This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  Don’t do it.

  Swedish prisons were notoriously cushy, she thought. No life sentences here. She’d be out in no time.

  Don’t do it.

  Brand bent down and picked up her long-lost duty gun, reuniting with the weapon that had been stolen away by a mohawk crazy-man with pink hair.

  As she straightened with the pistol in her hand, Brand gazed over the mad scramble in the square. An arresting sight caught her eye, a pair of figures in a window at the top of a building a football pitch away.

  The two were clearly visible. They seemed engaged in an embrace. With a start Brand recognized both of them.

  Moro Part attempted to push Ylva Voss out of the eight-story window to her death. Ylva fought to stop him from doing so.

  The outlandish biathlon rifle dropped first, plummeting through the air. Again, Brand felt more than heard the impact as the weapon bounced once and settled. Then the shooter and her attacker followed, Moro and Ylva locked in a death grip, tracing an arrow-straight trajectory before also slamming onto the stone pavement.

  The two bodies bounced not at all.

  Part four: Coda

  58.

  Krister Hammar stood looking out the window of his second floor office, his back to the functional ergonomic desk that was scattered with the legal documents that had consumed his life before this tawdry affair. He was waiting on his 11 o’clock appointment. Involuntarily he began counting the dead, folding his fingers over one by one, as he had once seen old Elin Dalgren do, toting up the evils done to her family amidst her plans for retribution.

  A few hours earlier he had dropped Veronika Brand off at the express train to Arlanda airport. Their leave-taking had been awkward. Hammar could not decide if they should embrace, if he should kiss her cheeks, or merely bid her a fond farewell.

  Brand had appeared flustered, also. In the end they settled on a stiff bow and a handshake, performed there in the antiseptic public precincts of the express station.

  The swift walk back to his Vasaplan office had not given him time to process the exchange. But now, Hammar shook his head. A bow! The formality represented a denial of all the rigors they had been through. With a drop in his gut he realized—too late, since she was already on a plane back to New York City—that his feelings toward Brand were more complex than he previously understood.

  What was their precise relationship? Not that of comrades in the foxhole, as he had felt during their recent travails. Alternative images flashed through his mind. Partners on a dance floor, a couple in the basket of a hot air balloon, two more-than-friends driving back roads together in an ancient blue Saab.

  Ridiculous. Though his physical wounds had healed, his moods swung wildly. From elation he experienced a blast of disappointment. She was gone. He had let her go. He consoled himself with the idea that the woman had not dropped off the edge of the earth. America was within easy reach.

  “Scandinavian Air has daily non-stops to New York every day,” he muttered to himself out loud, then immediately realized the stupid redundancy of his words. “Daily… every day.” Good lord, man, get a grip on yourself. Had her flight left yet? He should call her. Wish her a happy flight. But her phone rarely worked in Sweden.

  His thoughts tumbled. With a stab of guilt he thought of his late wife, Tove. She had warned him about the Vosses, cataloging their crimes in her work as a journalist. She died in a car crash that Hammar had always half-believed revealed the hand of the Voss family. So he harbored his own revenge, festering inside him since Tove’s accident and the blurred months since. Then he discovered her files, and everything came into sharp focus, a tangled web of underhanded dealing and outright swindling of native property holders.

  The Vosses. The family was deeply involved with an ongoing land grab in Norrbotten and Lappland, hijacking the birthright of the Sami, Hammar’s people. Generations of the Voss clan took what they wanted with impunity, destroying anyone who got in their way. But Tove was not just anyone.

  Hammar’s attention was diverted by a sight in the square below his window. Two benign looking elderly people, struggling against the strong wind that had blown into the city overnight.

  Sanna and Folke Dalgren.

  Veronika Brand’s great aunt and uncle, the hosts for the Dalgren reunion that seemed to have happened a hundred years in the past, had arrived for their scheduled debriefing.

  To see them from afar made the two of them appear harmless, capable of no act of violence greater than stepping on an ant. Yet here they had arrived, a couple of prime movers—the prime movers—behind the violent events of the past weeks.

  Sanna and Folke passed out of sight below. The stench of death clung to Hammar’s skin. He already knew what the two elderly Dalgrens would say, how they would claim their righteousness.

  Human traffickers, desecrators of the culture, figures of power and ruthlessness, didn’t they all deserve the most violent ends possible?

  But all the while Sanna and Folke sheltered safely at the family home in Härjedalen, Hammar himself had stepped in the blood of their victims, choked on the heavy smell of iron in his nostrils, recoiled at the sight of chopped flesh strewn throughout the death house in Djursholm. He had witnessed horrors that could never be unseen.

