The Dinosaur Feather(47)

“Speaking of pain . . . have you any idea what the problem with Helland’s eye might have been?” he asked innocently, and looked from one to the other. The professors seemed genuinely baffled.

“There was something wrong with his eye?” Professor Jørgensen frowned.

“Johannes and Anna both mentioned a growth of some sort in Helland’s right eye, they said it had become more noticeable in recent months. Did you see anything?”

The professors considered this. Then Professor Ewald began, tentatively: “This may sound odd . . .” she sighed, “but I never actually looked at him. Not closely. We would say hello in passing, but since Helland, in his year as head had practically handed over the head of department job to Professor Ravn upstairs, I hadn’t needed to discuss administrative issues with him. That was last spring, wasn’t it?” She looked to Professor Jørgensen for confirmation. He nodded.

“The atmosphere here was affecting me badly, you see.” She was looking at Søren now. “However, about six months ago I came to a decision. I finally stopped believing things would ever change. I decided to regard Helland as a necessary evil, like a motorway at the end of a garden you have spent precious years cultivating. I didn’t want to leave. I’m fond of the students and I love my research. And last year I realized I had only two choices: I could resign or I could learn to put up with Helland. Since then I haven’t had much contact with him. We used e-mail to exchange internal messages, but apart from that I avoided him. So, no, I hadn’t noticed that something might be wrong with his eye.”

Søren saw she was resting her hands calmly in her lap and looking straight at him.

“Me neither,” Professor Jørgensen added.

“And what about his health in general? Anything stand out?”

Again both professors looked puzzled. Then Professor Jørgensen remarked, “Something must have been wrong for his heart to stop beating without any warning. He suffered death throes, I imagine? Since he bit off his own tongue?”

“The autopsy will establish that,” Søren said in a neutral voice.

“Perhaps he was an undiagnosed epileptic?” Professor Jørgensen suggested.

“So you never noticed anything?” Søren cut him short.

“No,” they replied in unison. Søren got ready to leave, but sensed hesitation hanging in the air. He looked closely at Professor Ewald.

“Did you want to add something?”

Professor Ewald frowned.

“This is going to sound silly . . .” she looked away. “No, it’s too absurd.”

“Tell me anyway,” Søren prompted her.

“As I was saying, we e-mailed occasionally about practical matters. For instance, we shared the SEM computer at the end of the corridor and a couple of times Helland didn’t show 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 about a hundred feet 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 that 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 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 anything that 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.