This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  They headed southeast, toward Stockholm and the coast. A dense cloud cover settled in.

  8.

  A half hour after departing the Dalgren homestead, Brand glided onto the empty E45. Thick stands of Scots pine and Norway spruce braced both sides of the roadway. The trees looked scrawny and struggling. The asphalt ran arrow straight. Ugly, dirty brownish-gray snow lay packed hard on both sides of the road.

  The Saab proved woefully underpowered. Hammar informed her it was the rare production vehicle that boasted three cylinders—not four, not six, not eight. Such limited capacity did not allow Brand to drive at her usual breakneck pace. The car did not sail. It chugged.

  They drove in silence for a few kilometers. Then out of nowhere Hammar asked, “What is the retirement age for the NYPD?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “You want to know why I left the force.”

  “It’s strange,” Hammar said. “In America you say ‘police force’ and here we say ‘police service’.”

  “Allt är bättre här,” Brand pronounced in halting Swedish. “‘Everything is better here.’ That’s your national motto, isn’t it?”

  Hammar smiled dutifully. “And yes, I would like to know,” he said after a pause. “Why did you quit your job with the New York City police? You are in your late thirties? That’s young to retire.”

  “Twenty and out, as they say,” Brand answered the question. “Full pension after twenty years.”

  “Oh.” Hammar looked not entirely convinced. The idea that Brand had already logged twenty years of experience in the NYPD would have meant she would have had to join out of high school. So her reference to twenty years rang false. She saw Hammar doing the math in his head.

  “The decision to part ways was something of a mutual thing between me and the department, okay?” Brand said. “Are we done with me? Can we change the subject now?”

  Traffic slowly increased as they proceeded toward Stockholm and the coast. Double tractor-trailers roared by the little car. A few of them were emblazoned with the word “VOSS.” The red letters were outlined in black.

  The shadowy figure in the photo that Elin had left for her loomed in her mind. Brand tried to summon up a comment that Lukas Dalgren had made on the drive to the reunion, which was now not even twenty-four hours in the past. There had been semis on the road then, too.

  Lukas had briefly pointed out a Voss truck. “Voss Transport is the largest trucking company in Sweden, third largest in the EU. They are Dalgren neighbors. Our family does not enjoy good relations with the Voss clan. It is a long feud even from back to the war.”

  Brand assumed that the war Lukas had referred to was WWII. Now, as Voss trucks rumbled past the Saab, she questioned Hammar.

  “They are a very big company,” he told her. “Trucking, yes, transportation, even shipping, but now they are in construction and finance, too.”

  “Lukas mentioned something about the Voss family living right next door. I guess he meant near the homestead in Härjedalen. Have you ever run into any of them?”

  “Oh, I know the Vosses.”

  Brand glanced over at him. “You do?”

  “Not in the sense we are friends. But it is a big, spreading clan, active in the local area and in Sweden as a whole.”

  “And you are familiar with them how?”

  “In my capacity as an attorney, I have several times faced Vosses in court,” he added. “Some in the family, perhaps the majority, like to operate in the gray area between legal and criminal.”

  “There’s a gray area?” Brand asked. “I’ve always tried to keep the line pretty clear.”

  “You know, in Sweden, twenty families rule the whole country. We turn our face to the world as a socialist democracy, but if we look in the mirror we see Wallenberg, Kamprad, Olsson and Lumberg, big names of hereditary dynasties that hold all the wealth.”

  He indicated one of the big Voss trucks. “The Vosses are most definitely not in the very top tier. Not in the upper one percent, as they say in America. But they are up there. They make their money in transport, though in the past decade they have diversified aggressively. The phrase in English is ‘fingers in a lot of pies’, isn’t it?”

  “And politics, is that one of the pies?” Brand asked.

  “Oh, yes. Politics, finance, power. Certain Vosses are involved in shadow operations on the extreme far right. Down through the years a few radicals in the clan have fallen into trouble with more cautious family members. This is usually because of association with these extremists. Often wealth and right-wing views go together.”

