The Dinosaur Feather

to annihilate him once and for all. Helland and I have spent the last ten years deconstructing Freeman’s scientific credibility, and we’re slowly getting there. He’s cornered now and—’
    ‘Clive Freeman is an old man,’ Anna protested.
    ‘He attacked me,’ Tybjerg whispered. ‘Two years ago. In Toronto. He was wearing a ring and he hit me with it, on purpose.’ Tybjerg touched his eyebrow, where Anna remembered he had a thin, white scar. She was taken aback.
    ‘Didn’t you report him?’ she asked, horrified.
    ‘And he sent threatening e-mails to Helland,’ Tybjerg said. ‘Helland treated it as one big joke, “ha-ha, hilarious, don’t you think,” he would say to me. He just laughed it off, but I saw things differently. I’m the only one of us who has actually met Freeman. Helland always sent me. I’ve debated with him before, but the last time . . .’ Tybjerg gulped. ‘His eyes.’
    ‘What about them?’ Anna said.
    ‘They were filled with hate.’
    Anna sighed.
    ‘So you’re saying Freeman is using the bird symposium as his excuse to go to Denmark and murder Lars Helland?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And that you’ll be next?’
    ‘Yes.’ Tybjerg swallowed a second time.
    ‘I hope you realise just how insane that sounds.’
    Tybjerg’s face shut down and Anna instantly regretted her words.
    ‘And what about me?’ Anna forced Dr Tybjerg to look her in the eye.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘He must have found out that we’re about to deal him the fatal blow. I don’t know if he’s made the link to you.’ Tybjerg gave Anna a wretched look. ‘But I think you need to be careful.’
    ‘You’re wrong,’ Anna said, lightly.
    ‘Possibly, but I’m not taking any chances.’
    ‘But you’re wrong.’
    Tybjerg focused on the darkness. He was in a world of his own.
    ‘Helland died because his body was riddled with parasites,’ Anna said and waited for his reaction. Tybjerg continued to stare into space until, slowly, he turned to her.
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘His tissue was full of
Taenia solium
cysticerci. Thousands of them; several were found in his brain and that’s why his heart failed. The police are currently trying to establish whether the infection was the result of a crime. But whether or not it was deliberate, it couldn’t have been Freeman. The infection had reached an advanced stage. The cysticerci were three to four months old. Big ones.’ Anna straightened her back. ‘So unless you think Freeman came here in the summer to infect Helland, then it can’t have been him.’
    Tybjerg looked confused.
    ‘I know this from Professor Moritzen and Superintendent Søren Marhauge. By the way, Marhauge is looking for you,’ she added.
    ‘Leave now,’ Tybjerg suddenly urged her.
    ‘Dr Tybjerg, my viva is taking place in twelve days, even if we have to hold it down here! I
have
to sit it. Did the officeforward my dissertation to you? I handed in three copies last Friday. Have they given you one?’
    Tybjerg nodded.
    ‘Have you read it?’
    ‘You need to go now,’ Tybjerg said.
    ‘Yes, I do,’ Anna said, but she waited. ‘Perhaps we could leave together?’ she suggested.
    ‘No, I’ve a few things to do,’ he mumbled. ‘Just go without me.’
    Anna shrugged.
    ‘Okay, bye,’ she said. She started walking down the aisle, turned around and said, ‘See you, Dr Tybjerg.’
    Tybjerg didn’t reply, but turned his back to her. Anna pretended to leave, but slipped back inside and closed the door. She stood very still. Her trainers were still on the floor where she had left them. She could hear Tybjerg mutter to himself. Anna tiptoed back to the light. Rather than retrace her original route, she walked two aisles further along. Then she peeked around the corner. Tybjerg had opened one of the cupboards and was struggling to pull something out. It was a thin mattress, which he rolled out on the floor. Then he undressed, took out a sleeping bag, climbed into it and made himself comfortable on the mattress. He started reading a journal and munching an apple. Anna watched him for a little while, then she slipped silently out of the collection and started her run home.
    It was 10.15 p.m. when she came down Jagtvejen, and though her speed was good, she was cold in her running clothes. She would defend her viva in less than two weeks, she hadyet to prepare the one-hour lecture which would precede it, and she still had plenty of revision to do if she was to have a