The Dinosaur Feather by Sissel-Jo Gazan Read Free Book Online

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 thunder up the stairs. Two uniformed police officers and an ambulance doctor arrived; the doctor disappeared immediately into Helland’s office and thirty seconds later another two police officers turned up. One of the officers entered Helland’s office and the other three started to ask questions. Professor Jørgensen and Professor Ewald talked over each other and Anna fixed her eyes on a button on the lino. The two professors disappeared down the corridor with one of the