  She had now transferred the old snapshot to the pocket of her vest. Her grandmother used to spit out the name as though it were a curse. “Loke Voss!” she would exclaim. Her vituperation stood out because Klara Dalgren was not normally a demonstrative person. She rarely had a cruel word for anyone.

  “Lukas told you right,” Hammar said. “The original Voss homestead is less than a hundred kilometers from the Dalgren family farm, the place we just left. The Vosses own a small village called Västvall.”

  “They own a village?”

  “A ‘village’ here can be nothing more than two abandoned houses at the end of a road,” Hammar said. “The village of Västvall is certainly more than that. The family has holdings everywhere. On our way up ahead we could look at some Voss properties, if you like.”

  “Jesus, no—let’s just get back to Stockholm, all right?”

  But the Voss name nagged at her as they drove on. Blocks and gaps marked her memory of childhood. There were shadows in the past of her Swedish grandparents. Could one of those shadows have the name “Voss” attached to it? She had an uncomfortable hunch that it might be true. Heavy drinking fueled bitter, screaming arguments between Klara and Gustav. Brand as a young girl overheard them fight while huddled in bed, frightened.

  She and Hammar were still trailing behind one of the company’s semi-trailers. The name “Voss” hovered in the fading light of afternoon.

  “All right,” Brand said. She wondered if he would pick up the thread and realize she was agreeing to visit one of the Voss clan’s holdings.

  Hammar understood. “There is Sofieborg Manor House, not far up ahead. The Vosses own it now. Mid-seventeenth century, built by a Swedish count in honor of his wife. Said to be haunted. I have visited once before. The building is impressive. You will see. It tells a story of Swedish capitalists, past and present.”

  ◆◆◆

  At Hammar’s direction Brand exited off the highway. Whatever traffic there was dwindled in the rear-view. He pointed her along a route that led through several suburban towns. Dense forests covered the slopes above the frozen, snow covered surface of a lake.

  Brand was getting used to the traffic roundabouts, the foreign signage, the polite ways of other drivers. Along a stretch of suburban road a small flock of school children stepped onto the pavement in front of the car. Prattling among themselves, they seemed oblivious to the fact that a vehicle bore down on them.

  Brand braked abruptly. The Saab stalled. Before Hammar could stop her she leaped out of the car to confront the young jaywalkers.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled in English. “Do you want to get yourselves run over? Watch out where you’re going!”

  The half-dozen preteens stared at the madwoman. They didn’t seem overly concerned, just puzzled. One of them, a tall girl, echoed Brand’s words. She sounded as though she was puzzling out a phrase from a classroom lesson.

  “Watch out where you’re going,” she calmly repeated in accented English.

  “We have the right! Not you!” one of the others shouted.

  The kids moved on, laughing and talking, not even bothering to look back. Still upset, Brand climbed back into the car.

  “Very un-Swedish,” Hammar said. “Here we do not attack our children.”

  “I don’t care,” Brand said, starting the car again, jamming it into gear, and pulling away from the intersection.

&n
bsp; “You know, there are pills for what you have,” Hammar said.

  “Yes? What do I have?”

  “Anger issues. I would say Xanor, or some other sort of mild tranquilizer.”

  “And now you’re a doctor.” Privately she wondered if Hammar had somehow discovered her habitual use of amphetamines.

  Hammar adopted what sounded like his lawyer’s voice: “About twenty years past the law was changed giving pedestrians the right of way over cars. Though I admit it has resulted in more accidents.”

  “I neglected to run them over, then, as a favor,” Brand tried to keep a note of annoyance from her voice. She did not appreciate the reference to her anger issues. Even if it were true. Who did the man think he was?

  Hammar directed her, turn by turn, through a sparsely built expanse of countryside. Among their many holdings, he told her, the Vosses owned the large country estate that surrounded the historic manor house.

