Eye Collector, The by Sebastian Fitzek

Stoya had traced my call was extremely remote. I’d only been on his wanted list for a couple of minutes, after all, but Alina’s arrival on the scene had
destroyed my sense of security. The only problem was, I still had too little information on which to base my next move.
    ‘It’s tricky outside at present,’ I said truthfully. ‘There are big branches coming down every two minutes. I’d wait until the storm subsides a little.’
    She stopped fondling her dog. ‘All right, what do you want to know?’
    How did you really know about this boat?
    What’s your connection with the Eye Collector?
    Are you genuinely blind?
    ‘Let’s go on from where you left off,’ I said, as much to sort out my own thoughts as for any other reason.
    Go on from the murder. From the point where you broke the woman’s neck and dragged her corpse into the garden. ‘What happened next?’
    ‘After I put the stopwatch in her hand, you mean?’
    A shadow seemed to flit across her face. She kept her eyes tight shut. Her lips were also compressed, which lent her face a tense expression.
    ‘I went over to the tool shed,’ she said slowly, as if she found it hard to unearth a long-buried recollection from the depths of her memory. ‘It was made of timber, not metal.
I knew that because I got a splinter in my finger when I slid the bolt open. Besides, there was a smell of resin when I went inside.’
    She paused for a moment, nervously plucking at her left thumb with the fingers of her right hand.
    ‘There was something on the floor. It looked like a bundle of rags, but it was another body. Smaller and lighter than that of the woman lying dead on the lawn. It was a little
boy.’
    ‘Was he still alive?’
    ‘I think so. He smelt like my brother Ivan. I can scarcely remember Ivan’s face, but I’ll never forget the smell of sweets and grimy knees that filled my nostrils when we had a
bath together. I always smell it when I dream of little boys.’
    Or when you kidnap one.
    ‘Can you describe his face?’
    ‘No. I told you: the only faces I really remember are those of my parents.’
    I apologized for the interruption and asked her to go on.
    ‘I carried the boy to a car parked on the edge of the woods beyond the garden fence. I think it was early morning, shortly after sunrise. Suddenly everything went dark again and I thought
the vision was over. Then two red lights came on in the boot of the car. I laid the boy down inside.’
    ‘What about the girl?’
    ‘What girl?’ She looked genuinely surprised. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
    ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The Eye Collector has kidnapped some twins for the first time. The papers are full of it.’
    ‘I can’t read newspapers, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
    ‘There’s radio and television.’
    ‘And the Internet. Thanks for the tip.’
    ‘Then you must have gathered that the police are looking for two missing children, Toby and Lea. They’re twins.’
    ‘But I didn’t, okay?’
    TomTom raised his head, alerted by the indignation in his mistress’s voice.
    ‘Yesterday I went straight to the police, who questioned me in the same shitty tone of voice you’re using now. They thought I was a crackpot, I grasped that at once. I was so furious
when I got home, the rest of the world could get stuffed as far as I was concerned. So I settled down in front of the goggle-box with a bottle of wine and blotted out reality with some old Edgar
Wallace movies until I got so sozzled I fell asleep. Today I was woken up by some lunatic who made a date with me out here in the wilds.’ She snorted angrily. ‘And I, being a silly cow,
actually made my way here, only to be shat on a second time.’
    The paraffin lamp flickered, reminding me that it was high time I attended to the generator, or I and my weird visitor would soon be sitting in the dark.
    ‘And you expect me to believe all this?’ I said.
    Alina gripped the handle of her dog’s harness and stood up.