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

one who should be asking, ‘what’s up with that?’ Yes, I’m here in Sweden doing a little historical research. So what?”

“Two men lie dead—” Larsson said, but Brand cut him off.

“Gentlemen, please, I understand how things work, okay? First this Hans Voss person baits me, then suddenly the polis are at the door. I sense the hand of the brass here. Tell me who set this bullshit move in motion. I’d love to know whose feathers I’ve ruffled.”

And it’s actually three dead, Brand thought, maybe more. But she didn’t say it. No one had mentioned a dead body turning up at Västvall. Perhaps the corpse had been snowed over by the blizzard, waiting for the spring melt to be discovered. But she didn’t think so, and suspected a different kind of cover up.

After over an hour of back-and-forth, middle-of-the-night grilling, Hult finally released Brand, allowing her to walk free. Well, not entirely free.

“I’m going to have to retain your passport,” Hult said to her. “We might not be through with you just yet.”

She gave it up, not without regret. A persistent voice within—the voice of logic, of sanity—urged her to bail out immediately and return to life in New York. A double murder investigation, counseled Brand’s inner voice, might well serve as a roadblock to the success of her oh-so-vital mission in Sweden, to investigate her family’s past.

Hult also said he’d prefer if she remained in the immediate area of the Swedish capital, within easy reach if he needed to speak with her further.

“And keep away from members of the Voss family,” he added as a final caution.

“Well, they somehow keep turning up,” Brand said.

That was the message she was getting from the authorities. Yes to staying put in Stockholm, no to bothering the Vosses. Immediately after Detective Inspector Hult laid down those rules, Brand moved to violate both.

29.

They fled, the two of them. As soon as she emerged from the polisstation, she found Hammar waiting for her. He had already managed to retrieve the Saab from where it had been left at Lehtonen’s. Without a word he allowed her to climb into the driver’s seat.

“We have to get a goddamned different car,” Brand said. “This one sticks out like a pink mohawk.”

They bickered about that for a while, sounding like an old married couple. Hammar claimed there were plenty of old Saabs on the road, because the vehicle was such a miracle of durability. Brand doubted his argument. All the while they spoke, she guided the Saab through empty pre-dawn streets heading out of town. Her paranoia was such that she repeatedly checked the rear-view for a tail. She had no idea where she was going, other than away from the eyes of the Stockholm police.

“North on the E4,” Hammar advised her. “Then swing northwest at Tönnebro, taking road 83.” He promptly fell asleep in the passenger seat.

Daylight dawned with ice black skies. From the trials of the previous night, Brand should have been just as exhausted as Hammar. But she felt alive and awake, perhaps to a fault. She drove like a hellion, pushing the little three-cylinder Shrike engine in the Saab to its limits. Her mind raced. She wondered if she was in the midst of a manic episode. Multiple trains of thought coursed through her mind, crashing into and derailing each other. The skinhead’s sneer had by now become a sour sort of mantra.

What are you doing here, bitch? Go home!

The face of the sleeping Hammar brought out feelings of gentleness and hope in Brand. Here was a man who had thrown himself into the search for missing young women, vulnerable souls from a vulnerable immigrant community. As much as she was a lone wolf, Brand realized she depended upon Hammar’s presence for her mission. Over the years Brand had her difficulties with men. Serial relationships never seemed to settle into long-lasting ones. Being a police officer was notoriously hard on the “boy and girl thing.” But it was more than that. Brand suspected there was something broken inside her. She wondered what it was, where it came from. Why hadn’t she married? Why hadn’t she had children? Could the difficulty be due to her brooding Scandinavian roots?

Or was this idea too simple? After all, there were plenty of good times. Warm summer days with trips to a pond in the woods with Grandma Klara and Alice, her great aunt. Along the way the two women taught Veronika the names of plants and trees, berries. Following the seasons, they’d take along tin pails and spend hours picking plump blueberries off bushes, Veronika, as an adolescent, often eating more than she picked. Cherry season came, and fresh peaches at almost the same time. Everything was canned or frozen for use during the winters.

There were apple trees everywhere, the best fruit she would ever eat. Klara and Alice told her the appleseeds were brought over from early pioneering Swedes. Veronika believed most of what they told her in those early years. She absorbed their ways, but during her teenage years deliberately set aside much of what she had learned.

She watched the gradual destruction of the household. The consumption of alcohol, the on again off again emotions, the unexpected angry face. Gustav drank, and Brand’s mother Marta inherited the gene. Marta broke it off with Nick Brand, just as Veronika hit puberty. Later on came a second divorce, an unhappy home life, more and more erratic behavior.

The farm of her maternal grandparents at times represented an idyllic haven of peace for the young girl. But a sadness seemed to permeate the relationship of Klara and Gustav Dalgren. Brand fully realized their unhappiness only in retrospect. Some killing flaw lay at the heart of the marriage. Eventually, that flaw led to disaster. Brand stood witness to the arguments and shouting, making up her mind she would never travel the same route. Her pursuit of police work grew out of her childhood determination. Becoming a cop saved her