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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 Lars-son 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 released."
    "Actually, we've already managed to check up on that," said Knutas. "Do any of you recall Gustav Persson? The guy who used to roam around the pastures putting nails into horses' hooves? He would pound the nail in partway, and when the horse set his foot down to walk, the nail would go in farther and farther. Persson didn't just make do with one hoof, either. He would put nails in several so that in the end the horse couldn't stand upright. He eluded the police for several weeks until he was finally caught. By then he had injured a dozen animals. There's also Bingeby-Anna. She would kill any cat that she saw and hang them on the fence."
    "But she's super tiny and thin," Jacobsson objected. "She'd never be able to carry out this sort of