The Dinosaur Feather

Freeman and Michael Kramer were responsible for nineteen out of the twenty-three articles. Anna got up and found a computer with Internet access. First she looked up Xian Chien Lu and discovered that the Chinese palaeontologist had died the previous year. That left only Clive Freeman and Michael Kramer. It took Anna eight clicks to learn that Michael Kramerhad completed his MSc at the Department of Bird Evolution, Palaeobiology and Systematics at the University of British Columbia in March 1993, been awarded a PhD grant in 1993 by the same department and written his thesis there from 1997–2000, after which he had been employed as a junior professor in June 2000. Anna’s eyes scanned his CV and soon found what she was looking for: his MSc and his PhD supervisor was Professor Clive Freeman, his internal PhD examiner was Professor Clive Freeman, and the Senior Professor at the Department of Bird Evolution, Palaeobiology and Systematics was Clive Freeman. For the first time since Anna had started her MSc, she felt she had made a breakthrough.
    Anna had just taken off her jacket and switched on her computer when she pricked up her ears. She knew every sound in the department. The groaning extraction system, the shrill fume alarms, the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday noises of students conducting experiments, the sound of Helland’s busy footsteps, of Johannes’s snail’s pace shuffle, of Svend Jørgensen and Elisabeth Ewald, the other two professors in the department, who wore soft rubber soles and clicking heels respectively. However, the sound Anna was now hearing didn’t fit in. Someone was running, then they stopped, and she heard Johannes call out for Professor Ewald in a half-strangled voice followed by the sound of running feet again, and then Professor Ewald’s voice and then Professor Jørgensen’s. Frowning, Anna rolled back her chair and stuck her head out into the corridor. Johannes was standing in front of Professor Jørgensen’s lab, his arms flailing.
    ‘He’s just lying there . . . I think he’s dead. He looks dreadful.They’re coming, the emergency service said, they’re coming right away; they said I wasn’t to leave him, but I can’t look at him. His tongue . . . it’s his tongue.’ Anna stepped right out into the corridor and went to join the trio, which started moving away from her before she reached it. They were running now. Anna started running too, and ten seconds later they stopped in front of Helland’s open door.
    For a moment they all froze. Professor Helland was lying in his recliner. He was still wearing the grey trousers which Anna had seen five minutes earlier through the gap in the door when she crept past. He slumped slightly, his arms hung rigid to either side and his eyes were wide open. In his lap, as though he had been reading it, lay Anna’s dissertation. There was blood on it. Then she noticed his tongue.
    It was lying on his chest. One end of it looked like an ordinary rough, flesh-coloured tongue, the other was a severed, bloody limb, elongated and shredded like prepared tenderloin. Johannes was standing behind them, whimpering, and Anna, Professor Ewald and Professor Jørgensen reacted simultaneously by retreating to the corridor.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’
    They had arranged to meet to discuss their paper, Johannes stammered, his hands and eyes fluttering. ‘I was on time,’ he said. Helland had failed to answer the door, so he had pushed it open, and there was Helland, rattling, his tongue had fallen out of his mouth, that was how it had looked, as though it had let go of Helland’s mouth at that very moment and dropped down on to his chest. Johannes had grabbed him, only the whites of Helland’s eyes were showing; Johannes had panicked, run to the back office and called 112.
    Professor Jørgensen went to the lavatory right across from Helland’s office to throw up.
    ‘We have to go back inside,’ Anna said. ‘What if he’s still alive? What’s if he’s not dead yet? We have to help him.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ Professor Ewald declared.
    ‘We mustn’t touch anything,’ Johannes called out. ‘They told me not to.’
    ‘Calm down, Johannes,’ Anna said. She felt dizzy. Professor Jørgensen emerged from the lavatory, white as a sheet. Then they heard the sound of the approaching emergency vehicles.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ Professor Jørgensen said, rubbing one eye with the palm of his hand.
    The emergency vehicles were close now and soon they heard people