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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.”
    The others gave the tech a puzzled look.
    “How would you explain that?” said Jacobsson.
    “The only thing I can come up with is that the perpetrator must have collected the blood.”
    “Why would anybody want to do something like that?” objected Wittberg.
    “I have no idea.” Sohlman stroked his chin meditatively. “The owner last saw the horse at around eleven last night. The vet estimates that the animal had been dead for at least five or six hours by the time the girls found him. That means that the crime was most likely committed sometime before four in the morning. As far as the pasture is concerned, it’s being searched by dogs, along with the immediate vicinity, in an attempt to find the head. So far no luck. We’ll continue to widen the area of our search.”
    Jacobsson grimaced. “How disgusting. So the perpetrator took both the head and the blood along,” she said. “What do we know about the horse?”
    Knutas looked down at his notes.
    “A pony, fifteen years old, castrated—so it was a gelding. A gentle, friendly animal, with no previous police record.”
    Wittberg snickered. Jacobsson was not amused.
    “What about the owner?” she asked.
    “His name is Jörgen Larsson. Married, the father of three. He took over the farm along with his brother ten years ago. It’s their childhood home, and their parents still live in one of the separate wings of the house. The farm is quite large. They have about forty cows and a lot of calves. There don’t seem to be any conflicts within the family. They’ve run their farm in peace and quiet all these years. Neither Jörgen Larsson nor any other family member has a police record.
    “The vet thinks that the crime was committed by someone who grew up on a farm or who has had previous contact with the slaughtering or butchering of animals,” Sohlman went on. “He says that this isn’t the sort of thing that can be done on the spur of the moment. It requires careful planning, nerve, and determination—as well as brute strength. You’d have to hit hard to make the horse lose consciousness, and you’d also have to know where to strike. The brain is located very high up on the forehead. According to Åke Tornsjö, the perpetrator must have done this sort of thing before.”
    Everyone seated around the table was listening with interest.
    “Has the farmer or anyone in his family ever received any sort of threat?” asked Wittberg.
    “No, not as far as we know.”
    “The question is whether this was directed at the farmer personally, or whether it’s a madman who’s attacking animals,” said Jacobsson.
    “Could this be some kind of boyish prank?” Wittberg tossed out the question.
    “With a butcher knife and an axe and a means of transporting the head?” said Jacobsson. “Not on your life. On the other hand, I do wonder if there are any mental patients with a history of animal abuse who have been