“I am only centimeters away from you, Varzha,” he whispered to the empty air. “I’m watching. I’ll keep you safe.”
With the baron in residence, use of the truck would be out of the question. If he left the estate that night Dollar Boy would have to take the motocross.
Actually, that wasn’t really a problem. He loved the Husqvarna TC 125 motocross more than life itself. Workers at the lodge jury-rigged the motorbike with a trailer. The unit would serve Dollar Boy’s purpose almost as well as the truck. Its use on a winter night would freeze a rider’s body solid, but such was the life of a lovelorn teenager.
He settled in on his cot to wait, letting his mind play over the possibilities for the evening.
He knew what the gadje always said. Roma were knife people. But Dollar Boy saw himself as cut from a different, more modern mold. He wasn’t drawn to the violence, or the weapons, but they offered him protection from his real fear. Dreams unfulfilled by a blow from a foreign hand. Some day he would step out from his people’s shadow. He would go to America, where dreams come true under the lights of the Hollywood stars. There he would arm himself the way all American citizens did, with a lethal pistol. Until that golden time in the impossible future, he would just have to protect himself with a blade.
15.
Brand boarded Stockholm’s tunnelbana at the Ropsten station. Each day she woke a bit later, remediating her jet lag, adjusting to the time difference. She’d heard it said that in crossing time zones, you leave your soul behind and it takes a while for it to catch up.
After the bloody horrors at the Sofieborg Manor House, Brand felt the need to go to ground. She isolated herself in the guest house of Lukas Dalgren. Her cousin lived east of Stockholm in the suburb of Lidingö. She didn’t see much of him or his family. He carefully located his prized Tesla elsewhere. He didn’t inform Brand where the vehicle was, lest she think to borrow it. Brand concluded the man was somewhat afraid of her.
Lukas and Isabella endured a strained home life. They still lived together even though, as Isabella told her—giving the words a frosty air of permanence—“We’re apart.”
Leaving the guest house, Brand took the Lidingöbanan light-rail to reach Ropsten and changed to the commuter tunnelbana. The train immediately dove underground. The gleaming car glided along in almost ghostly silence. Its rubber-treaded wheels made all the difference in comparison with the screeching steel of the New York City subway.
In the reflection of the heavy plate glass of the car’s window, Brand saw a woman still youthful, startling gray-blue eyes still prominent, her Scandinavian bone structure a legacy of her grandparents. Gray also appeared in her hair, just a few streaks here and there. She’d always remembered the scene in Moonstruck, when Cher went from plain to dazzling via the magic of hair coloring. She knew she was expected to aspire to the enduring lure of youthful beauty, but it was redemption that Brand was contemplating, not transformation. She must change her life. Past failures confronted her in the shadow image flashing in the tunnelbana window. She saw forty approaching. The smoky stench of all her burned bridges at the NYPD still hung about her person. Unsure if she could ever return to the department, she found herself a stranger on two turfs, both in the States and in Sweden.
She felt a gust of nausea, and smiled to herself, at herself. Perhaps she would feel less sick if they allowed her to steer the train. Never a passenger, always a driver. Her motto. She had left the Glock behind at the guest house, hidden in her duffel. Naked and vulnerable, she took herself and her bundle of nerves into central Stockholm.
Krister Hammar had returned again and again to the multiple disappearances that plagued the gypsy community in Stockholm. Work at the Klara kyrka in central Stockholm immersed him in the chaotic, unsettled plight of recent refugees, immigrants from Africa, the multiple diasporas and the displaced, and the Romani community in particular. The church fed a hundred people every day and gave shelter at night, a bed to those in need.
Hammar evidently considered Brand as some sort of investigative resource who might help untangle the mystery of the stolen girls. Her first reaction had been to put him off. As a result of the manor house experience, she changed her mind.
“Listen,” Hammar had told her. “I have a friend in Stockholm who might be of use to you. Aino Lehtonen, a photographer. She used to work with my wife. And she has been shooting the Romani in Sweden for years. Lately her photos begin to reveal the missing.”
“And this woman would help me how?” Brand asked.
“Let’s call it for identification purposes,” Hammar said. “Lehtonen’s a visual detective. You will like her—she is part-American.”
Brand smiled inwardly at the assumption she would like someone because they have American pedigree. She agreed to meet Hammar and Aino Lehtonen at the Gamla Stan tunnelbanestation in the heart of Stockholm.
She was headed there now. At a stop the train doors opened to a fresh glut of passengers. They were suited up for winter yet still elegant, many on cell phones. Pushing in with the crowd came a weather-beaten man. He carried a blue Ikea bag of reinforced polypropylene slung over his shoulder, bulging with plastic bottles.
The tunnelbana car lurched forward. It’d been years since Brand worked the New York subways, a rookie transit cop on the night shift, jittered up, a sweaty hand on her sidearm, scanning the cars and station platforms for anything that blipped the radar. Those were definitely not the days. The bright Swedish metro car, with its colorful fabric-covered
