The Dinosaur Feather

various numbers. Søren drummed his fingers on the counter.
    ‘He’s not in his office, in the collection, the refectory or the library,’ she said. ‘All I can do is e-mail him.’
    Søren left his name and number with a message for Dr Tybjerg to contact him. Then he drove to Bellahøj police station and worked in his office. He had just made up his mind to go home when his telephone rang.
    ‘Søren Marhauge.’
    ‘It’s me.’ It was Søren’s secretary, Linda.
    ‘Hello, me,’ Søren said.
    ‘The Deputy Medical Examiner just called.’
    Bøje Knudsen, the Deputy Medical Examiner, worked in the basement of Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen’s central hospital. Søren had never been able to decide whether or not he liked him. Bøje had a twinkle in his eye, and though Søren appreciated that a certain amount of professional detachment was required, Bøje still came across as strangely aloof. One day Bøje had read his mind and remarked, ‘Søren, my dear friend, if I broke down and cried every time I felt like it, the hospital would be flooded. But, trust me, my soul is grieving.’ Søren had warmed a little to Bøje, but he had yet to be convinced. Søren himself was more thick-skinned now than he had been at the start of his career, that went without saying, but he told himself that this made him neutral and composed rather than cold.
    ‘Why didn’t you put him through?’ Søren asked.
    ‘He wouldn’t hear of it. He told me to give you his regards and to tell you that if he were you, he would hurry over to the hospital.’
    Just before five o’clock Søren drove to the hospital and parked under two poplars stripped bare by the advancing autumn. The tarmac was slippery with fallen leaves and the wind seemed to blow simultaneously from all four corners. He felt a profound sense of unease. He announced his arrival at reception and took the lift down two floors to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. It was the second time in one day that he had walked through a desolate grid of interconnectingpassages and corridors, but this time he didn’t get lost. He greeted a few familiar faces in passing before he heard music from the radio and Bøje’s humming. He knocked on the open door and entered. Bøje was behind his desk. It looked like he was expecting him.
    ‘There you are,’ he said, as Søren entered.
    Søren took a seat and Bøje glanced at him. Then he looked down at a sheet with indecipherable hieroglyphs and up at Søren again. He rolled his lips and tapped the table once with his finger.
    ‘Today I performed an autopsy on one Lars Helland,’ he began.
    ‘And?’ Søren wished he could extract the information from Bøje in one go and absorb it later, at his own pace.
    ‘He died from heart failure,’ Bøje went on, and nodded. Søren nodded back. It was what he had expected.
    ‘And his tongue?’
    ‘He bit it off himself. His heart failed after a series of violent epileptic fits and because no one was there to put a splint in his mouth, his tongue bore the brunt of the seizures.’
    ‘Right, okay, I might as well get going then,’ Søren said, getting up and pulling a face that made it clear he was annoyed at having been summoned to the hospital.
    ‘In theory, yes,’ Bøje shrugged. ‘Unless I can interest you in a charming detail which, in all likelihood, induced the fits?’
    Søren sat down again. Bøje peered at Søren over the rim of his reading glasses.
    ‘It was an agonising death, Søren,’ he then said. ‘It’s not uncommon for the tongue or the lips to be bitten throughin places, but I have never come across a case where the tongue was severed.’
    ‘I think your memory is faulty. There was the Lejre case and that one from Amager,’ Søren objected.
    ‘Yes, but in those two cases – actually I know of three, but never mind,’ Bøje glanced at Søren. ‘In each severed-tongue case, other instruments were involved. It requires huge force to bite off a tongue. It isn’t something you just decide to do,’ he said emphatically, and then his expression softened.
    ‘And as it doesn’t look like anyone was directly involved in Helland’s death, it’s my theory that he experienced extreme convulsions which led, among other things, to the severing of his tongue and heart failure shortly afterwards. There is no doubt that Lars Helland died a brutal and painful death.’ Bøje was looking urgently at Søren now.
    ‘But, Søren Marhauge, my friend,’ he said, amicably.