S. Gazan - The Dinosaur Feather

“He didn’t respond to anything. To my letters or my calls. He had quite simply dropped me. Last August I started therapy. It was mainly about my relationship with Asger, about my role in his life. My therapist told me to write another letter to Asger, that he definitely read them and they made a difference even if he didn’t respond. In the letter I was to assure him I would be there when he was ready, and I was to tell him I loved him and I looked forward to seeing him again. But not until he was ready. That was important, the therapist stressed. He had begun an emancipation process, she said, and I was to leave him alone. Respect him. The therapist insisted it was about time, too.” She looked embarrassed. “So that’s what I did. Wrote a letter, which the therapist read and approved before I sent it to Asger. Then I waited. I heard nothing, but the therapist comforted me. It was quite normal. The longer the period after puberty when emancipation ought to have taken place, the harder it was. She said it might take years. So I was so happy when he suddenly called last Thursday.” Professor Moritzen looked earnestly at Søren. “I swear it never occurred to me that Asger might be implicated in Lars’s death. I had speculated like crazy whether the parasite might have come from our stock, but in consultation with my colleagues, I concluded it couldn’t possibly be one of ours. We hadn’t been broken into, nothing had been touched, nothing had been taken. Last Thursday, Asger told me he had watched me through my office window. His plan was to make it look like I had infected Helland with tapeworm. We should both be punished, he said. He even found the prospect amusing. He knew tapeworms weren’t dangerous, but they frequently aren’t discovered until they’re several feet long and fill most of the intestines. He thought his plan was brilliantly disgusting. He imagined how the tapeworm would grow and take up more and more space, just like Helland and I had gradually taken over his life.

“He also told me he had threatened Helland. Sent him some e-mails in English from an untraceable address. Helland was completely indifferent; he didn’t even take them seriously. He had replied to a couple of them, Asger told me, though he obviously didn’t know to whom he was replying, and he seemed to find the threats amusing. Asger was crushed,” she said softly.

“Asger heard about Helland’s death on the radio and got very scared. Last Wednesday he visited the institute. It took less than fifteen minutes to catch up on all the gossip. Helland had been riddled with cysticerci. Asger panicked and went home where he spent the next twenty-four hours thinking it over. He couldn’t make sense of it. He called me Thursday night. His voice was small and timid. At first, I couldn’t understand why, after months of silence, he’d called me to talk about the life cycle of parasites. Surely he could look it up in his own reference books? But he insisted. Slowly, the pieces began to fall into place and, in the end, I asked him outright: Are you involved in Helland’s death? He thought so, he whispered. Then he told me everything, though he still didn’t fully understand what had happened, all he had wanted to do was give his loser dad tapeworm. I connected the dots myself.”

“Will it help him that he confessed? It will, won’t it?”

“He could have called the police himself,” Søren said gently.

“But that’s what he has done by calling me,” Professor Moritzen protested. “It has been this way all his life.” Again she looked ashamed. “I always made his calls. To the tax office, the housing benefit office, the student grant office. He can’t call people he doesn’t know. He just clams up.” She looked out of the window.

“Perhaps there really is something wrong with him,” she said. “But then I don’t understand why he’s always been a straight-A student.” They sat for a while. Søren gave Professor Moritzen a break. Then he got up.

“I’m going to pick him up now,” he said. “And we’ll help him, okay? As much as we can.”

She looked inscrutable. “Yes,” was all she said.

When Søren left Professor Moritzen’s block, it had started to drizzle.

It was close to midnight when Søren, accompanied by four colleagues, arrived at 12 Glasvej. Søren looked up at the apartment, which, according to Professor Moritzen’s instructions, was on the third floor to the right. It was dark. He had briefed the others before they left the station and he reiterated the main points. Asger Moritzen was highly likely to be unstable. He shunned people and he was anxious, so their approach must be soft and gentle. Four heads nodded. Then they entered. When they reached the third floor, the four uniformed officers lined up on the stairs and Søren, who was in plain clothes, put his ear to the door before he knocked. There was no sound from the apartment. He knocked harder. No reaction. He called a locksmith, who promised to be there in ten minutes. Søren was tempted to kick down the door, but was reminded of what Professor Moritzen had told him about Asger.

“Proceed with caution,” he had told the others in the street, and he stuck with that even though he had his doubts. He knocked lightly on the neighbor’s door. A moment later, they heard footsteps. The door was opened by a puzzled-looking woman in a nightgown. They spoke for three minutes. The woman had never met her neighbor. She had lived in her apartment for ten months and she had wondered about it, of course, but decided the apartment was probably empty while its owner was traveling. She had never heard any noises coming from it. No running water. No music or guests. She shrugged. Sorry, she couldn’t help them. Søren thanked her and asked her to return to her apartment. When her door had been closed, a breathless locksmith came up the stairs. Two minutes later, Søren could open the door to Asger’s apartment.

“Asger Moritzen,” he called out. “This is the police. We would like to talk to you.” Not a sound. Inside, it was dark—only the light from the stairwell made it possible to see. Søren switched on the light. The hall was spacious and tidy. The built-in closet was closed, as were the three doors. The kitchen must be the door to the left. He signaled to the others to stay put. He called out again. Still no reply. He carefully nudged open the kitchen door with his elbow—the light from the hall enabled him to find the switch. The kitchen was tidy and impersonal. The walls were bare, and Søren could see silvery trails from a dishcloth on the work surface. The sink shone. He returned to the hall and stopped in front of the two closed doors. One had to lead to the living room with the blacked-out windows, the other to the bedroom. He opened the one to the left, again calling out.

“Dr. Moritzen. This is the police. We want to talk to you.” The smell hit his nose. Nail polish remover was his first thought, some sort of solvent, definitely. The room was black and quiet.

“Flashlight, please,” he demanded over his shoulder and one of the officers shone a bright beam of light into the room. There were tanks everywhere, just like Professor Moritzen had said. From floor to ceiling. In the middle of the room were a loveseat and a coffee table. Nothing stirred. Søren switched on the light and the cold, dim gleam helped him get his bearings. The smell of solvent was overpowering. Then he spotted something glowing white. In every terrarium lay a cotton ball, each the size of a child’s fist.

Behind him, his colleague coughed. Søren turned around and asked him to open the window. He walked up close to one of the tanks. Then he spotted it. A bird spider, the size of a cake plate, diagonally behind the cotton ball. It didn’t stir.