The Dinosaur Feather

by Sissel-Jo Gazan, Charlotte Barslund

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Anna Bella Nor is just two weeks away from revealing her controversial research on the evolutionary origin of birds when her supervisor, Lars Helland, is found dead - his tongue and a copy of her thesis in his lap. As the police investigate the most brutal and calculated case they've ever known, Anna remains convinced someone is trying to frame her. She must fight to prove her innocence... and fight for her life.

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Print pages: 400

Sample

Solnhofen, Southern Germany, 5 April 1877

Anna Bella Nor was dreaming she had unearthed Archaeopteryx, the earliest and most primitive bird known. The excavation was in its sixth week, a fine layer of soil had long since embedded itself into everyone’s faces and the mood had hit rock bottom. Friedemann von Molsen, the leader of the excavation, was the only one still in high spirits. Every morning when Anna staggered out of her tent, sleepy and shivering in the cold, von Molsen would be sitting by the fire, drinking coffee; the congealed porridge in the pot proving he had cooked and eaten his breakfast long ago. Anna was fed up with porridge, fed up with dirt, fed up with kneeling on the ground that only revealed bones that were, of course, interesting in their own right, but were too young to be the reason she studied biology, and most definitely not the reason she was spending six weeks of her precious summer holiday living in such miserable conditions. The year was 1877 and, at this point in her dream, Anna got the distinct feeling that something didn’t add up. She was wearing her quilted army jacket and thick furry boots with rubber soles, but Friedemann von Molsen didn’t seem the least surprised, even though he was wearing a three-piece corduroy suit with a pocket watch, a woolly cap, which rested on his ears, and had a pipe in his mouth.

They were in Solnhofen, north of Munich, and in addition to Anna and von Molsen, the group consisted of two local porters, two other postgraduate students and von Molsen’s brandy-coloured retriever bitch, whose name also happened to be Anna Bella; a truly irritating detail in the dream. While they plodded across the same ridge as yesterday, von Molsen told anecdotes. His stories weren’t particularly amusing and, by now, Anna had heard them so many times that she no longer derived any pleasure from having been dropped into a time in history which any natural scientist would give their right arm to experience. Whenever von Molsen was about to speak, he would snatch his pipe from his mouth and point it in the direction of England. It was Darwin who had upset his sense of order.

In the 1870s Darwin’s theory of evolution was starting to gain a foothold, but the mechanism that caused species to evolve was a matter of huge controversy, and though it fascinated von Molsen, he categorically dismissed Darwin’s theory that evolution was driven by natural selection. When his feelings ran high, von Molsen would call Darwin a ‘stickleback’. Anna failed to see how a stickleback could be the worst term of abuse that von Molsen could come up with.

At the start of the expedition Anna had challenged von Molsen’s argument and this was how his interest in her had originated. Von Molsen was a man who encouraged curiosity towards the phenomena of natural science and it was perfectly reasonable, he declared, to play devil’s advocate in order to provoke a stimulating debate, provided one didn’t seriously believe that in a few decades the stickleback’s hypothesis would be accepted as common sense; that all living organisms, mice and men, birds and beetles, had evolved from the same starting point and that differences in their individual morphology, physiology and behaviour were entirely the result of adaptation and competition. ‘What would be the consequence of that?’ von Molsen had demanded and pointed abruptly at Anna with his pipe, but before she had time to reply, he answered his own question.

‘The conclusion,’ he declared, cheerfully, ‘would be that the genome wasn’t a constant. It could be changed and no one would be able to predict what would cause it to change. As if everything, life and nature, was entirely random and unplanned. The whole business was insane!’

During an already notorious lecture at Oxford University, Darwin had recently argued that the vast gaps in fossil evidence for birds existed solely because such fossils had yet to be discovered. Once they were found, and this was purely a matter of time, the evolutionary game of patience would come out and it would be obvious to everyone, as it already was to Darwin and his supporters, that the driving force behind evolution was the process of natural selection. The man must be mad, von Molsen had exclaimed, and looked sharply at Anna.

