This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  “Moro Part,” Lehtonen said. “The big man. He sees himself as a godfather figure. It’s a very hierarchical community. Some of my sources say he may be a people trafficker, or at least a smuggler of some kind. His money comes from somewhere. I’ve followed him for a while now, and he’s very hard to pin down.”

  Aino turned back to the photos of the white-faced wedding girl and the comical clownboy. “These two I’ve spent time with,” she said. “Moro Part treats them very well. There seems to be a special relationship between them. I don’t know, maybe he rescues these kids. I’ve heard that as well, that he’s a Robin Hood character, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.”

  Brand examined the portrait. She felt the challenge in Varzha Luna’s gaze, as though it were fixed upon her personally. “I don’t know about him, but her I’d be afraid to meet in a dark alley.”

  “I know what you mean. I had to work for ages just to get a single word out of her. Krister knows more.”

  “Her eyes look much older than the rest of her,” Brand said.

  “She’s sixteen, if you can imagine that. It took a while for me to earn her trust, paying them for taking a photo. I know a church that works with refugees, the Roma, the homeless. My friends and I collect second-hand sweaters and coats, blankets, something warm for the night. We’re not alone in this kind of thing. A lot of Swedes donate.”

  “What are the Roma doing living in the subway?” Brand asked. “I saw a whole encampment at the station.”

  “Look to Eastern Europe if you want to understand why the Roma come. The mud they slog through, the suspicion and abuse they get from non-Roma. Many times they have no shelter at all, other than tents and makeshift shacks in the woods.”

  Aino rapped her knuckles on the wall next to Varzha Luna’s portrait. “Here is the stereotype—a street beggar singing folk songs. But in Sweden and elsewhere many Romani are academics, entrepreneurs, members of parliament. We are everything, teachers and writers and artists.”

  Brand pulled up short. We? Had she heard right?

  Lehtonen read the expression on her face. She gave a short laugh. “Oh, yes, I am Kaale Roma, Finnish, through my father’s side.”

  “I apologize,” Brand said. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything.”

  “The Romani you see on the streets, like Varzha and Vago, are mostly from Romania or Bulgaria, in social systems that keep them mired in poverty. As you understand from your work with sex crimes and trafficking in New York City, poverty renders the young vulnerable.”

  “Why is it everyone here knows so much about me?” She found it mystifying. This woman she had just met referred knowledgeably to her experiences on the job in New York City.

  “Sweden is a small country with a small population,” Aino explained, laughing apologetically. “Nothing remains secret for very long.”

  “What about shelters for these people? And where are the fucking police? I feel for the homeless, believe me I do, but having them camped in a train station can’t be the answer. Or maybe I should speak more politely, like ‘where in the bloody hell are the po-po?’”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly okay to drop the f-bomb around here. I sometimes teach photography to teenagers. These kids nowadays watch so many Hollywood films, they believe every American family sits down at the table and says, ‘what the fuck’s for dinner?’ I try to disabuse them of the idea.”

  “Krister Hammar is very much involved with the Roma, isn’t he? In his work as an immigration lawyer. What happened to him today? Where is he?”

  They heard the door of the studio open. Without looking around, Lehtonen said, “Speak of the devil and he appears.”

  “Hello?” Hammar’s voice called out from the front entrance of the loft.

  He emerged into the studio space, his face red with the outside cold. He and Lehtonen gave each other a quick, polite hug. He glanced over at the huge photographic portraits of Varzha and Vago.

  “I’ve found them,” Hammar said. “Let’s go.”

  17.

  A half dark had come on by the time Aino, Krister and Veronika left Lehtonen’s studio. A mist covered the city and winter rain fell, making the cobblestones of Stockholm’s Old Town more difficult to navigate. They crossed a bridge from one island to another, passed through an enormous stone arch and entered a commercial neighborhood on the other side.

  Brand allowed Lehtonen and Hammar to take the lead. She knew only that the three of them were on their way to keep an appointment with the Romani boss-man who starred in one of Lehtonen’s massive photographs.

