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the door to the chicken coop,” she said, pointing at the wall.
    “You haven’t seen any strangers around here lately?”
    “No, and neither has Staffan. I asked the children, a bit cautiously, of course, because they actually have no idea about what happened, but they don’t seem to have seen anything unusual, either. Whoever put the horse’s head there must have done it sometime between eight and nine o’clock last night. Just before eight I called the kids inside—they’d been out playing—and at that time I didn’t see anyone. Then Staffan came home right after nine o’clock.”
    “Good,” said Knutas, offering her encouragement as he took notes. “The narrower the time frame, the easier it will be for us. There’s one thing that I want to say right from the start. Don’t tell anyone about this. It’s important that not a word gets out. Especially for the sake of the children.”
    “Of course,” said Susanna Mellgren hesitantly. “Although my mother …”
    “That doesn’t matter, as long as she keeps it to herself. So where is the horse’s head?”
    “It’s kind of a long walk,” she said.
    “We’d better drive. We’re going to take the head with us,” said Sohlman.
    “Really?” She looked doubtful, and a new anxiety appeared in her eyes.
    “Of course. It has to be properly examined. When we compare samples from the head with the decapitated horse’s body, it may help us to solve the case, if things go our way,” Sohlman explained pedantically.
    “Before we drive over there, I’d just like to have a look inside your house. Would that be all right?” asked Knutas.
    “Yes, of course.”
    Susanna Mellgren showed them in. The house had an old-fashioned feel to it with oiled wood floors, unpainted furniture, and a mostly white decor, which created a bright and cozy impression. The wide window ledges were filled with earthenware pots and wooden and ceramic sculptures of various sizes. Clothes, balls, and toys were strewn everywhere. In the kitchen sat an elderly woman reading from a book of fairy tales to a child sitting on her lap. The woman glanced up and greeted them with a friendly nod when the three detectives appeared in the doorway.
    “This is my mother,” Susanna explained. “She’s here to help me with the kids today.”
    They took two cars. Jacobsson drove with Susanna Mellgren in the first one, while Sohlman and Knutas followed in the second.
    After half a mile on the paved road that took them even farther away from Lärbro, they turned onto a bumpy tractor path. Susanna stopped the car next to a field and a cluster of trees. There was a ditch next to the path. She climbed down in the ditch and started removing grass and branches.
    Knutas and Sohlman immediately joined her to help . Jacobsson chose to stand on the side of the road to watch. She had a hard time coping with the sight of dead bodies, whether animals or people. She had foolishly believed that she would eventually get over it, but instead it had gotten even more difficult over the years. The more bodies she saw, the more unbearable it became.
    When the head was uncovered, they climbed out of the ditch and stood on the road to look at it.
    “There’s no doubt about it. Or what do you think?” said Knutas.
    “It’s obvious that it’s a pony, and it definitely looks like it belongs to the horse’s body out at Petesviken,” said Sohlman.
    “It’s extremely well preserved,” murmured Jacobsson through the handkerchief she held pressed to her mouth. “And it doesn’t smell much, does it?”
    “No, it’s been frozen, just like the horse’s head at Ambjörnsson’s house.”

MONDAY, JULY 26
    ON SUNDAY EVENING Knutas had tried numerous times to contact Mellgren, but without success. He didn’t answer his cell phone, and when Knutas talked to Susanna Mellgren late that night, she still hadn’t heard from her husband.
    The whole thing was bewildering, to put it mildly. Mellgren had been subjected to the same terrifying experience as Gunnar Ambjörnsson. Yet according to his wife he hadn’t seemed particularly upset.
    Knutas hadn’t bothered with breakfast at home. He was eager to get to work, so instead he got a cup of coffee and bought a sandwich from the vending machine. The only one left was cheese on a rye roll with a few shriveled bits of red pepper. It had been there all weekend, of course.
    The phone rang in his office just as he was trying to get the roll out of its tight packaging.