The conversation had occurred on the fifth day of the expedition by which time Anna had already gained a reputation for being something of a chess wizard. They played on a small board with horn pieces, which von Molsen had conjured up from the left-hand pocket of his jacket, opposite the one in which he kept his pipe, and he balanced the board on his right thigh. Anna had slipped up when, in an attempt to support Darwin’s views, she had mentioned a fossil which wouldn’t be discovered until seventy-four years later, and had, in order to cover up her gaffe, dug herself into an even bigger hole by citing the feathered dinosaur from China, which two Chinese palaeontologists would find and describe 124 years later. At this point, von Molsen had become so outraged that he accidentally knocked his own queen off the board. Anna felt like banging her head against one of the tent poles. ‘We’re talking serious science here, not tomfoolery and nonsense,’ von Molsen had sneered, as he picked up his queen. Anna gave up. After all, it was just a dream.

From that day onwards Anna’s mood had gone steadily downhill and this morning when von Molsen, in an exuberant state of mind, started gesticulating towards England with his pipe, Anna decided that, as far as she was concerned, the excavation was over. She would return to Munich, eat a decent meal, then take the train back to Berlin and from there travel home to Copenhagen. She rubbed her eyes and tried to wake up, but the wind swept heedlessly across the Bavarian plain and von Molsen had turned ninety degrees north and reinstated his pipe in his mouth. In the distance Anna saw a hare rise onto its hind legs to sniff the air before it disappeared into the scrub. She sighed.

During the day, when Anna was awake, the year was 2007, and she was enrolled as an MSc student at the Faculty of Natural Science at the University of Copenhagen, more specifically at the Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology at the Institute of Biology, where she had spent the past year writing her dissertation on a scientific controversy which had been running for more than 150 years. Were birds present-day dinosaurs or did they originate from an even earlier primitive reptile? She had just handed in her dissertation and her viva was in two weeks.

Scientific controversies were par for the course. People had argued whether the earth was flat or round, whether man was related to the apes, the status of the Milky Way compared to the rest of the universe, with a fervour which ceased the moment sufficient evidence became available. The earth is round, man is a primate, and the Milky Way does mainly consist of red stars. However, the controversy surrounding the origins of birds appeared to be different. It rumbled on, even though, scientifically speaking, there was nothing left to discuss.

Von Molsen relit his pipe and the sweet tobacco aroma tickled Anna’s nostrils. Someone started to make coffee. She could see and hear Daniel, one of the other students, clatter with a saucepan while he said something to von Molsen and hitched up his trousers, which had a tendency to fall down. Daniel had been fairly chubby five weeks ago when the excavation began, but since then he had lived on the same food as everyone else: beans, porridge, cabbage and coffee. Anna suspected that Daniel secretly questioned von Molsen’s dismissal of natural selection. The day she had debated it with von Molsen and had completely shot herself in the foot by referring to the two as yet undiscovered fossils, she had exchanged glances with Daniel, who was standing a little further away pretending to secure a couple of guy ropes, and she thought she had detected something in his eyes. Something that told her he had genuine doubts as to whether Darwin’s theory of natural selection was really as far-fetched as especially the older established scientists of the day were claiming.

Anna understood entirely why the new concept of evolution seemed unimaginable. For centuries the broad consensus had been that God had personally created every animal and plant, and that the mouse and the cat, the beech and the maple were no more related than the desert and the firmament or the sun and the dew on the grass. Everything was God’s work and one creature couldn’t simply evolve into another, nor could animals and plants become extinct unless it was God’s wish to remove the species in question from production. As far as birds were concerned, it therefore didn’t follow that the sparrow was related to the starling, the flamingo, the shearwater or any other bird, or that birds as a group were related to each other or to dinosaurs or reptiles or any other animal. They had been put on earth, aerodynamic and fully-developed, by God. Voilà.

The theory of evolution broke completely with the doctrine that the earth and all its organisms had been created by one divine being, and this was a huge challenge: how could people suddenly accept that evolution happened by itself, without God’s influence, just like that?

