You could have knocked Anna down with a feather.
“She’s his mother?”
“Yes,” Tybjerg said. “Asger’s mother is Professor Moritzen.”
“Why do you think that?” she said in disbelief.
“You don’t think Asger would know his own mother?”
“But I know her,” Anna said, vehemently. “She doesn’t have children. She always said she never had children!”
“Then she was lying,” Dr. Tybjerg declared.
Anna was at a total loss. Hanne had a son with Professor Helland. Anna was only distracted for a second, but Tybjerg managed to retreat so far into the darkness that he vanished. Anna heard the sound of his shoes, heard him mutter something, and then the rattling of a cupboard door. She stared into space, stunned.
“I have to go,” she muttered to herself.
Anna left the Vertebrate Collection and let herself into the museum. Her heart was pounding and she was starting to have second thoughts. Should she have told Søren what she had discovered? Was her plan too dangerous, after all?
Then she spotted Troels. He was waiting for her in the doorway to the Mammoth Room. He touched the artificial glacier with trepidation and withdrew his hand in wonder. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and had stuffed his wool hat into his back pocket. His auburn hair fell in skillfully cut locks across his forehead.
Anna’s breathing quickened as she watched him, her weapon safe in her pocket. When she had managed to calm down, she approached him and gently put her hand on his back. He turned around.
“Hello again, Anna,” he said. His eyes were flickering.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said, softly.
Slowly, without speaking, they drifted through the exhibition. They even stopped in front of some exhibits before ending up in the Sperm Whale Room, where they found a bench. A group of noisy kids shuffled their feet, waiting impatiently for headsets to be passed around. Anna and Troels sat close together.
Anna said, “What have you done?” and turned to him.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Anna gasped.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I fell in love with him,” he confessed.
“With Johannes?” Anna raised her eyebrows and, for a moment, her horror gave way to confusion. “But Johannes wasn’t gay… he…”
“I know,” Troels replied, quietly. “But I was still in love with him.”
“So what happened?” Anna probed.
“We met at the Red Mask. I went there with a couple of guys I don’t actually know very well. I had never been there before, but I liked the place. I noticed Johannes almost immediately. He was standing at the bar, looking amazing. He wasn’t actually very handsome, was he? But he outshone everyone and made us all laugh. He was surrounded by people. I moved closer and we started talking. I drank some more beer—I had already had too many. We talked for a long time, and I struggled to keep up.” Troels looked embarrassed. “He spoke about complex subjects, gestured with his hands, touched my shoulder, stabbed his finger into my chest, ruffled my hair. For a new acquaintance he was very physical, and I lapped it up. I’ve been on the gay scene for years,” he smiled, “where, usually, quick physical contact equals sex, and I thought… he wore a leather skirt, fishnet tights, and army boots. Johannes, however, spoke about everything but sex that night. He talked endlessly about the theory of science, which didn’t really interest me. But he mesmerized me. He seemed completely indifferent to how other people perceived him, waved his arms around whenever he felt like it. Take me or leave me. That was why he was a magnet, of course. I’ve always admired people like that.
“At dawn, we left together and walked to Enghave Plads. He hugged me and said it had been great to meet me, that he would like to see me again.”
“Johannes wasn’t gay,” Anna protested. Troels looked away.
“We met a few days later. I couldn’t get him out of my head. He invited me to dinner at his apartment; we drank wine. I was totally confused. He sent out such contradictory signals and in the end, I asked him outright. I said I was very attracted to him; I wanted to have sex with him. He said he wasn’t gay. At first, I got angry. I felt he had strung me along. With the wine, the meal, and the ridiculous clothes he was wearing. But then I realized there was more to it. He wasn’t gay, but…” Troels hesitated.
“He wanted me to… humiliate him. Sexually, but without us touching. I was allowed to hit him and to verbally abuse him, but I must never touch his dick. He got off on being humiliated. He had tried it with women, but it wasn’t really working for him. So that’s what we did that night. I’ve tried something like that before, but never anything that real. I lived in the US for years and I was a part of that scene, going to S&M clubs, I’ve been the dominant one in all my relationships, the aggressor. But with Johannes it was… so hot. Because it was new for him. Because I was the first.” He glanced shyly at Anna who was sitting very still, staring at the sperm whale on the wall. The noisy children had gone, and a family of four had arrived. The father lifted up the younger boy.
“I hit him, and… no, it doesn’t matter. He masturbated until he climaxed. Obviously I wanted to touch him, but every time I tried, he turned away. He didn’t want me. In the end, I was deeply frustrated. I wanted to have sex with him. I tried, but the magic disappeared. Johannes got upset, went into another room, and told me he was disappointed in me. That it wasn’t what we had agreed. I apologized, but it was no good. He just wanted me to leave. Get out, get out, he whispered. Very quietly, as if I had failed him. So I left. In the days that followed I was beside myself. He was all I could think about. I e-mailed him, but he never replied. On the goth scene I’m known as YourGuy.” Troels peered at Anna. “Most people on the scene have aliases. It’s part of the game. It suited me just fine. Copenhagen is a very small town. And I’ve just come back from abroad and, to be honest, I’m scared shitless of ending up on the front page of the tabloids. ‘Supermodel into S&M’ or something like that. I’m actually quite famous in the US,” he added, “but getting work back here, when I returned last spring, was really tough. But finally I was about to land a huge campaign, a well-paying one, so I preferred going to places where no one cared who I really was. Anyway, Johannes never replied, and I was getting desperate. Then we bumped into each other, accidentally, in a café. He seemed pleased to see me. As though he had forgotten what had gone wrong during our last meeting. He had been busy, that was all. We agreed to meet again, the next day.
“That night I realized the two of you knew each other. He had mentioned you several times that first evening. Anna, my colleague; Anna, the woman I share a study with, without me making the connection. But when we met again, he referred to you as ‘Anna Bella,’ and it clicked that it had to be you. I knew where you lived, and I had meant to get in touch ever since I moved to Copenhagen. Only I was too ashamed. Ashamed I had run away back then. Your parents…” Troels shook his head. “I heard from them for years. They had my address in New York, and they wrote faithfully to me every Christmas and on my birthday. Your mom even sent me an advent calendar one year. They urged me to get in touch if ever I came back to Denmark.” He laughed bitterly. “And I never replied. When I moved to Copenhagen, I thought it would be easier to get ahold of Karen first. I missed you the most, but… Christ, how you freaked out at me that night.” For a moment, he looked at her with tenderness.
“So much that you were afraid you might beat me up?” Anna asked. She felt her anger rise through her shock. It wiped the smile off Troels’s face.
“I don’t know why you had to humiliate me,” he said. “You were just as bad as my dad that night. You kicked me, Anna. You hit me and you screamed. And group sex was a seriously shitty idea. Whose was it?”