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the local winos on the lawn across from the Rackarbacken ring wall when the weather was good.
    Cautiously he climbed the steps, just enough so that he could reach out and slowly press down the door handle. Something was there, he could clearly sense it; he hardly dared breathe. Now it was too late to change his mind.
    At first he didn’t comprehend what it was that came rushing out at him when the door opened. He fell over backward, and he could feel something big and bloody come toppling over him. He screamed when he looked into the dead eyes of a horse’s head.

 
    He washed his hands with great care, rubbing on the soap and scrubbing with the stiff brush so that his skin hurt. Then he continued up along his arms, brushing so vigorously that his skin stung and layers were gradually scraped off. He started to bleed. By that time he no longer felt any pain. The water didn’t flow properly from the faucet, nor did it ever get truly hot. He didn’t care; in some way that was all part of the whole process. He bled into the sink, and he liked seeing the blood splash up on the stainless steel sides. Then he scrubbed his chest, his stomach, his legs, and his arms in the same rough manner.
    He came out here every time. This was his starting point, the center of his circle, the hub in his life. Here the present shook hands with the future, stood eye to eye with the past. Everything became knotted together into one entity. It was only in this house that he could feel peace.
    The turning point had occurred here, and he knew exactly when it had happened. He now understood that he had been chosen, but also that this had not occurred by mere chance.
    He had arranged it himself by finally taking command of his own life. He would never have to wonder what it was that had prompted his actions from the very beginning. Perhaps it was merely a feeling of satiety, that now it was enough. From being a victim, he had now gone on the attack. Once and for all.
    There was something painful yet at the same time liberating about getting older. Life’s insights caught up with you, and there was no avoiding them. They nudged the back of your knees, breathed down your neck until you let them emerge, and then it was like a dam bursting. All the torments that he had hidden under his skin came to the surface and broke through the wall of defenses that he had so carefully constructed since the very first violations in his childhood. To live was to suffer, but he had been punished enough. So one day when he was wandering through the woods alone, he confronted them eye to eye. They spoke through pine and spruce, juniper and blueberry branches. He could hear their whispering voices in the crowns of the trees, in the marshy ground, and in the overcast sky. When he trudged along the shore he heard their cries from far off in the foamy white wave tops and in the sandy dunes.
    He screamed and drowned out the roar of the waves.
    “I hear you, I hear you. I’m here, I’m yours! I’m your eternal servant, I offer my blood, my life!”
    They answered him quickly and firmly. It was not his blood they were interested in.

 
    The call came into police headquarters at 9:15 P.M. Speaking in a distressed and disjointed manner, Gunnar Ambjörnsson told the officer on duty about the horse’s head in his shed. The officer then contacted Anders Knutas, who in turned called Jacobsson. Since she lived within walking distance of Norra Murgatan, they agreed to meet there.
    When Knutas arrived, she was already waiting outside the fence. They found Ambjörnsson, with whom Knutas was slightly acquainted, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on a chair in the yard. He was speaking agitatedly with a female police officer. When he caught sight of Knutas, he stood up.
    “Anders, this is insane. Come see for yourselves.”
    He led the way to the shed, which stood in a corner of the property.
    Jacobsson took out a handkerchief in preparation for what they were about to see and pressed it to her mouth.
    Her stomach still turned over when she saw what Ambjörnsson had found an hour earlier. The swollen and bloody head of a horse was affixed to a sturdy wooden pole that was leaning against the door. The pole had been shoved up into the head through the neck. The mouth hung open, and the eyes gave both officers a glassy stare. Several seconds passed before anyone said a word.
    “Do you see what I see?” said Knutas in a toneless voice.
    Jacobsson slowly nodded from behind her