  As they walked together the photographer and the immigration lawyer would lean toward one another, exchanging soft-spoken words apparently not intended for Veronika Brand’s ears. Like a brother and sister, thought Brand. Occasionally Hammar turned to make sure Brand still followed.

  The commercial street was in sharp contrast to the charm of Gamla Stan. The guts had been ripped out of this part of the city to make way for retail progress. The anonymous, neutered and bland buildings stood in stark contrast to the medieval precinct they had just left. Storefronts offered racks of cute-faced fuzzy moose-head key rings, tiny blue and yellow Swedish flags, baskets of smooth wooden spoons, and an abundance of postcards, all a bit tacky looking.

  Hammar and Lehtonen halted at an intersection. An H&M occupied one corner, and a modern department store, long, low-built, and brownish red, stood opposite.

  “Åhléns,” Lehtonen said. A long row of large display windows glowed with a warm, inviting light. Shoppers rushed past, carrying their precious goods through the foggy dark of the fading afternoon.

  “This is where Varzha Luna’s kidnapping happened,” Hammar said quietly.

  Two men waited at the store’s entrance, older and younger, one stocky and the other rail thin. They were the photographs in Lehtonen’s studio come to life. The young beanpole Brand recognized as Varzha Luna’s twin brother Vago. The older, more impressive gent wore the same brown overcoat as in Lehtonen’s full-color photographic portrait.

  Moro Part, the Romani godfather. He glared sullenly as they drew near. Vago pestered his handler with repeated cries of “Zsa-Zsa.” Finally Moro seemed to lose patience, arm-locking the kid briefly to shut him up.

  “Your sister is gone, but she will be back,” Moro assured the boy.

  In a quavering voice Vago sang, Open the door, oh wandering bride… He put his undersized violin to his chin and drew a bow over the squealing strings. Moro gently but firmly took the instrument away.

  “Sounds like a cat being strangled,” he said, not unkindly. He pushed the kid back into a begging posture, seated on a tattered blanket on the cold sidewalk.

  When they left the studio, Brand had slipped a pill into her mouth. Now she felt Adderall alert, amphetamine focused. She noticed everything. Vago had tucked and folded his begging blanket to form a compact pad, like a mediation prayer pillow, upon which he bounced nervously up and down. She saw that the blanket’s wool fabric was brightly patterned with teddy bears scattered through, a child’s coverlet. Brand’s mind jerked back and forth like the head of a bird.

  Aino tapped Vago on the shoulder.

  “Aino!” he said happily.

  “That’s me,” she said. “Aino.”

  “I know you know but what do I know?” the kid responded, laughing delightedly.

  Aino turned to Hammar and Brand. “This is an old joke between us,” she explained. She gave the kid a bag of pink and white skumkantareller as a small token gift.

  “Here is Krister Hammar,” Aino announced to Moro. “And this is Veronika Brand, from New York City.”

  Moro didn’t appear interested in introductions. He gave Brand a veiled, suspicious look. “You bring the polis along?” he muttered to Lehtonen.“Relax,” Aino said. “She’s an American.” As if that explained everything.

  “Have you found her?” Hammar asked. “Does anyone know where she is?”

  Moro shrugged in the negative.

&nb
sp; “My head hurts,” Vago said, pressing his hands on his temples. “Now more than always.”

  The others ignored him, caught up in tension between Brand and Moro Part.

  “We only want to help,” Hammar said.

  “I need everyone to back off,” Moro responded.

  “We heard that Luri Kováč was there at Åhléns, begging at the same time, and he saw Varzha being taken,” Aino said. “Maybe it would help if we speak with him.”

  “No,” Moro said, biting off the word.

  “I want Zsa-Zsa,” the twin said. Aino shushed him.

  “You’re not my boss,” Vago told her. “Moro is my boss.”

  “Luri Kováč is a fool,” Moro said dismissively.

  The comment caused Vago to laugh and clap his hands together. “Luri is a foo-foo-fool!” he crowed.

  “For the love of God, Vago!” Moro exclaimed, quieting the boy. “Luri sits there on the street like a big frozen turd. He never has more than a single krona in his cup. He didn’t see anything. The man is half-blind.”

