This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  “So there you have your answer.”

  “Loke, the old man, he’s like a hundred years.”

  “No one is too old to die. In fact quite the opposite. He should be dead already.”

  The overhead lighting abruptly went out in the dance hall, so that the only illumination was the flicker of prayer candles. The sweet strains of a sad song floated over the dim interior. It was Vago Luna, playing his child-size violin, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

  Luri Kováč performed a lonely solo soft-shoe in the center of the empty, unlit floor. The few Romani women who still remained in the cavernous space began to weep again.

  Moro held up the four fingers on his massive, paw-like left hand, folding them down one by one.

  “Jarl Voss, Elias Voss, Vilgot Voss, Loke.”

  45.

  Human joy has many different expressions, but human grief is more single-minded.

  Four hundred and fifty kilometers to the northwest of the Stockholm dance hall where the Romani memorialized Dollar Boy, another funeral gathering occurred with far different mourners in attendance. Though they were fewer and perhaps less exuberant than the Roma, the same black thread ran through the weave.

  Jarl had not delivered his dead cousin to the Voss Medical Center in Sveg. Ylva kept yelling at him to go to the big hospital facility that the family had funded. Repeating the demand over and over, she was clearly off her nut. Go to the Medical Center, she kept insisting.

  “Better a mortuary,” Jarl told her.

  Ylva struck him in the mouth again. This time he slugged her back. Vanquished, the poor girl retreated, weeping, clutching Malte’s dead body in her arms. They drove like that for the rest of the way to Västvall.

  Junior Voss had smoothly orchestrated the public announcement of his nephew Malte Voss’s death. A tragic accident, a bitterly ironic end to the life of such a brilliant marksman—that he would die by a stray rifle shot while tramping through his beloved forest at Västvall. The local constabulary accepted the version of events presented to them. The source of the bullet was delicately left uninvestigated. There were many hunters in the woods of the Voss estate that day. A communal bear hunt had been organized, with rounds going off all the time. Lynx, red fox, many hares and even a wild boar were taken, though no bear.

  And tragically, supposedly, one human.

  “He died doing what he loved.” What a vile formulation, thought Ylva Voss, the dead man’s unconsummated soul mate. Malte didn’t want to die doing what he loved. He didn’t want to die doing what he hated. He was thirty years old. He didn’t want to fucking die at all.

  A portion of Ylva’s soul had been taken. She had been halved, rendered permanently off balance as surely as if a limb had been amputated, unable to walk, talk, or think normally now that Malte was gone.

  Alongside the black, cruelly vibrating thread of grief, a red hot wire of fury also ran through Ylva’s soul. She had no patience for mourning. The dulled and muffled quality of the family memorial, held in Vilgot’s sprawling rustic lodge, angered her. Malte’s biathlon friends livened up the gathering somewhat, guzzling brandy and smoking weed around a bonfire at the back of the grounds. Ylva had little tolerance for the bro attitude, either.

  Thankfully Jarl made himself scarce. Ylva had already socked him more than once. Though Jarl was the stronger of the two, when it came to Ylva he turned weak. She had bent him to her will as a child and he could not undo it. Ylva took full advantage of his inability to resist. She blackened his left eye as soon as they returned to Västvall from the catastrophe along the Hede River. Jarl was the cause of it all. He slunk around the compound, retreating to his quarters, attempting to weather the storm.

  Due for a reckoning, that boy. Jarl understood that fact. He avoided Ylva like the plague.

  In the region of the world around Västvall, whatever Junior Voss said went. The specific circumstances of Malte’s death were kept carefully under wraps. No autopsy, no official examination of the wound. If they had been conducted, tests would have determined the fatal shot came not from a hunting rifle but a 9mm round, probably fired by a Glock pistol. Questions would have multiplied. Inconsistencies in Junior’s official line might be brought to light.

  None of that happened. Malte’s father Vilgot made a stab at rebellion, demanding a full police investigation. He was quickly voted down by the other members of the brother’s generation.