  Hammar heard the two as they made their way down the corridor to his office, their voices light with laughter. They entered without knocking, chattering happily. Practically ebullient with their victory. Them with their clean hands.

  “Sit!” Hammar welcomed them with a command, motioning to the chairs normally reserved for Hammar's clients, ready to entrust him with their darkest truths. “And yes,” he said in response to the questioning looks of anticipation on their faces. “I dropped Veronika off at Arlanda Express. Her flight to New York should be taking off right about now.”

  “I’m a little surprised the police handed back her passport so readily,” Sanna said, easing herself into one of the comfortable chairs.

  “Detective Inspector Hult remains under investigation for his collusion with the Vosses,” Hammar said. “An indictment is forthcoming. Which is why Veronika pretty much got off scot-free.”

  “Why we all did,” Folke added.

  “By design,” Sanna said.

  “Yes,” the other two agreed in unison. Hammar considered he had been too easily drawn into the Dalgren’s revenge scheme. His misguided belief was that it would in some way right the wrongs against Tove, born a Dalgren herself.

  “We are missing someone else here, also,” Folke said.

  “Dear mother Elin,” Sanna said. “I grieve she didn’t live to see her stolen life, friends and family, avenged.”

  Folke nodded. “It was she who insisted we reach out to a certain American detective.”

  “We needed Veronika, didn’t we?” Sanna asked in almost a pleading tone. “Blame me. I recruited her. I brought her to Sweden.”

  “Let’s not talk about the woman,” Hammar said.

  “No, let’s not,” Folke said.

  Sanna reached out to lay her hand on Hammar’s arm. “The real mystery is how you made it off your death bed so soon.”

  “With enough morphine,” Hammar said, “Anything is possible.”

  Folke smiled. “Last time we saw you, you looked like—”

  “—Like Santa Claus the day after Christmas,” Hammar interrupted mirthlessly. “Yes, our friend Moro Part’s line.”

  “Now the police say Moro Part killed Loke Voss,” Folke said.

  “What?” Krister was surprised.

  “Took the rifle away from Ylva,” Sanna added, nodding. “Knocked her out and did the deed. Then she came back awake, attacked him, and they fell.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Hammar said. “For one thing—”

  Folke cut him off. “Don’t you see? They want anything but a Voss killing a Voss. Anything but a granddaughter killing her grandfather, even accidentally. It’s much tidier for them if the Romani godfather did it.”

  “In the e
nd, revenge was dished up suitably cold,” Sanna said.

  “Stone cold,” Folke said. “Over a half century in the deep freeze.”

  “The Dalgrens do not forget,” Sanna said briskly. “Everyone’s dead who should be. And everyone who is left alive will have a few more breaths to cherish but will die soon enough anyway.”

  “That’s the cheerful Swedish outlook,” Hammar said. He shivered inwardly.

  The three again fell silent. Folke fooled with his pipe, tapping the unlit bowl in his hand. A vague sense of unease still hung in the air.

  “You know, I’m sorry,” Hammar said. “I know I said we shouldn’t talk about her, but I can’t help thinking of Veronika. I was never really comfortable keeping her in the dark.”

  Folke responded with a phrase in English. “What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.”

  “You played her like a harp,” Hammar said. And me as well, he added silently to himself.

  “Did we?” Sanna asked. “I was never sure. At times I believed she was playing us.”

  “What’s done is done,” Folke said. “Our Veronika left the country none the wiser.”

  “Which makes me challenge the idea that she really is a great detective,” Sanna said. “Or even a competent one.”

  “Recall that I myself would not be present here if we had not involved her,” Hammar said. “I’d be a frozen block of ice floating in the Hede River.”

  “Still, even so, I agree with Folke about the quality of her professional expertise.” Sanna stared off, musing. “She didn’t half know what she was doing. Pretending to hide her drug use. I feel for the poor woman. It was painful to watch her groping her way through this mess. Perhaps we should have laid out our entire strategy right from the start.”

  “No regrets, you two,” Folke said. “We’ve already been through this. Our American cousin acted as an absolutely vital element in the plan, did she not? Whether she was ignorant of our strategy or not, it turned out not to matter.”

  “‘Eyes the color of the winter sea,’” Sanna said with a bite in her tone. “I just happened across that phrase in a novel I picked up. The line made the hair on the back of my neck stand. I thought, that’s her. That’s Veronika. With her Voss eyes.”

  “Oh please, Sanna. “This is not a novel. It’s real, real people massacred,” Hammar said.

  “There’s no playing the innocent now, Krister,” Sanna said, her voice ice cold, her eyes hard as metal. “It’s too late for that.”

