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It was Pia, and there was an eager tone to her voice. He could hear that she was driving as she talked.

"Hey, a horse has been found in a pasture with its head cut off."

Pia had a habit of skipping any introductory greetings, which she viewed as unnecessary, especially when she was in a hurry and had something important to say.

"When?"

"This morning. Two little girls found it in a pasture out by Petesviken. Do you know where that is?"

"No clue."

"It's in southern Gotland, on the west coast-it's probably about thirty-five miles from the city."

"How did you hear about this?"

"I have a friend who lives there. She called me."

"Who owns the horse?"

"A completely ordinary farm family."

"We should drive out there right away. How soon can you get here?"

"I'm out in front now."

Johan hung up the phone and immediately called Detective Superintendent Knutas on his direct line. He got no answer, and the switchboard told him that the entire investigative team would be tied up all morning.

A decapitated horse sounded weird, but that was exactly what he needed. He grabbed a notebook and pen and locked the door to the office. He decided to wait to call Grenfors in Stockholm; he had nothing against keeping the editor on tenterhooks for a while.

He sat in the kitchen, thinking about how palpably a room could change, depending on who was in it and what was taking place. The gloom that had previously emanated from the walls, and the guilt and shame that had fallen from the ceiling onto his head, were now gone. In the past the walls had pressed in and threatened him whenever he sat at his place at the table, which was always the same. Whatever food was served gave him no pleasure; it merely swelled up inside his mouth until he had a hard time swallowing. A plateful of anxiety lay hidden under the gravy.

Things were different now that he could do whatever he pleased. He had made himself a hearty breakfast. The exertions of the morning demanded a solid meal.

On the plate in front of him were three thick slices of toasted white bread with pieces of Falun sausage and eggs dripping with fat. He topped them off with a generous squirt of ketchup, along with salt and pepper. The cat was meowing greedily and rubbing against his leg. He tossed her a piece of sausage.

The clock on the wall showed that it was nine forty-five. Through the dusty windowpane he could see the sun lighting up the yard outside. He ate the food with a good appetite and gulped down some of the cold milk. When he was done, he pushed away the plate and belched loudly. He leaned back in his chair and took a pinch of snuff.

His body was tired; his arms ached. It had been more difficult than he'd anticipated. For a moment he had even thought that he might not be able to do it. Finally, he had managed it. The finishing work had taken a good long time, but now it was done.

He stood up and picked up his plate. Carefully he rinsed off the scraps of food under the faucet and then washed the plate.

All of a sudden he felt very tired. He had to lie down and sleep. He let out the cat, who soundlessly slunk off. Then he went up the creaking stairs to the second floor and went into the far room, at the end of the house. The room had never been repaired after the fire. Patches of soot covered the walls, and even the burned bed was still there, like some sort of charred log in the corner. He thought he could even sense a faint whiff of smoke, but it was probably just his imagination. On the floor was an old mattress, and that was where he lay down. This room made him feel good. It gave him a sense of calm that he otherwise never felt, and he slept well.

Knutas never ceased to be amazed at how fast news traveled. Reporters from the local radio station, TV, and newspapers had all contacted him, wanting to know what had happened. On Gotland there was enormous news value in the fact that a horse had been decapitated. Experience had taught him that nothing stirred up the public as much as the abuse of animals.

The thought had barely appeared in his mind before the organization Friends of the Animals was on the line, and several other animal rights groups would undoubtedly be calling him soon. The police spokesman, Lars Norrby, was away on vacation, so Knutas had to handle the reporters on his own. He wrote up a brief press release and said that for a change he was going to be unreachable for the next few hours.

Back at the criminal investigation division after the morning excursion to Petesviken, Knutas bought a sandwich from the vending machine in the coffee room. There was no time for lunch. He had called in his closest colleagues for a meeting at one o'clock. Sohlman should be able to make it back from the investigation out at the crime scene to join them, thanks to the fact that there were now two crime techs in the police department.

They gathered in the bright, open conference room, which had a big table in the middle. Police headquarters had recently been remodeled, and new furniture, in a simple Scandinavian design, had been purchased. Knutas had felt more comfortable with their old worn furniture made of pine. At least the view was still the same; the panoramic windows looked out on the Forum supermarket parking lot, the ring wall, and the sea.

"The crime that has been committed is a particularly nasty one," Knutas began, and he told them about what they had seen out at Petesviken. "The pasture and the surrounding area have been blocked off," he went on. "There's a highway that runs past the pasture, and that's where we're looking for traces of any vehicles. If the person or persons who did this took the horse's head with them, they most likely had a car. The neighbors and other people who live in the area are being interviewed, so we'll have to see what turns up during the course of the day."

"How was the horse killed?" asked Jacobsson.

"Erik can tell us more about that." Knutas turned to the crime tech.

"Let's take a look at some pictures of the horse," said Sohlman. "I have to warn you, Karin, that some of them are very unpleasant." He directed this comment to Jacobsson, not only because she was the most sensitive of his colleagues when it came to blood, but also because she had a great affection for animals.

He clicked through the photos of the horribly abused body.

"As you can see here, the head was severed from the neck, or rather, hacked and chopped off. A veterinarian, Ake Tornsjo, has already taken a look at the horse. He's going to do a more thorough examination later, but he was able to tell us how he thinks it was done. According to him, the perpetrator-if it actually was the work of one individual-presumably first knocked the horse unconscious by giving him a strong blow to the forehead, most likely with a hammer, a sledgehammer, or an axe. When the horse lost consciousness, he used a large knife, like a butcher knife, to slice through the neck, and that's what killed the animal-meaning, the loss of blood. To sever the head from the vertebrae, he had to smash them apart. We've found crushed pieces of bone, and I would guess that it was done by using an axe. Marks on the ground indicate that the horse was still alive after the first blow. He lay there, kicking in his death throes. The grass had been thrashed about, and the ground was churned up. The area around the neck is ragged and rough, which indicates that the perpetrator had to go at it for a while-he seems to have known perfectly well what to do, even if he lacked a more detailed knowledge of a horse's anatomy."

"How nice. Then we can exclude all veterinarians," muttered Wittberg.

"There's one thing that I can't make sense of," Sohlman went on, unperturbed. "When the carotid artery was severed, the horse should have lost an incredible amount of blood. We can see that blood did run out of the neck and body, but there's only a small amount accumulated on the ground. Almost negligible. Even if the blood had seeped into the ground, there should still be more of it."