  “In the country of the blind,” Brand murmured.

  “What?” Moro asked, bristling again.

  “Panhandlers always have the best eyes on the street,” Brand said.

  Moro stared at her. Brand met his gaze. They were two dogs facing off.

  “One of them had a police wallet,” Moro finally said.

  “One of them?” Krister asked. “Does that mean there was more than one?”

  “He was in uniform?” Aino asked.

  “Two men,” Vago said, rising to his feet. “A beard and one no beard.”

  Everyone stopped and looked at the kid.

  “One had a beard and the other didn’t?” Krister asked him.

  “Two cops?” Aino wanted to make sure. “Plainclothes? Maybe SÄPO?”

  “I think they were pretending to be cops,” Brand said.

  “Enough!” Moro shouted. “I’m not going to tell you again to back off. We are Kalderaš Romani. We take care of our own.”

  Vago began turning in circles, talking to himself. “My grandfather has many grandsons. When Zsa-Zsa was a bird, I was a deer. I took care of my own. In the sky blue village. Our home, Zsa calls it. There was a stolen goat that spoke real words and gave kid’s milk. We are Kalderaš Romani, we are travelers, we have no home, the road is our home.”

  His words sounded like an oft-repeated catechism. Aino took him by the shoulders to stop his spinning. “Vago,” she said. “What were the men? Tall? Short?”

  “Yes,” Vago said.

  “Roma?” Aino asked.

  “Schwedo,” the boy said.

  Aino gave him a can of soda.

  His mouth full, Vago tossed off a bit of intel that pulled them all up short. “The bearded one says to Zsa-Zsa, ‘I am Officer Liam’. The other one says ‘I am Officer Mattias.’”

  “What?” asked Krister.

  “What?” echoed Aino.

  “Not parale!” Vago said. “Not police. Fake news, fake news!” He chortled as if laughing at his own joke.

  “The kid doesn’t know up from down,” Moro said. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Vago said, repeating the words mindlessly. “I don’t like going out without being white.”

  Brand felt for the boy. She remembered his whiteface makeup in Lehtonen’s photos.

  “It’s okay,” she told him quietly. Surprisingly, Vago quieted. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

  Moro removed a small, smooth stone from his pocket and held it out to Brand. The offering took her by surprise.

  “A token for a newcomer to this country,” he said. “For good luck, and to ward off the evil eye.”

  Brand didn’t want the gift, didn’t trust it. But she didn’t see any way to avoid taking it, either. The little gray talisman felt warm to the touch.

  “If you promise to lay off,” Moro said to the three gentiles confronting him, “I’ll pledge to make sure you know everything.”

  “He won’t,” Vago stage whispered.

  Moro laughed and gave the boy a playful cuff.

  “You’ve told us exactly nothing so far,” Hammar said. “Is that going to change?”

  Brand pulled a piece of white fabric from the pocket of her vest. The move caused a small explosion. As soon as Vago caught sight of it, he emitted a loud cry and fell sobbing to his knees. He took a swipe at Brand and missed. Then he continued with his full-throated grieving.

  “Made a slave to the wicked!” the boy shrieked. He wept tear rivers.

  “Quiet down, Vago!” Aino said. The commotion attracted the attention of passersby.

  Moro bear-hugged the kid, though it was difficult to tell if it was a consoling hug or a suffocating one.

  “I can’t think,” Vago babbled. “My head hurts.”

  Moro Part pushed the tiny violin into the boy’s hands. Possession of the instrument instantly quieted the boy.

  “Play ‘Blue Eyes,’ Vago,” he said. “What does Varzha always say? She says, ‘Play Blue Eyes, Vago, because it gets them every time.’”

  The boy took his bow and scraped out a song, “Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain.” Sounding faint and tremulous in the new night, the tune hit Brand in the heart.

  18.

  Brand steered Hammar’s Saab northwest on the E18, back towards Härjedalen. They left the suburbs and outlying towns around Stockholm to enter a countryside still locked in winter. Straw-colored stubble showed above the snow in the fields. The land looked empty. Most people with money had fled the winter cold to parts south, Thailand, the Canaries, or Andalusia.

