The Dinosaur Feather

instance, we shared the SEM computer at the end of the corridor and a couple of times Helland didn’t turn up when he had booked a session, so I e-mailed him to ask if I could use his slot.’
    ‘You chose to e-mail him even though his office is thirty metres down the corridor?’ Søren asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Professor Ewald said, curtly.
    ‘All right, go on,’ Søren said.
    ‘And if I have to come up with something which might seem a little out of the ordinary, then this is it’ – she laughed a hollow laugh – ‘his spelling was deteriorating.’
    Søren and Professor Jørgensen were speechless.
    ‘His spelling?’ Professor Jørgensen said.
    ‘Yes,’ Professor Ewald replied. ‘His last two or three e-mails were so appalling that I could barely read them. As though he had bashed them out in seconds and simply couldn’t be bothered to spell-check them before hitting “send”. I took it as further evidence of how little respect he had for me. But, now that you mention it, it does seem a bit strange.’
    They both nodded and Søren made a mental note.
    Still convinced that Helland had died from natural causes, Søren arranged for the four biologists to be driven to the police station where he formally interviewed them and their statements were written down and signed. Anna still looked disgruntled.
    As he and Henrik drove down Frederikssundvej, Søren quickly reviewed the case, purely to assure himself that he hadn’t missed anything. Professor Helland clearly couldn’t compete with Santa Claus in the popularity stakes, that much was obvious, but Søren had yet to stumble on anythingthat might hint at uncontrollable rage, and without that it was quite simply impossible to rip someone’s tongue out. He smiled to himself. Anna Bella was the only one who appeared remotely combative, but the idea that she would mutilate her supervisor was far-fetched.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ Henrik wanted to know.
    ‘Nothing,’ Søren said and looked out of the window.
    At half past four in the afternoon, Søren sat in his office wondering if he could write his report now, even though he was still awaiting the result of the autopsy. It would probably arrive tomorrow, but he was pretty sure he knew what it would say: Lars Helland had died from heart failure. Once he put that in his report, the case would be closed. The only thing stopping him was that he had yet to talk to Professor Helland’s allegedly close colleague, Dr Tybjerg. After interviewing Anna and her colleagues, he had gone to the Natural History Museum to find him. The place had been like an enchanted forest. Søren had started by asking for Dr Tybjerg at the reception and had been directed through a door and into a complicated maze of deserted corridors, where he instantly got himself lost. It wasn’t until he had been into four empty offices and knocked on six locked doors, which no one answered, that he met a living human being. It was an old man sitting behind a desk, writing. A huge poster depicting thousands of colourful butterflies of all sizes hung on the wall behind him. The old man directed Søren further down a corridor and up to the third floor where Dr Tybjerg was supposed to be sitting by the windows overlooking the park.
    Five minutes later, Søren was lost again and when he, finally and with the help of a young woman, found the desk where Dr Tybjerg was supposed to be when he worked with bones, all he could see was an angle-poise lamp, which was switched on, a pencil and a chair. He hung around for a while, but after ten minutes he grew impatient and decided he had had enough. He found something which appeared to be a refectory and informed the catering assistant, who was wringing out a cloth, that he was a police superintendent and insisted on speaking to Dr Tybjerg this instant. The woman glanced around, said, ‘He’s not here,’ and carried on cleaning.
    Someone at a table in the refectory, however, told Søren that Dr Tybjerg’s office could be found in the basement, in the right-hand wing; that is, down the stairs in the central wing, then right through two swing doors, and then down to the basement. Halfway down one of the basement corridors, the one facing the University Park, was an office and through that office was another office and that belonged to Dr Tybjerg. Søren stomped back to reception where he asked, in his most polite tone of voice, the student staffing the counter to get hold of Dr Tybjerg. The student rang