The Dinosaur Feather

hope of answering the questions which would follow. When she had met with Dr Tybjerg, she had intended to tell the police where he was the next day. Smoke him out, force him to examine her. Now she was having second thoughts. Tybjerg was clearly terrified and beyond rational argument. What if he had a breakdown? She had already lost one supervisor, and the last thing she needed was for Tybjerg to be out of action. She speeded up as if she could run off her frustration.
    Anna let herself into the communal stairwell and heard a door open upstairs. The timed light went out and Anna felt a pang of guilt. A run shouldn’t last nearly two hours, not even with the bogus excuse of picking up a book. She reached out to turn on the light, but it came on before she touched the switch. She leaned forward and looked up the stairwell. A cold, defensive shiver ran through her.
    Lene’s face appeared in the gap between the banisters, looking down.
    ‘Any problems?’ Anna said, shamefaced, taking several steps at a time. Her downstairs neighbour was holding the baby monitor in one hand and Anna’s key in the other.
    ‘Who was that?’ Lene asked. The light went out and Anna turned it on again.
    ‘Who?’ Anna was confused.
    ‘That guy.’
    Anna looked perplexed.
    ‘Didn’t you pass a guy on his way down? He’s just left.’
    Anna squinted.
    ‘I didn’t see anyone. I’ve been out running.’ Anna was still confused.
    ‘There was a guy here just now,’ Lene persisted. ‘The baby monitor bleeped and I went upstairs to check that everything was okay. He was sitting on the stairs by your landing. He was waiting for you, he said, and that was fine by me. I said you would be back shortly. Lily was sleeping when I went inside, so I don’t know what set off the monitor. I put her duvet back and was going to call you to find out when you were back as we wanted to go to bed. I’d left your front door open, but when I was about to leave, the guy had made himself comfortable on your sofa, and I wasn’t happy about that. I tried calling you to find out if it was okay.’
    Anna fished out her mobile from her running jacket. Three missed calls.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was on silent.’
    ‘Because I couldn’t get hold of you, I asked him to wait outside. I explained that you had gone running and that he would just have to wait on the landing. I’ve never seen him before; I couldn’t just leave him in your flat when you hadn’t mentioned anything about visitors, could I?’
    Anna shook her head.
    ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ she managed to say. She felt cold all over.
    ‘But you must have seen him,’ Lene insisted. ‘He only just left.’
    ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ Anna said. ‘Could it have been Johannes, my colleague from the Institute of Biology? Did he have ginger hair?’
    ‘He wore a cap. And a long coat,’ Lene said. ‘I think he removed his cap when he sat down in your living room, but I don’t know if his hair was ginger. More brown, I think. I’m not sure.’
    ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Anna said. ‘I used my key to let myself in downstairs and then I walked up. No one came down. I swear.’
    Lene looked tired and ran her fingers through her hair.
    ‘Weird,’ she mumbled. ‘He raced down the stairs only a minute ago. I’d closed my door, thinking how odd it was for someone to visit you this late. I wondered if I should fetch Otto, and then I heard him leave in a hurry. As if he had changed his mind and decided not to wait for you. I went back out on the landing, I saw his hand glide down the banister, the light went out, you switched it back on and we spotted each other in the gap.’ Lene pointed to the curved banisters. Anna felt another chill down her spine.
    ‘We agree that you turned on the light, don’t we? Because it wasn’t me,’ she said.
    ‘No,’ Lene said. ‘We certainly don’t. I didn’t turn it on. You did.’
    Anna raced up the stairs to her own front door, holding out her key as a weapon. Her hands were shaking and it took three attempts before she found the keyhole. The flat was dark. Anna ran blindly into Lily’s room. She could make out the duvet, Bloppen, Lily’s toy dog which had keeled over, and her daughter’s favourite embroidered pillow; she could even make out the stickers which Lily had stuck on her bedposts, but she couldn’t see Lily. She heard Lene behind her and the two baby monitors screeched when they got too close. Lene switched off