  “All this is family property,” he said, gesturing around to the forested terrain.

  “How do you know?” Brand asked.

  “I know,” Hammar answered simply.

  “So do we just drive up to the front door and knock? I mean, what’s our plan here?”

  Hammar indicated a private road that slanted off from the public one. “There’s the driveway,” he said. “Let’s go do some investigating, Detective.”

  “Whoa, really?” Brand pulled the Saab over to examine the turn-off.

  “We can go in and have a look, take direction from what we see,” Hammar said. “As I told you, I have visited here before, and it is often uninhabited. During the summer, tours are sometimes offered.”

  The ungated drive featured no identifying signage, simply a wide, well-plowed lane that led through a snowy grove of poplars and birch. Brand ventured forward. A few hundred meters in, the house came into view. Its symmetrical design and façade of cold, yellow render stood it apart from the neighboring traditional red farmhouses. A newly tacked on extension to accommodate multiple cars jutted out from the side, disrupting the original balance of the house. The whole structure was a ostentatious attempt to indicate wealth and power.

  Brand slowed the Saab as they approached. Graceful stands of birches suffused the yard with a pale light, which reflected off the residence’s façade of glazed stone. Closer in, the trees gave way to an expansive snow-covered lawn. No one was around, either on the grounds or near the structure. Untracked snow piled up on the walkway at the front entrance. A feeling of limbo emanated from the place, a sense of adjournment and suspended time. Nothing about it looked lived in.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have to knock,” Brand said.

  “No?” Hammar asked.

  Brand gestured to a side door of the building, which hung open. Next to it were the closed bays of the garage. The situation didn’t look right to her. There, a muddle of fresh footprints smashed in the overnight snow. She braked ten meters back from the house. The open door triggered an uneasy feeling. Her cop sense bristled. The deserted manor house offered a perfectly serene tableau, except for the single disturbing flaw of a wide open door.

  She had not reset her watch. Eight forty-two a.m., New York time. Adding six hours brought her almost to three o’clock. The dense light of a winter afternoon made it feel much later. Enveloping darkness threatened to swallow the whole scene. She climbed out of the Saab onto the snowy gravel drive.

  “Remain where you are,” she told Hammar, employing her best control-and-command voice. Hammar did not move from the Saab’s front passenger seat.

  Only Brand’s footfalls broke the oppressive silence. She approached the house slowly. Elsewhere in the yard, the surface of the snow was clean and unbroken. Not here, in front of the open door, where the snow was heavily tracked.

  As soon as she crossed the threshold, Brand stepped in blood.

  9.

  The open door gave out into a wood-paneled vestibule. This looked to be the less formal entrance to the manor house, perhaps for the help. The gloom of the fading afternoon reached inside the premises.

  Brand saw there were bloody footprints everywhere inside. The markings crisscrossed the entryway. She followed the tracks with her eyes. They showed heavily on the stairway that led to the second story. Something about footprints struck her as odd. Brand could not have immediately said what the strange quality was.

  She retreated. Returning to the car, she grabbed the handle of the driver’s side door. She swung it open, flipped back the seat and accessed her bag.

  “What?” Hammar asked. “Who’s in there?” Brand heard the undertone of fear in the man’s voice. She reached inside the bag. Pulling out half the contents, she piled her clothing on the back seat. Among the scattered garments she fished out a small leather pouch that was tucked within a rolled-up hand towel.

  “What did you see?” Hammar asked. “If something is not right here, we should call the police.”

  “I am the police,” Brand replied. She zipped the pouch open. Its metallic lining was specifically designed to thwart X-ray machines. Concealed inside the pouch was her duty pistol. The Glock’s frame was fabricated from high impact plastic. The weapon’s metal works were limited only to its barrel and firing mechanism. The composite construction rendered it less detectable during security screenings.

  Through being instructed in the detection of smuggled weapons, Brand had learned how to conceal one effectively. From her cop training she understood it wasn’t all that difficult to slip a handgun past an airport checkpoint. Not in carry-on, but in baggage. Blind tests indicated that security personnel missed ninety-five percent of all weapons.