The dream continued. The sun was now high above Solnhofen. After a quick consultation about today’s tasks and a cup of coffee as black as tar, they all got to work. Anna’s area was a gentle slope behind the rest of the team and she had only to raise her head to see where the others were and what they were doing. The lithographic limestone slab spread out beneath her like a huge blackboard. She scraped, she eased away a couple of layers, she brushed sand and soil aside, she coaxed the earth; she took off her jacket and pushed up her sleeves. An isolated gust of wind from the south forced her to close her eyes to avoid the dust. When she opened them again and looked down, she saw the fossil. The wind had removed nearly all the excess material, and though another two layers needed to be removed before the creature would lie fully revealed, there was no mistaking it. Beneath her, bathed in the light from a yellow sun, lay Archaeopteryx Lithographica, one of the world’s most precious fossils. It was slightly smaller than a present day hen and had one wing beautifully unfurled. In this respect the dream was a bit of a cheat, she thought, because she instantly knew what she had discovered. She recognised the small bird from hundreds of photos; only two weeks ago, in the Vertebrate collection at the Natural History Museum, she had been studying the impression – which the Germans had reluctantly allowed a Danish palaeontologist to make – of the Berlin Specimen, as Archaeopteryx Lithographica was known. She recognised the flight feathers, which lay like perfectly unfurled lamella against the dark background, she saw the relatively large tail feather, the wondrously faultless location of the rear and front limbs and the arched position of its flawlessly formed skull, which made this specimen superior to anything else discovered so far. In 1861, the newly discovered London Specimen had been sold to the British Natural History Museum for £700. Now Anna had uncovered one of the ten most beautiful and significant fossils in the world: the Berlin Specimen.

Her instinctive reaction was to punch the air and cry out in triumph to von Molsen, who was standing some distance away in deep thought, holding his pipe, but what she needed now was a plan. Anna had to beckon von Molsen in a manner that made it clear she had stumbled across something extraordinary, while simultaneously sounding sufficiently vague in her conclusion so von Molsen wouldn’t get the impression that she already knew what she had found. That really would make him suspicious.

Von Molsen turned around instantly when she called him and came towards her with reverence. When he reached her, he knelt down by the excavation and stared for a long time at the fossilised animal that was emerging. Carefully, he worked on the last two layers of the limestone sediment, whereupon, with great awe, he traced the perfect body of the small bird with his finger. Anna knew that the bird was 150 million years old.

‘Well done, my girl,’ he said. When he turned to look at her, she noticed that one of his eyes was almost purple. Her find had shaken him to his core.

‘Mum?’

Von Molsen laid his pipe on the ground, took out his magnifying glass and, right at this point when Anna absolutely didn’t want the dream to end, it started to dissolve.

‘Mum, I want to get into your bed,’ a little voice pleaded. Anna clenched her fists and woke up in Copenhagen.

The light in her bedroom was dim. Lily was standing next to the bed, in her Babygro, with a soaked nappy, which Anna Bella grabbed hold of as she swung the child into her bed. Lily snuggled up to her. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet. Pale, white dawn light was starting to creep in, but it would be another half hour, at least, before any objects would be visible. Her bed linen was freshly washed and it felt crisp.

A figure was standing between the window and the door to the living room. It was Friedemann von Molsen. She couldn’t see his face, but she recognised the broad-brimmed felt hat he wore against the merciless sun. Anna’s heart pounded inside her ribcage. She wanted him to disappear. Von Molsen watched her silently, just as lifelike as he had been in her dream.

‘If I wait long enough,’ she told herself, ‘the light will make him go away.’

She knew she must be imagining this. She had to be. And yet she saw him just as clearly in the grey dawn as she saw the tall chest of drawers next to the door, the green vase on top of it, and the silhouette from the lilies she had bought yesterday and put in the vase.

Later, when she looked back at this morning, she knew exactly what von Molsen was.

He was an omen.

Monday morning, 8 October. The Institute of Biology was an H-shaped building squeezed in between the Natural History Museum and the August Krogh Institute in the University Park in the Østerbro area of Copenhagen. The main building was a narrow rectangle of four floors, which bordered Jagtvejen on one side and a cobbled square on the other.

Anna Bella parked her bicycle outside the entrance to Building 12, which housed the Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology on its second floor. It had been a ghastly morning. When she tried to drop off Lily at nursery, Lily had sobbed and refused to let go of her in the cloakroom. Through the window in the door Anna could see the other toddlers, see them fetch their cushions and get ready for morning assembly. Lily was inconsolable. She clung to her mother, smearing snot and tears into Anna’s jacket.

