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
