The missing head of Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue turned up in a box outside a local television station, a journalist at the station said yesterday.
Danish police confirmed they had recovered the head after the station contacted them, but they declined to give further details.
"We found the head in a box outside our main entrance after offering a 25,000 krone (£2,500) reward for its return," the journalist said. "We saw nobody deliver the head, but we immediately contacted the police, who came along to collect it."
The statue, Copenhagen's most famous waterfront landmark, was found decapitated for the second time in 34 years early on Tuesday, after an anonymous call to a local television cameraman.
Police have had few clues to work on in tracking down the perpetrators of the beheading.
On Thursday a Danish feminist group retracted its claim of responsibility for the action and police failed to find fingerprints on the torso of the damaged statue.
The Little Mermaid lost her head once before, in 1964. Based on the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen about the Sea King's half-human, half-fish daughter who must wait on her rock for 300 years before entering the world of humans, the Little Mermaid attracts almost one million tourists a year.