Eventually, one of the nursery teachers came to Anna’s rescue. Lily’s sobbing grew louder. Desperation poured through the pores of Anna’s skin. She looked at the nursery teacher with pleading eyes and the nursery teacher lifted Lily up, so they could pull the snowsuit off her.

Anna suffered from a permanently guilty conscience. Cecilie, Anna’s mother, looked after Lily almost all the time. Cecilie had volunteered her help six months earlier when Anna’s studies had become increasingly demanding.

‘If you’re to have any hope of finishing your dissertation within the allotted time, you can’t possibly leave the university at four o’clock every day to pick up Lily from nursery,’ she had argued.

And that had been it. Lily loved her granny, Anna told herself, so why not? It was the obvious solution.

For several months she had virtually worked around the clock, but though she had finally submitted her dissertation, she still had to prepare for her forthcoming viva. No matter how much Anna missed her daughter and knew very well that the temporary arrangement had got out of hand, there simply was no room for Lily in the equation. And as she kept telling herself: Lily liked being with Granny.

‘Stop it, Lily,’ she snapped. ‘I have to go now. Granny will pick you up today. You’re sleeping at Granny’s tonight. Now let go of me!’ She had to tear herself loose.

‘You go,’ the nursery teacher said, ‘I’ll deal with her.’

When Anna had finished locking up her bicycle, she caught sight of Professor Moritzen in her office on the ground floor. Anna tried to catch her eye, but the professor was hunched over her desk and didn’t look up.

Hanne Moritzen was a parasitologist in her late forties, and four years earlier she had taught Anna at a summer course at the university’s field centre in Brorfelde. One night, when neither had been able to sleep, they had run into each other in the large institutional kitchen that belonged to the Earth Sciences Department. Hanne had made camomile tea and they had got talking. At first the topic was biology, but Anna soon realised that Hanne, in contrast to other professors she had met, wasn’t particularly interested in talking shop. Instead they discussed favourite books and films, and Anna could feel how she was genuinely warming to Hanne. When dawn broke, they agreed it was pointless to go back to bed, and when the bleary-eyed kitchen staff arrived, they had just started a game of cards.

Later they had bumped into each other at the faculty, said hello, exchanged pleasantries and eaten lunch together several times. Anna admired Professor Moritzen’s serenity and sense of purpose. It was a long time now since their last lunch. Once she had defended her dissertation, she would make it up to all the people she had neglected: her daughter, Hanne Moritzen, herself.

Finally, Hanne looked up from behind the window, smiled and waved to Anna. Anna waved back and walked through the revolving doors to Building 12.

The Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology consisted of offices and laboratories arranged on either side of a long, windowless corridor. The first office belonged to Professor Lars Helland, Anna’s internal supervisor. He was a tall thin man without a single wrinkle. This was remarkable. Biologists, as a rule, made a point of never protecting their skin when doing fieldwork. The only clues that revealed he was in his late fifties were white flecks in his soft beard, a slowly spreading bald patch and a photograph on his desk of a smiling woman and a teenage girl with braces on her teeth.

Anna was convinced that Professor Helland loathed her; she certainly loathed him. During the nine months he had been supervising her dissertation, he had barely taken the time to offer her any guidance. He was permanently crotchety and uninterested, and when she asked a specific question, he would go off on an irrelevant tangent and couldn’t be stopped. It had angered Anna from the start and she had seriously considered making a formal complaint. Now she had resigned herself to the situation and she tried, as far as possible, to avoid him. She had even left her dissertation in his pigeonhole last Friday, rather than hand it to him in person. When she checked the pigeonhole for the fourth time, her dissertation was gone.

The door to Professor Helland’s office was ajar. Anna tiptoed past it. Through the gap she could see part of Helland’s recliner, the last centimetres of two grey trouser legs, feet in socks and one shoe lying carelessly discarded with the sole facing up. Typical. When Helland was in his office, he spent most of his time lying in his recliner, reading, surrounded by a Coliseum-like structure of books and journals piled up in disarray around him. Even on the very rare occasions they had met, Helland had been reclining as if he were a nobleman receiving an audience.

Helland wasn’t alone. Anna could hear an agitated voice and she instinctively slowed down. Could it be Johannes? She tried to make out what they were talking about, but failed. She would have to find out later, she thought, and accelerated down the corridor.

