’s death. And that child who looked as if he could be my son.’
    Seeing the incomprehension on Andi Borchert’s face, he began at the beginning and told him, as best he could, about the shocking images that had confronted him last night.
    ‘That’s why I can’t go to the police. He said he’d kill the twins, so I’ll have to find out on my own how Simon knows about the murders. I’ve got four days left,’ Stern concluded, feeling thoroughly ridiculous all of a sudden. If anyone had tried to sell him such a fantastic yarn two days ago, he would have laughed them to scorn and sent them off with an earful.
    Borchert took the DVD from him without comment and turned on the interior light. Thanks to the perpetual drizzle, it was as misty as a Turkish bath outside.
    ‘I believe you,’ he said at length, handing back the silver disc.
    ’Really?’
    ‘I mean, I believe you when you say there was something on it last night. This thing is an EZ-D.’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A throw-away DVD. Only a prototype existed when I was in the film business. It’s got a special polycarbonate coating that reacts to oxygen. Take it out of the recorder after playing it, and light and oxygen render it useless. It was really developed for video libraries, so people didn’t have to return a film after renting it.’
    ‘OK, that proves it. But what am I supposed to do with a throw-away DVD? There was information on it I’m not meant to pass on.’
    ‘Robert, don’t get me wrong, but …’ Borchert scratched his hairless head. ‘First we find that stiff and now you’re being blackmailed by some unknown man who claims your son is still alive. Could this voice exist only in your head?’
    Looking at Borchert’s flushed cheeks, Stern realized that the question was fully justified.
    Perhaps Felix’s death really had robbed him of his reason ten years after the event. That must be it. Every objective fact clearly indicated that Felix was dead, yet the cruel voice on the DVD and Simon’s memories had, with merciless precision, revealed something deep inside him – something he himself had never dreamed about until now: a definite receptivity to supernatural phenomena. He was shocked to admit that the absence of any rational explanation didn’t matter to him as long as some higher power enabled him to see his son again. Borchert was right.
    He was genuinely on the verge of cracking up. He put his hand on Borchert’s shoulder, his eyes filling with tears.
    ‘Know something? I only held him in my arms three times.’ Stern couldn’t have explained why he’d said that. ‘And the last time he was dead.’
    The words came pouring out, beyond his control.
    ‘Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, even now, with the smell of him in my nostrils. Felix’s body was cold by the time Sophie finally let go of him, but he still smelled the way he did the morning I held him for the first time and rubbed him with baby lotion.’
    ‘And now you seriously want to find out if he …’
    Stern could tell how hard Borchert found it to get the word out.
    ‘… if he’s been
reincarnated
?’
    ‘Yes. No.’ Stern sniffed. ’I don’t know, Andi, but I’ve got to admit I can’t find a rational explanation for the resemblance.’
    He told Borchert about the birthmark on the boy blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.
    ‘It’s just where Felix had one. On the shoulder, and that’s very rare. They’re mostly on the face or neck. It’s much bigger now, of course, but the weirdest thing is its shape. It looks like a boot.’
    ‘And Felix …’ Borchert hesitated. ‘I mean, the baby you buried. Did he also have a birthmark like that?’
    ‘Yes, I saw it myself. Before he died and