The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy)

THE ICE CAGE

Copyright
2012 Olivier Nilsson-Julien

All Rights Reserved

First published in
Great Britain
in 2012

b
y
Olivier Nilsson-Julien
at
KDP

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permissi
on in writing from the author
, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper, broadcast
or other relevant publication
.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Table of Contents

M
a
p

Pr
o
l
o
gue

Chap
t
e
r 1

C
h
a
pter 10

Ch
a
p
te
r
20

C
h
a
pt
e
r 30

C
h
a
p
t
e
r 40

C
h
a
p
t
er 50

C
h
ap
t
e
r
60

Chap
t
er
70

C
h
apt
e
r
80

Cha
p
te
r
90

Cha
p
t
er 1
0
0

Ac
k
n
o
w
le
d
gements

About t
h
e author

Feedb
a
ck

Magn
u
s se
r
ies

To Lindsay
,
Estelle &
Oscar

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

Edward Abbey

Balti
c
Se
a
, Tuesday 28 February 2006

They say that when you die,
you see your life in flashback
.
I didn’t. All I saw was what I h
adn’t done, what I should and
could have done. I tried to slam my
elbow against the ice, but it came out as
a caress, barely a movement, not even a touch. I had no power
left and the ice was too close. It
was perfect, strong, sealed. O
n top. There were
sh
adows attacking the ice and the darkness came with
unb
earable noise. My lungs were imp
loding,
trapped between the seabed and the ice
.

1

On winter Sundays Lisa Forsman and her husband Mikael would lace
up their skates
and head
out
into the archipelago. This morning they’d discussed making a full day of it
,
but settled for a picnic in a local bay. They’d brought sandwiches and coffee
in a thermos
. Solviken was their regular summer beach. They enjoyed the contrast
–
imagining themselves in swimming trunks, as opposed to polar outfits.

They
hit the ice a little after 7
a
.m
. It was a perfect morning with blue sky, no wind and black ice. The only sound was the crackling
under their skates.
They
took their time
–
t
his was their only chance to talk properly. They had to decide whether to buy a new car
and during the week they
w
ere too busy to make a decision
.
Their Clio had broken down and
Mikael was against a replacement. Did
they really need a car on a tiny
island,
where
t
he
longest road was 30 kilometres?
Working as a teacher and a bank clerk, they had to watch their
finances
, especially as they were suppo
rting their daughter’s
biology
studies. But Lisa
still thought
that
wheels were handy, e
ven an old banger would do. They were halfway to a compromise
,
when they arrived in the bay.

‘
Look!
’

At first L
isa couldn’t understand why
Mikael
was shouting
. The bay was still,
e
v
erything normal, but then
she saw
the
man
lying naked on the ice
,
staring at the sky. Mikael wanted to turn back
immediately
.
This wasn’t the Med
–
t
here were enough coves not to have to share
with a nudist
.

‘
Wait.
’

The man
wasn’t moving
. I
t could have been an eccentric, but with
the thermometer flirting
with
-
30°C
overnight and
still
hovering
around
-
20
°C
, Lisa wanted to make sure he was OK.
She skated closer, until she was about
10
meters away
.

‘He
llo?
’

He
still
didn’t budge.

‘
Y
ou OK?
’

She looked a
round and saw
a car
parked behind the rocks. She skated
over
to the man,
with
Mikael
in tow
. The silence was total as they stopped
. The man
was lifeless and his hair
had turned in
to an
ice cap.
There was a hole
in the ice
next to
him. It was
as if the sea had regurgit
ated him and
left him stranded.
His body was so deep
-
frozen and his whiteness so surreal that there was n
o question he was dead. Mikael stared
with his
mouth wide
open
,
p
aralysed.
Numbers were his forte, life wasn’t.

‘
Give me your phone.
’

Mikael
reached for his mobile and handed it to Lisa
,
who dial
led while he did the fainting
. Now she had two men
lying at her feet
–
o
ne naked, o
ne in full winter gear
,
b
oth lifeless.
Thankfully t
he ambulance was on its way.

2

He hated
Finland
.

Saab, Volvo, Björn Borg, ABBA, Henrik Larsson, ASEA, Absolut Vodka, Karolina Klüft, IKEA… The Swedish superiority was evident, as clear and sparkling as Ramlösa mineral water. Ask a foreigner to name a Finnish writer, or just a mineral water for that
sake
. He couldn’t. A composer? Sibelius might spring to mind
, but he was
a Swedish Finn.
Their artists didn’t exactly top the music charts either.
Nokia? Founded by another Swedish
-
speaking
Finn.
W
ithout the oppressed Swedish minority,
Finland
wouldn’t even exist. It would be a bunch of scattered degenerates living in mosquito
-
infested forests.
It was
.

3

When my father’s
solicitor called to tell me
my father had drowned,
I wasn’
t sure what to do –
I hadn’t seen the man for 20 years. But
i
n the end I decided to go
.
I would regret it if I didn’t and Carrie agreed I should, if nothing else to get a clearer picture of
my Scandinavian roots
.
I
jumped on a
f
light from Stansted to Arlanda
and a
fter
a quick train journey to
Stockholm
followed by
a two
-
hour
wait at the ferry terminal
, I boarded
the
connection to
Mariehamn
.

Flying over
Sweden
, I’d seen
hundreds of lakes scattered in the forests.
Cruising towards the Åland
archipelago, I saw
equal numbers of
tree
-
covered islands scattered in the sea.
It
looked like a
photographic
n
egative of the Swedish mainl
and.

Although Åland was officially Finnish
, e
v
eryone saw the archipelago
as Swedish. Not only was it nearer the Swedish mainland, but the islanders spoke Swedish and referred to mainland
Finland
as ‘actual
Finland
’
,
as if they were living in an ‘imaginary’
Finland
, as
if they were ‘i
maginary Finns’ but real
-
life Swedes.
Ultimately
, they were
just
Ålanders
.