Anna and Johannes shared a study. Johannes had finished his MSc, but he had been allowed to stay on because he was co-writing a paper with Professor Helland, who had been his supervisor as well. Anna could vividly recall her first day in the department last January when Helland had shown Anna into the study where Johannes was already working. Anna recognised him instantly from her undergraduate days and had spontaneously thought ‘oh, shit.’ Later she wondered at her reaction because, until then, they had never actually spoken.

Johannes looked weird, and he was weird. He had ginger hair and looked at her as though he was leering at her with slightly sticky eyes behind his round, unfashionable glasses. For the first three weeks, she deeply resented having to share a study with him. His desk looked like a battlefield, there were half-empty mugs of tea everywhere, he never aired the room, never tidied up, every day he forgot to switch his mobile to silent and though he apologised, it was still infuriating. However, he seemed delighted to have acquired someone to share the tiny study with and talked non-stop about himself, his research and global politics.

During those first few weeks Anna deliberately kept him at a distance. She went to the refectory on her own, even though it would have been obvious to ask if he wanted to join her, she gave curt replies to his questions to discourage him from striking up a conversation, and she declined his friendly suggestion that they take turns to bring cakes. Yet Johannes persisted. It was quite simply as if he failed to register her aloofness. He chatted and told stories, he laughed out loud at his own jokes, he brought in interesting articles she might want to read, he always made tea for both of them and added milk and honey to her cup, just the way she liked it. And, at some point, Anna started to thaw. Johannes was warm and funny, and he made her laugh like she hadn’t laughed in . . . well, years. Johannes was extraordinarily gifted, and she had allowed herself to be put off by his peculiar appearance. Nor were his eyes sticky, as she had first thought, they were open and attentive, as though he was making an effort, as though what she said really mattered.

‘You’re wearing make-up!’ she exclaimed one spring morning, not long after they had become friends.

Johannes was already behind his desk when Anna arrived. He was wearing leather trousers and a Hawaiian shirt, his hair was smoothed back with wax and his long white fingers were splayed across the keyboard. His glasses magnified his brown eyes by 50 per cent, so when he looked at her, there was no way she could miss it.

‘I’m a goth,’ he said with a mysterious smile.

‘You’re a what?’ Anna dumped her bag on her chair and gave him a baffled look.

‘And things got a bit wild last Friday. I was in drag,’ he continued, cryptically. ‘I thought I had got all that stuff off.’ He waved her closer. ‘Come on over, I’ve got something for you to look at.’

He showed her some pictures on the Web while he talked. The club he had been to was called the Red Mask and events were held the first Friday of every month. The club’s name was inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe novel The Masque of the Red Death, and it was a meeting place for goths from all over Scandinavia. Goths were a subculture, Johannes explained when he saw the blank expression on Anna’s face and pointed to a photograph. Anna failed to recognise the slightly androgynous-looking woman with red hair, black lipstick and dramatic eyes, wearing a tight black corset, a string vest, leather trousers and studs. The caption below the photo read Orlando. Anna frowned.

‘It’s me,’ he said, impatiently.

‘You’re kidding!’ Anna exclaimed, thinking she really was an idiot. It was obvious: Johannes was gay!

‘What does “Orlando” mean?’ she asked.

Johannes looked exasperated.

‘Orlando is a reference to the eponymous hero of the novel by Virginia Woolf, obviously. Orlando starts off as a man and is later transformed into a woman. Like me, at nightfall.’ He laughed. Anna gawped and said:

‘Okay.’

‘But, no, I’m not gay,’ he added, as though he had read her mind.

‘So what are you then?’ Anna asked, before she could stop herself.

‘I’m into women.’ He winked at her. ‘And, in addition, I’m a goth. From time to time I go to goth parties in drag; women’s clothing, that is.’

‘So do you all have sex with each other or what?’ Anna blurted out.

Johannes raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds like someone’s interested in going?’

‘Shut up.’ Anna threw a rubber at him, but she couldn’t help smiling. ‘That’s not why I’m asking. I was just curious. You look like a . . .’ she nodded in the direction of the screen. Johannes followed her gaze.