  She was right. He was bloody whether or not he wielded the axe or pulled the trigger. He had throughout believed his motivations more pure than their second-hand hate—the dream of retribution his dead wife’s family had nurtured since the dying embers of the Nordic Light had been extinguished.

  At the sound of footfalls on the oak floor of the corridor, the three paused.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” Sanna asked. She and Folke twisted around to look behind them, waiting.

  For a moment, she stood in the doorway, a vision in her all-black New York clothing, hair covered by the same watch cap she had worn entering the country.

  The blood drained from Hammar’s face.

  Veronika Brand crossed the room towards them, a set expression on her face, not giving anything away.

  “I thought you put her on the express train to the airport,” Sanna hissed.

  “I did!” Hammar responded. He started to rise, then slumped back in his chair.

  “Hello, everyone,” Brand said quietly, standing over them.

  They stared at her.

  “Did I miss anything?” she asked.

  Book club questions

  ◆◆◆

  - How are minorities like the Sami and the Roma portrayed in the book? How have the authors dealt with stereotypes and prejudice?

  - How have your perceptions of the Roma changed from reading this book?

  - Do you have more or less compassion for victims that are from a minority group?

  - What is the role of the Sami in Swedish culture and society? How are they portrayed in this and other books?

  - Aino Lehtonen has a mixed heritage but what aspect of this stands out and is this important to how she is perceived by her peers in Stockholm?

  - Why does Krister care so much about the Roma?

  ◆◆◆

  - How does the representation of women differ from other crime thrillers? Does it reinforce or challenge gender stereotypes?

  - By the end of the book, Varzha is engaged to be married. Was this an expected part of her narrative?¨

  - Krister Hammar’s wife, Tove is a silent character in the book. How would her voice have influenced the storyline?

  - What do Elin, Veronika and Varzha have in common?

  - Loke takes out his revenge on Gustav by raping Klara. How does this objectification or ownership of women contrast to how other women are portrayed?

  - What are the strategies that Varzha Luna employs to assume control of her life?

  ◆◆◆

  - How does the use of Swedish enhance or detract from the story telling?

  - How effectively is Swedish used as a tool for reinforcing Veronika as an outsider?

  - When Veronika visits her relatives in Sweden, they all speak English to her; how does that affect their relationship?

  - What does Veronika’s voice and her choice of words say about her character?

  - Varzha captors assume she can’t understand Swedish. What does this say about both her captors and migrant groups?

  ◆◆◆

  - Why would you take revenge for something that happened a long time ago?

  - What would Elin and Klara say if they knew what happened after their deaths?

  - How does Loke Voss react when he meets Veronika?

  - Moro Part plays a critical role in facilitating the revenge plot, but what do you think are his true motives?

  - Why are Ylva’s and Malte driven to avenge perceived wrongs?

  ◆◆◆

  - Why does Veronika do what Krister Hammar tells her?

  - Krister Hammar could tell Veronika about the cabal but doesn’t. Why do you think this is?

  - What do you think happened to Lel and the other trafficked girls?

  - When Veronika was confronted with the crime scene in the Djursholm house, was she critical enough of Krister Hammar?

  - Krister owns an old Saab that he takes care of lovingly. How do the authors use his car as a way of defining his identity?

  - What role does Nordic mythology and nationalism play for the Vosses?

  - When Varzha is being taken from Drottninggatan, she doesn't seem to object. Wouldn’t this have made her captors suspicious?

  ◆◆◆

  - The book takes place mainly in two regions: the capital city of Stockholm and the desolate province of Härjedalen. How do these two regions define the characters and the story?

  - What role does weather play in the book? How would the story have been different if it had been set in summer?

  - Why do you think the authors chose the region of Härjedalen as the setting for their story?

  - What cultural differences does Veronika encounter in Sweden?

  - How are the car journeys used to understand the characters?

  ◆◆◆

  - Veronika expects Swedes to be tall and blond and she is surprised that the person who meets her at customs at the airport looks ‘un-Swedish’. What misconceptions or stereotypes do you think the book challenges or reinforces?

  - What sense do you get of Nordic culture and people from the book, in terms of looks, style, behaviour and lifestyle?

  - How would Swedes describe a stereotypical American? Does Veronika live up to that idea?

  - The Vosses seem to be fascinated by the holding onto a reactionary ideal of Swedish culture. Is this a trend that is relevant now or have people always thought this way?

  - How do perceptions and assumptions about US culture (for example, American TV crime sho
ws) shape the reception Veronika receives in Sweden?

  - In what ways do Veronika’s conflicts with Swedish police illustrate the differences in public safety officers in Sweden versus America?