This Land is no Stranger Sarah Hollister (best biographies to read .txt) 📖

“I’m sorry,” Brand said. “Who are you?”

“No, I’m sorry!” Joyner clapped his hands. He spoke in clipped sentences. “Deputy consul. Your man in Sweden. You caught me at home, Uppsala. A real special city, if you haven’t been. College town. All it needs is a little more sunlight, like everywhere else around here this time of year.”

Charles Joyner pronounced the name of the town as “Oopsala.” Brand had him categorized as some sort of flunky assistant. Somebody’s junior’s junior. Sent out to clean up the Ljusdal mess.

The deputy consul leaned in. Brand could smell his breath, tobacco overlaid with a heavy mint smell.

“What I would recommend to you, right now? Return home. I know you’ve got a heap of trouble back there. Just between you and me and these four walls, I’ve been on the phone with New York. Things are happening. The situation might develop in your favor. The deputy commissioner indicated she needs you back in the fold. Your testimony would be crucial, she said. Well, I didn’t hear her say that personally. I only talked to her subordinate. I don’t recall the name. But that’s good news, right?”

He practically bellowed out his last sentence. Brand imagined the man’s superior at the consulate giving Joyner his marching orders. For chrissakes, Charlie, get the woman detective out of there. Have her airlifted if needs be. For the second time in half an hour she witnessed someone make a gesture indicating that she should exit the room.

“Sure, sure, good news," Brand agreed. She stood. “It’s just that, the local constables, sir, they say, please don’t leave the country for now. Then you tell me to get the hell out of town. I’m sorry, I’m feeling jerked around here. It’s ping-pong city in this place.”

“Don’t worry about those guys!” Charlie Joyner crowed. “I’ll take care of them. You just have a good flight back to NYC. Sweden in February, brrrr! Am I right?”

Brand let him guide her out of the little office and along a corridor to the station lobby. He had a limousine waiting at the curb. A car from the consulate, he said. The trip to Arlanda would be all taken care of, he said.

“Arlanda?”

“Back home!” Joyner said brightly.

Brand was half stunned and half amused by the man’s presumption. Like she was a mere chess piece he could move around the board at will.

Joyner stood poised holding the station door open, waiting for Brand to head outside and dive directly into the limo.

Through the lobby’s glass windows she saw the ancient blue Saab. The owner sat inside, head lowered with only the light from his phone illuminating the interior of the car against the dark afternoon sky. Even from a distance, his hunched profile gave away the fear of someone who had never been on the wrong side of the law. Brand was surprised at the sense of relief she felt upon seeing Hammar. She stepped through the door.

“My ride’s here,” Brand said. She pushed past Joyner.

“You’re making a mistake, Detective,” Joyner called after her. “No one wants you here.”

Brand turned. “That never stopped me before.” She strode on.

“From now on, you’re on your own,” Joyner said. “You get into trouble, we can’t pull you out.” Then he climbed into the car from the consulate and left.

◆◆◆

Brand crossed to Hammar. She stood beside the car, waiting outside the Saab’s driver’s side door. Shaking his head, Hammar yielded his place to her.

“You’re impossible,” he said.

When she entered, she simply sat at the wheel without making a move to start the engine. Something didn’t add up.

“They knew I was a Dalgren,” she said. “Someone did, anyhow.”

“What?”

“Someone in the cop shop, I didn’t see who—someone said I was a Dalgren.”

“Okay, yes,” Hammar said. “Well, we must have told them. Or maybe I told them, back at the manor house, that we had just come from a family reunion. You said that, too, maybe? So the police already heard the name Dalgren, isn’t that right? What’s so wrong about that?”

That’s the Dalgren bitch.

Had she heard the words, or just imagined them?

She turned the ignition key, engaged the Saab’s clutch, slipped the transmission into gear, and performed a U-turn in the police station driveway in order to head back toward the highway.

Except for occasional navigating instructions from Hammar, they rode in silence. Brand was thinking about a dog, or bear, or bear-dog. A beast, anyway. A blond beast that moved in the underbrush like a ghost.

The vision was already fading from her mind. The light had been bad. At the time when she thought she saw the beast, her body’s physical chemistry was understandably disrupted by encountering a horrific crime scene. Her respiration had been heightened. Fight-or-flight biochemicals were flooding her system. She was probably mistaken about the whole thing.

Hammar broke the silence. “You think I’ve tricked you, that I played you, as you say. But I’ve actually done you a favor.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brand said. “A huge favor, introducing me to that scene back there.”

“You’ve got the Voss family on your mind, right? You’re a detective. You want to find out all about them.”

She glanced over at him. “Yes.”

“What was in that house tells a basic truth. The Vosses are capable of violent extremes. Maybe the two dead men betrayed them somehow, or had to be silenced.”

“You admit that you suspected the Voss name was somehow connected to human trafficking. That’s why you brought me out there. Under false pretenses.”

“What could be a better front for human trafficking than a trucking company?” he asked. “I don’t think you realize who the Vosses are.”

“You don’t have the faintest idea what I realize,” Brand said irritably.

“You know, in Sweden, you and I are equal,” Hammar said. “You are not a police detective, are you? Not here. Just an ordinary person on a visit to the homeland.”

“Your point is? I know you must have one.”

“A bit of humility might be good.”

“So everyone tells me,” Brand said.

13.

Within the NYPD, the line