‘Yes, I’m well and truly dolled up,’ he said, pleased with himself. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked at Anna as though he was debating with himself whether or not he could be bothered to explain this to her.

‘There’s no sex at the Red Mask,’ he said eventually. ‘But quite a few people belong to the goth scene as well as the fetish scene. Me, for instance.’ He gave her a probing look. ‘That club is called Inkognito and events take place twice a month.’ He scratched one eyebrow. ‘And yes, there we have sex. There are darkrooms and people arrive dressed in latex and leather. Here you can be hung from the wall and given a damned good thrashing if that’s your thing.’

Anna held up her hand. ‘Yes, thank you, Johannes. That will do.’

‘And prudes are very much in demand on the fetish scene. Very.’ Johannes flung out his arms by way of invitation. Anna threw a journal at him, Johannes parried by rolling his chair backwards. He roared with laughter. Anna could restrain herself no longer and joined in. With Johannes, everything seemed so easy.

The only time the harmony between them soured was when the subject turned to Professor Helland. Shortly after they had become friends, Anna asked Johannes what was bugging Helland. In her opinion, he was always in a hurry, he was grumpy and vague. To her great surprise, Johannes seemed genuinely baffled. What did she mean? Helland had been a brilliant supervisor for him, he protested, beyond reproach.

‘Don’t you find him distracted, distant and apathetic?’ she asked.

Johannes didn’t think so at all.

One day they almost had a fight about Helland. Anna happened to mention that she often fantasised about playing practical jokes on the supervisor; hiding his favourite reference book, for example, or removing a small, but vital part of his stereo-microscope, which was worth millions of kroner – just a tiny bolt so the lens wouldn’t focus or the eye pieces couldn’t be adjusted to fit the distance between Helland’s eyes. Or how about grafting mould on to his wallpaper? Or releasing a couple of mice in his office? Something which would wind him up without resulting in serious repercussions for her? They were enjoying a tea break and had discussed a film they had seen, they had been laughing, but Johannes paled when she shared her fantasy.

‘That’s not funny,’ he said. ‘Why do you say stuff like that? That’s really not funny.’

‘Hey, relax,’ Anna said, instantly embarrassed at suddenly finding herself isolated with a clearly highly inappropriate idea.

‘You can’t go around playing tricks on people,’ Johannes had muttered.

‘It was just a joke,’ Anna said.

‘It didn’t sound like it,’ Johannes said.

‘Hang on, what are we really talking about?’ Anna asked, defensively, and turned on her chair to face Johannes who was bent over his keyboard. ‘Are you saying you think I would actually hurt Professor Helland?’

‘No, of course not.’ But Johannes sounded unconvinced.

‘It’s beyond me why you always have to defend him,’ she continued, outraged.

‘And it’s beyond me why you always have to attack him.’ Johannes gave her a look of disbelief. ‘Honestly, Anna, just give the man a chance.’

‘He’s not committed,’ she said and could hear herself how ridiculous that sounded.

‘And so he deserves mould on his wallpaper which will give him a headache, itchy eyes and a streaming nose?’

‘It was a joke!’

Johannes studied her closely.

‘Tell me, why do you have to be so harsh sometimes? Your tone . . . it can be really cutting. And Helland isn’t so bad. In many ways, he’s quite all right.’

Anna turned to her screen and hammered away at the keyboard. She was close to tears. Johannes boiled the kettle and made more tea.

‘Here, gorgeous,’ he said, affectionately, placing a cup of tea on her desk. He nudged her softly.

‘It was just a joke, all right?’ she mumbled.

‘But it wasn’t funny,’ he replied and went back to his desk.

From that day on Johannes and Anna avoided discussing their mutual supervisor, even though Anna was finding Professor Helland’s behaviour increasingly bizarre. One evening, after taking Lily to Cecilie’s, she cycled to the Institute to work. It was dusk and the car park behind the building was filled with dancing blue shadows. There was the leafy scent of the end to an unusually chilly summer. Pigeons were pecking at the ground by the bicycle stand. They scattered when her bicycle keeled over. Johannes had obviously gone home ages ago, which was a shame.

Professor Helland materialised out of nowhere in the twilight. He stood with his back to her, completely rigid, right where the birds had just been congregating and he looked like a waxwork. He seemed unaware of th