The Dinosaur Feather

explain because I don’t know, either. But
you
do.’ She exhaled.
    ‘My birth certificate,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘The date I was named is almost eleven months after the day I was born. It’s not true that you named me as late as you’ve always maintained, is it? You changed my name.
Why?
’ The latter came out as a not very quiet roar. Lily jerked and a man wearing earphones turned and gave Anna a look.
    There was total silence down the other end.
    ‘Anna,’ Jens pleaded. ‘We need to talk. I can explain.’
    Anna held out her mobile and scowled at it. Then she remembered that the World’s Most Irritating Detective had told her to control herself. She put the mobile back to her ear.
    ‘Anna,’ Jens called out. ‘Anna?’
    ‘I’m here,’ she said tonelessly.
    ‘Cecilie can’t know about this,’ he whispered. ‘Promise me you won’t mention this. I can explain. It would destroy her completely.’
    ‘Dad,’ she said patiently, ‘if the truth will destroy her,she’ll have to be destroyed. It’s over.’ She hung up. Her mobile rang immediately. Jens’s name came up on the display. She switched her mobile to silent and stared at it. He called eight times before he gave up. He left no messages. Anna leaned back and tried to look out into the dark night, but all she saw was her own reflection. She looked tired, but not angry. Not in the least. She closed her eyes. She began to fit together the pieces of what had happened almost thirty years ago, when she was born. But only the pieces. A girl who started off as Sara, then became Anna. A lie.
    Slowly she calmed down. She went to the toilet and when she returned, she covered Lily with her jacket. Then she called Karen.
    ‘I was just about to give up on you,’ Karen said happily. Anna had spent the day being cross with Karen for calling Troels the night before, but she was no longer angry. Instead she said: ‘It took longer than I had expected. I went to Odense. It’s a long story. We’re on the train. We get in at 22.08.’
    ‘I’ll meet you at the station,’ Karen said.
    ‘There’s really no need,’ Anna said.
    ‘I know that. But I’ll be there all the same.’

CHAPTER 12
     
    On Friday 12 October, Søren rose at six o’clock and showered. Two hours later, he arrived at Bellahøj police station, in plenty of time for the morning meeting at nine. He stood in his office, staring out of the window at the running track, while he reviewed the case. Two days after a murder, four days after a suspicious death, which was very likely also a murder, and what did he have? Not even the beginning of a theory. He should be rushing around, getting the investigation moving, pumping suspects for information and chasing every last piece of evidence.
    He thought about Anna. He had never asked anyone for help. He had never been so unprofessional. And he had picked her – of all people. An unbalanced lioness with a threatened cub. A woman with something to hide.
    He watched the sky above the city and was consumed by a deep urge to make love to her. He imagined that it was New Year’s Eve, they had gone somewhere, Anna and he, to a party with lots of people, women in beautiful gowns, men in black tie. Anna stood by the window and Søren watched her from across the room. She was wearing a black dress, her yellow eyes were made up and looked dramatic, and Søren knew thatevery man secretly desired her. Later that night, she danced. Drunk and vulgar, throwing propriety to the wind, her hair in a mess, her thighs bared where her dress had ridden up. He would find her in the darkness and put out her fire with petrol. It would never go out. Never ever, as long as he lived.
    He froze. Where had she been last Wednesday night when he had called her, twice? What could she have been up to which was so private that she refused to tell him? It was odd that Henrik had said something similar. That
he
had been with someone and that he had screwed up? Søren was suddenly convinced that Henrik had visited Anna. That he had used the case as a pretext for seeing her and that they had . . . He checked his watch and stormed off to the morning meeting, itching to pick a fight with someone.
    He briefed his team, distributed that day’s tasks and answered a few questions. He didn’t look at Henrik directly, but watched, out of the corner of his eye, how Henrik doodled on a pad, paying absolutely no attention. It wasn’t until Søren announced that he intended to visit