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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, Åke Tornsjö, 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