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shots.
    Johan started off with the usual questions about what had happened. Then came something unexpected—or maybe not totally unexpected.
    “Have you found the head?”
    Knutas clenched his teeth and didn’t answer. The fact that the head was missing was something the police had decided to keep secret. Those who knew about it had been given strict instructions not to divulge anything about the matter.
    “I wonder if you’ve found the head,” Johan repeated stubbornly.
    “I have nothing to say on that topic,” said Knutas, annoyed.
    “I’ve been told by a reliable source that it’s missing,” said Johan. “So you might as well confirm it, don’t you think?”
    Knutas’s face turned bright red with anger. He realized that the police no longer had anything to gain by denying the fact.
    “No, we haven’t found the head,” he admitted, giving a sigh of resignation.
    “Do you have any theory about what happened to it?”
    “No.”
    “Does that mean that the perpetrator took it with him?”
    “Probably.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “Impossible to say at the moment.”
    “What do you think the person or persons who did this will use the head for?”
    “It’s all speculation, and speculation is something that we police don’t waste much time on. Right now it’s a matter of trying to catch the guilty party.”
    “What’s your personal reaction to the crime?”
    “I think it’s terrible that someone would do such a thing to an animal. It goes without saying that the police are taking the matter very seriously, and we’re going to devote all possible resources to finding out who’s to blame. We’re appealing to the public to call the police with information if they saw or heard anything that might be connected with the crime.”
    Knutas ended the interview.
    He was hot and annoyed. Even though he knew it was fruitless, he tried to get Johan to leave out the information about the missing head. Not surprisingly, the journalist refused to budge. He thought the information was of such general interest that it had to be made public.

 
    By the time Pia and Johan got back to the office, they had to hurry to put together the story in time to make the evening news. They sat down to work in the only editing room. Johan called Grenfors, who thought it was okay that they had interviewed the girls. They were old enough, and he was of the same opinion as Pia—it was just a horse, after all. On the other hand, Grenfors wasn’t known for being the most cautious of news editors.
    “I just hope that no one else finds out the part about the missing head,” murmured Pia as she focused on pushing buttons. They had half an hour left before it was time for the first spot from Regional News, and they had promised the editor to deliver at least a minute and a half. At five fifty they were ready, and they sent the digital story by computer to the home office in Stockholm.
    After the broadcast, Grenfors called. “Well done,” he said appreciatively. “Great that you got the girls. They were damn good, and I don’t think they’ve been interviewed by anyone else.”
    “No, as far as I know, we were the only ones they talked to.”
    “How did you get them to talk, by the way?”
    “The credit goes to Pia,” said Johan. “She was the one who persuaded them.”
    “Is that right?” Grenfors sounded surprised. “Give her my best and tell her that she did a damn fine job. What are you doing tomorrow to follow up?”
    In his mind Johan pictured the editor as he sat there, tilting his chair back at his desk in the Regional News offices in the TV building in Stockholm’s Gärdet district. He was a tall, trim man of fifty, with dyed hair and a blatant sense of vanity.
    Johan thought that things had been getting worse lately. Grenfors had grown more and more nervous. His anxiety about not getting usable stories delivered on time manifested itself in different ways: constant phone calls to ask how the work was proceeding and long discussions about how the report should be done. The editor often made his own calls to individuals who had been booked for an interview, just to double-check that it was actually going to take place.
    Of course, Grenfors had always had a tendency to meddle too much, but not to this extent. Johan wondered whether it had to do with the increased stress and shrinking profits at the editorial office. Cutbacks were frequent at the news divisions. Resources were constantly being