  She knew the methods. She had lately developed a stubborn unwillingness to venture anywhere “naked," as the jargon had it, meaning unarmed. Her recent issues with several more aggressive members of the NYPD made her paranoid. After almost fifteen years on the force, the Glock 17 she carried was as much a part of her as her eyes, her hands. Leaving it behind was out of the question.

  When he saw the pistol, Hammar reacted as if struck. “What’s that? Where did you get that?” An expression of sick fascination crossed his face.

  Brand didn’t answer him. She held up her hand, gesturing Hammar to remain where he was.

  “Stay.” She sounded as though she were speaking to a pet. Hammar began to object. He went quiet when Brand racked the pistol. It was a sound, she had noticed, that gave a lot of people pause.

  Brand ducked back out of the Saab. She felt herself entering into crime scene mode, when a certain kind of hyper-vision took over. She needed a cool head. The comforting weight of the Glock helped anchor her.

  She moved forward, once again approaching the wide-open side door of the manor house. She stepped gingerly to avoid walking over the tracks that were already there. The odd aspect she had noticed on her first approach to the premises became clear. Mixed in with human footprints were prints of an animal. A large dog, it looked like. The paw-prints were huge. Or a bear, Brand guessed, as unlikely as the possibility was.

  As she crossed to the stairway, her heart rose further into her throat. Blood was everywhere. Penetrating the scene, stepping carefully to avoid contamination, actually felt a little thrilling, like tightrope walking. For the first time in a long while, Brand felt wholly alive. There were any number of customary police procedures she was violating just by being there. Her best move would be to call it in. She ventured forward anyway. The bloody tracks led upward to the second floor overlooking the garage.

  At the landing at the top of the stairs she turned right. A doorway opened into a long, narrow space. This was, what? Some kind of children’s playroom? The surroundings featured pint-size furniture, puppy decals decorating the walls, stuffed toys. Drawings of cute puppies, yes—and a foul, unholy stink that rose strong and sharp.

  Waves of disgust engulfed her. She steeled herself to discover the source of the spilled blood. Several times in the past, her work had led her to encounter hurt or murdered child
ren. She choked back nausea.

  A bank of windows ran along one side of the room. Because they were all shaded, the light remained dim. Brand clasped her sidearm tightly. The blood was fresh red, and she could no longer avoid stepping in it. Her fear threatened to rise to the level of panic.

  The first body lay tucked beside a couch-like collection of pillows, a stocky, bearded male of about thirty. Brand didn’t need more than a glance to understand the man was dead, but she bent to check for an aortic pulse anyway.

  Around the crotch area, the flesh displayed an extreme degree of evisceration. Brand had never before seen that level of ferocity. Someone—or something—had been hard at work on the body. Ripped apart clothing and skin revealed a bloody mass of torn flesh. Judging from the appearance of the wounds, the damage had not all been post-mortem. The victim’s voided bowels raised a stench.

  The body was cool to the touch. But rigor seemed not to have yet set in. That indicated the bearded man's life had been cut short only within the past few hours. In his out-flung hand he clutched a palm-size leather wallet. Brand gingerly flipped it open and saw it contained some sort of identification. She could puzzle out Swedish enough to understand the word “POLIS” in large, blocky red type.

  Could she really have a dead cop on her hands? The discovery transformed the whole situation. The alarm bells going off in her head tripled in volume. Reaching in cautiously, she quickly searched the body for a weapon. There was none. The man didn’t look like police. The beard and the clothing seemed wrong to her. But what did a Swedish plainclothes look like, anyway?

  Brand stood. Recoiling from what she had seen, she crossed the room. She raised a single window shade. Weak, cloud-filtered sunlight helped illuminate the ghastly scene. A second victim sprawled a short distance from the first. The body, also male, lay blood-covered and motionless.