  She and Hammar did not talk. The only sound in the car was the vague rush of wind and the rumble of vulcanized tires on pavement, punctuated by a volley of text messages that Hammar persistently ignored. Brand wondered if he had a place to be, someone to answer to that didn't know about his foray into the criminal underworld.

  The two of them were headed toward a church in the north for old Elin’s memorial service. During the long stretches of silence on the drive, Brand wondered if Hammar might be making a polite gesture toward mourning. Eventually, though, she understood his silence was based more on an innate kind of serenity. His wordlessness, Brand realized, was simply one of the man’s virtues. She couldn’t judge whether it was a common Swedish trait or one peculiar to Hammar. All she knew was that her companion didn’t give in to the modern urge to chatter.

  It would be her second visit to the province of her ancestors. Brand again brought along the Glock. A few of her fellow police referred to a sidearm as an ‘Amex’, as in, “don't leave home without it.” The weapon was in the car’s back seat, concealed in a clunky backpack she took from her cousin Lukas’s guest house. Brand thought of the photo she had filched from Elin’s room. The images bled into the present day, her own family’s murky past somehow connecting with the bloody crimes of the Voss family.

  Hammar directed her along a specific route. It differed from the one they had traveled just two days before, on their way back to Stockholm after the Härjedalen reunion. This way they would not pass by the Sofieborg Manor House. The site threw out an evil aura. It probably glowed in the dark. Brand might have liked to visit in full daylight, if there was such a thing in the Swedish winter. She would prefer the company of a forensic investigator, but that opportunity was not open to her. She was not in good odor with the local polis.

  The scene at the Ljusdal station played over in her mind. In retrospect it gave her a case of investigatory whiplash. Bok the local cop had handed her off to the district commissioner woman. Then came the big cheese from the American embassy. Brand had been involved with high-profile cases in New York. She knew what political weight felt like when it fell on top of her.

  The whole business seemed cock-eyed somehow. The deaths were horrific. The crime scene was practically apocalyptic. But really, such a grand fuss over a suspected dog-fighting case? Something didn’t add up.

  Varzha Luna, the striki
ng Romani figure in Lehtonen’s portrait, had been present at the scene. That much was clear. They had shown the wedding dress to Lehtonen. She had identified it as the young woman’s. And Vago went agro upon seeing it. Had Varzha been murdered? Was it her blood at the manor house, mixed with that of the traffickers? But then why remove one body from the scene and leave two others?

  Sofieborg Manor House was a Voss property. Two paths crossed there, the Vosses and Varzha. The explanation hovered in the darkness at the edge of a stand of birches, where a big ghost dog moved. Brand could not grasp the meaning of it all.

  Vago gave them the names of the two men who had taken his sister, Liam and Mattias. Through back channels, Hammar determined the identities of the two dead men discovered at the manor house. Liam Blom, yes, and then someone called Nils Hansen. So at least one of the men who kidnapped the girl met his death almost immediately after. A falling out among the traffickers? A bloody spat over money? Impossible to figure.

  The Saab snaked into hillier terrain. Slabs of granite tilted up along one side of the highway. In the distance, snow-capped mountains rose through a scrim of clouds. Hammar’s presence had a calming influence on Brand. He was the type of man, she considered, whom you might overlook in a crowd. Then, coming back to him, you’d realize he was the one you wanted to be around. He had a distinctive look, his hair cut short, a close-muscled body, eyes as dark as the northern winter sky, and a mouth that somehow seemed to match his face despite being almost cartoonishly large.

  Hammar looked over at Brand now, giving her a silent smile. She smiled back.

  As the car swung up a hill, the road took a sharp turn. Revealed below was a lake, only identifiable by the snow laden evergreens that marked the missing shoreline. The sun sparkled on the frozen snow. “Siljan,” Hammar said. “One of the largest lakes in Sweden. It’s not as big as your American Great Lakes. But we have two that are almost as large, lakes like oceans.“

  It was as many words as she had heard him speak in the previous hour.