  “What happened?” asked a stern Junior Voss of Ylva. She was the only Voss able to bring back a coherent account of the incident.

  “What happened?” echoed Vilgot Voss.

  To Ylva’s ears, it was like a goddamn chorus. Brothers and wives and cousins all wanted details of what went down when Malte was killed. They were like bees buzzing around her head. All she wanted to do was remain numb.

  She bit off her words when responding. “I nailed the guy who shot him,” she said. “Some gypsy asshole. Split his head open to the chin. He’s dead. You won’t see him around anymore.”

  Small satisfaction. “There were others,” Ylva added. “The immigration lawyer, we got him, too. And the American detective woman.”

  “She is no longer among the living, is that correct?” asked Junior. “You took care of her also?”

  Ylva didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to come out with the most bitter word in her life at that moment, but she forced herself. “No.”

  “Then you didn’t finish the job?” Junior made her say it again.

  “No.”

  “Hmm.” A bullshit non-response from Junior Voss’s lips. For Ylva it contained a whole encyclopedia of comment. Are you a Voss? Did you love your cousin Malte? How could you fail him in this way?

  Her cousin Hans represented Ylva’s only refuge from maddening grief. They met around the bonfire in the yard, lost amid the hail-fellow fraternity of biathletes.

  “As soon as this is over, you and me, right?” Ylva said to him.

  “Yeah, sure,” Hans said. But Ylva could tell he was wavering.

  “The American detective is in this business up to her neck. Plus we need to nail a few more of those Roma fuckers.”

  “You know, maybe we should let things cool out for a bit,” Hans said. “The Hede business is all over the news.”

  “Damn it, Hans!” Ylva snapped, raising her voice. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You want to back out?”

  Her outburst drew the attention of the biathlon bros around the campfire. They looked over as if Ylva was harshing their mellow.

  She drew Hans aside. “If that detective goes back to New York, we’ve lost her.”

  “You think?” Hans said. “Maybe it would be even better to do her over there. I could do with a trip to New York.”

  Ylva felt alone. All right, she thought, if I have to pursue this solo, so be it.

  Her father Gabriel Voss came out of the lodge and found the two of them. “Good news and bad news,” he said.

  “Always the bad first, you know that, pappa,” Ylva said.

  “The Sami lawyer didn’t die. He’s in a coma at the hospital in Sveg, about to be airlifted to Stockholm.”

  Ylva cursed. “Are you sure? It can’t be the guy, pappa—it just can’t! I broke his head open. Then Malte and I threw him into the river. That body won’t be discovered until the spring.”

  “And yet there the man is, in a hospital bed in our own medical center, a hundred kilometers away.”

  “No! I refuse to believe it.”

  “Belief isn’t necessary for truth, and exists altogether outside it.”

  Ylva turned to Hans. “Are you coming?”

  “Hold up,” Gabriel said. “According to our sources, the flight for life airlift isn’t happening until tomorrow morning. So a nighttime visit to the medical center would be fine.”

  “We have to get geared up,” Ylva said.

  “Your grandfather wants to speak with you, that comes first.”

  “All right,” Ylva responded, still impatient
. “So, wait, you said, bad news, good news. What’s the good?”

  “The American detective is with him.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what we hear.”

  Ylva smiled grimly. “‘Two birds with one stone,’” she said in English.

  “Yes,” Gabriel said.

  Ylva noticed that Hans looked a little sick. He was going to be of no use, she decided. Her mind buzzing, she returned to the lodge to seek out her grandfather, Loke Voss senior.

  “Hi, farfar,” Ylva said to the old man, kneeling next to his wheelchair.

  “I’m sorry for you,” he said. Loke searched his granddaughter’s face with his pale, watery eyes. “I know you and Malte had a special bond.”

  “I’m sorry for us all,” she responded automatically. Save me from age, Ylva thought. Perhaps, she considered, it was better that Malte died young. His beautiful self would never have to suffer the indignity of years.

  Everyone in the family feared that Malte’s death would be a shock to his grandfather’s system. The tragedy would claim two Voss lives instead of one. But the old man clutched at Ylva’s arm with surprising strength. His expression was odd, pleading. It was as if he would siphon some of Ylva’s youth in order to somehow sustain him in life. She saw him struggle to formulate his thoughts.

  “I’ve heard that woman detective is involved,” Loke said, his hoarse voice barely rising beyond a whisper.

  Ylva nodded. “The American, Veronika Brand.”

  “Veronika Brand,” the old man repeated. He had a strange, wistful tone to his voice, as if he were about to cry. “I’ve never met her.”

  “Of course not,” Ylva said.

  “Must she be…removed?”

  Ylva reacted with mild surprise. Ylva didn’t know how to respond. What was he asking? Why was he asking it? He did indeed appear to weep, or perhaps it was only an old man’s rheumy eyes leaking.

  “Must she…?” Loke repeated, trailing off.

  “Yes,” Ylva said firmly.

  “The death…has to stop!” Loke called out, afterwards abruptly sitting back and falling into brooding silence.

  Old age, concluded Ylva. One gets soft. A man at death’s door, of course he would wish for the death to stop. And if wishes were horses beggars would ride.

  Ylva rose to her feet. “That’s all right, farfar. I’ll make it stop.”

  Then she went about her business.

  46.

  “What I’m finding difficult to understand is how the animal could be taken from the estate without your knowledge.”

  Detective Inspector Vincent Hult had never before confronted his patron in such a direct manner. Normally the Baron expected and received deference due to his position. Even though nobility was challenged and debased in these egalitarian times, it still counted for something in Swedish society.

  “Do you know how to tell when a Roma is lying?” the Baron asked. “His lips are moving. The boy responsible for this foul business, Lash Mirga, has disappeared. I’ve informed the constabulary of his disappearance. So far, your police investigation has turned up nothing. I will have to put my own people on it.”

  Hult felt that the ball he had served to the Baron had returned quickly to his side of the court.

  “I understand,” he said placatingly, trying to smooth the Baron’s feathers. “You believed the beast had simply been taken out for veterinary procedures.”

  “Yes, I was lied to,” the Baron said in a clipped manner. “It happens, if you deign to deal with the lesser races.”

  They had gathered for fika around a small table in one of the barns on the Gammelhem property. Hult, the Baron, his man Magnusson, and Junior Voss—the four males stood in rubber boots and matching duck jackets of heavy-duty canvas. Two of them, the Baron and Junior Voss, displayed the casual condescension of power, with the other two clearly subordinate.

  Separated from them by a stout fence, a paddock spread with wood shavings featured a jumble of landscaped boulders at its opposite end. Three spotted hyenas, two pups and a nursing dam, its teats engorged and prominent, lounged lazily at the mouth of a den built into the rocks.

  “What I want to know from you,” the Baron said to Hult, “is if the connection of Gammelhem to this tawdry affair has been contained.”

  “I believe it has,” Hult responded. “The knowledge of the animal’s presence at the Hede River scene has been limited to two officers, and they have been directed to remain silent on the matter.”

  “Fenrir…” the Baron mused, gazing over at the other members of the small hyena pack he maintained at the estate's zoo. “I carried him in my arms onto the plane from Ghana. He grew into his magnificence here, in this corral.”

  “We buried the beast with proper ceremony,” put in Magnusson, leaving Hult and Voss to wonder just what might be the suitable internment rituals for hyenas.

  Junior spoke: “The Roma and your damn demon dogs from Africa are a separate matter. I have no doubt that you and Magnusson will punish your own people to everyone’s satisfaction. I am much more concerned with the possible involvement of the American woman and the Sami lawyer.”

  “They left the lodge immediately after the truck carrying Fenrir,” Magnusson said, earning a glare from the Baron.

  “What were you doing hosting them?” demanded Junior. “They’re very dangerous to us!”

  “Gentlemen!” Hult cut in. “We are focusing too much on deciding whose mess this was. What we need to be doing is cleaning it up quickly and thoroughly. I offer a mea culpa myself. I had the two of them brought in to the central polisstation in Stockholm, attempting to frighten them off. Perhaps I let them go too easily.”

  Junior cursed. “It’s ancient history, this whole Nordic Light thing! I wasn’t even born! What does the bitch want? Does she expect my ninety-eight year old father to offer some sort of public apology?”

  “Detective Brand’s motives don’t matter in the least,” Hult said authoritatively. “She is a lonely, bitter woman who was recently fired from her post in the NYPD. It would be sad if it weren’t so pathetic. But like a wounded animal, she can still bite.”

  “Not particularly good-looking, I hear?” Junior Voss asked.

  “Ill-favored,” Hult said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the Baron mused. “I’ve often thought there’s a kind of beauty that has something wrong with it. An off-kilter look can be alluring. It is not the perfect, magazine-style, prefabricated prettiness that is so commonly foisted upon us. I’m thinking of someone like Bette Davis, or maybe more of your generation, the Streep woman.”

  “I don’t see any of that in the Brand bitch,” Hult said.

  “Not to my taste, of course,” the Baron added quickly. “But I wouldn’t deny her intelligence, however much her life is in pieces.”

  “Say we remove her from the scene,” Junior said. “What could we expect in return?”

  “Remove…?” Hult asked, letting the question dangle.

  “I’m afraid my niece Ylva has formed a violent hatred of this Brand person,” Junior said. “She is heartbroken over her cousin Malte’s death. She was so fond of him.”

  “Hult?” Baron Kron asked. “What do you say?”

  “It depended on how it was done, or course. To kill a visiting cop—”

  “—A suspended cop, disgraced in her own jurisdiction,” Junior cut in.

  “Okay, but the job still requires a certain degree of care,” Hult said. “In this particular case, my involvement must be masked. I’m not in any position to have it done myself.”

  “Of course not,” Junior said hurriedly.

  “If the woman could just…vanish?” Magnusson suggested.

  “Turn up with the spring thaw,” the Baron agreed.

  “Listen, gents,” Hult said, “as long as things don’t get too messy, I think I can handle any repercussions on the part of the police.”

  “We are agreed, then,” the Baron said. “Try to control Ylva, Junior, will yo
u? Bless her black heart, I know the young woman can be a terror when she wants to be.”

  “What about the Sami lawyer, gentlemen?” Magnusson asked. “We have not spoken about him.”

  “Already dead, or soon will be,” Junior said. He screwed up his face into an expression of disgust. “Damn, those animals stink like Satan’s anus.”

  Kron gave a sweet smile. “I no longer smell it myself. The odor stems from a substance excreted from certain glands. They smear it everywhere they go.”

  “Ugh,” coughed Junior. “I’m feeling as though they’ve smeared it on me.”

  “Would you like to hear the term for the excreta? ‘Hyena butter’!” Kron laughed coarsely.

  “I have to leave or I’ll vomit,” Junior exclaimed.“I need something to wash the stench out of my mouth.”

  “Shall we adjourn to the lodge, then?” Kron suggested. “There is a cuvée of Krug I’ve been wanting to attack.”

  As they left the barn, the Baron took a last glance over his shoulder at the hyena dam. She panted hungrily in the darkness of her den.

  47.

  Brand knew she would have to leave the medical center as soon as possible. The effects of hypothermia dissipated, leaving only a maddening prickly feeling in her extremities. She was healthy enough to go, the doctors at Sveg were willing to discharge her, but still she failed to depart.

  Hammar remained in a coma. It seemed less and less likely that he would regain consciousness anytime soon. In a four-hour operation that occurred while he was still under, surgeons pieced back together the pieces of his skull, inserting as a temporary fix a series of tiny stainless steel screws into the caved-in parietal bone. They would soon be flying him via helicopter to a hospital in Stockholm.

  The threat of imminent discovery by the Voss family formed the pressing reason Brand had to absent herself from the hospital sooner rather than later. Not only that, but somewhere nearby, law enforcement authorities were playing a game of connect-a-dot. They would soon place her and Hammar at the chalet along the Hede River.