The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (23 page)

He
believed that all interesting peop
le had a self
-
destructive streak
, a death instinct that gave them a
n inclina
tion to do w
hat they shouldn’t but had to
because of an inner conviction
. In spite of initial appearances, Magnus
was turning out to be one of these people whose determination could outdo plain reason
. Was it English bloody
-
mindedness
–
Magnus n
ot w
anting to do what he was told and h
avi
ng a mind of his own?
In any case, it was highly un
-
Swedish. Most Swedes were bloody sheep.

He’
d alwa
ys admired the Old
England
of k
nights and real men,
the total opposite of
today’s multicultural poofters. He was disgusted by the invasion of the cockroaches from Asia and the
Middle East
.
King Arthur’s realm
had
become as weak and soiled as
Sweden
.
In fact, the whole West was under threat.

He
was hoping
that
Magnus w
ould put up a good fight, that he’d f
inally
found
an adversary cast in his mould. He wanted to be tested, confident in the knowledge that he
’d be controlling the challenge.

Bypassing
one of the cameras, Magnus slipped into the back of a Scania truck, immediately appeari
ng on one of the monitors. The man behind the monitor
was pleased. Everyth
ing was going
according to plan.

‘
Welcome to the cast, Magnus.
’

43

I opened a
door at the back of the museum
,
leading
to a corridor with a ser
ies of doors.
Peering into one of them, I discovered
a
n editing room with state of the art equipment.
My first reaction was to wonder why
a museum
would
need
cutting
-
edge facilities, but on
second thought
i
t wasn’t that
strange
–
the
exhibition contai
ned
multimedia installations. And if the authorities
supporting the museum were
p
repared to pay… w
hy not
?
But w
hat was on these machines?
I tried to start one up. It had two large monitors and
a
big rac
k that looked like a car grill
e
–
probably the memory. The fan
made a terrible racket when it
came on.

I
eventually
managed
to get something on the screens, but only found
endless fi
les with animal and plant names –
fox, o
tter, birch, moose, lynx, wolf… – and w
hen I opened them that’s
what I found. No surprises, except that the photography was amazing, demonstrating exceptional patience, perceptiveness and attent
ion to detail. It made me connect
with the animals on a deeper plane. There was something almost met
aphysical a
bout their movements, as if each of them
embodied all li
ving beings. They were
deeply
engaging, almost t
ouching. Could this be my father’s work?
It must be
–
Thor
had
told me all the
nature magazines wanted his photos
. No wonder,
I’d never
seen anything like these. If they
were my father’s
, I was impressed. No, I was proud.
How come I didn’t have an iota of artistic genes?

All I could find w
hen
I walked deeper into the ba
ckstage universe of the museum
was
more
corridors and
stairs
. E
very single door was locked
.
I decided to give up and return
to the main hall,
but
steel shutters had come down to block my retreat.
I was trapped
.
The bare corridors were
the complete oppo
site of the rather baroque
exhibition
of the main hall
.
Here, t
here were only walls
and floors, v
ertical and hor
izontal lines, straight lines and
n
ever
-
ending flatness, c
oldness, with t
he s
teel shutters
coming down one af
ter the other, in front of me, b
ehind m
e, making me turn
, closing me down and
p
laying me like a rat.

I’d looked for another way out, but t
he building was watertight, fire alarm buttons the only decoration. I wasn’t going to escape unless s
omeone let me. I’d lost
control
and when
I pushed the double doors at the end of yet anot
her corridor
,
I expected
to be apprehende
d by a security guard any moment
.

I l
ooked back through the porthole, but
t
here was n
o way out
. I was
completely
locked in. Were these automatic security measu
res or c
ould they be fire doors? I didn’t know what to believe. I banged and kicked the steel
shutters as hard as I could, a
gain and again.

I’d anticipated trouble and thought I was prepared for the worst
,
but
I wasn’t.
When the metal curtain opened
, I was picked up by two men
.
They dragged me down a corridor without
a word. T
heir grip was painful,
their determination a bad omen. The reason
able option was to wait and see
,
in the hope t
hat I could talk my way out of this, b
ut
I didn’t trust the situation
–
t
hey wer
e treating me like a
convict
,
a chunk of meat.

After
the initial fear
-induced panic
, I opened up and s
tarted t
o see. I needed to take control, because t
he longer I waited to act, the unlikelier I was to
escape. The net was tightening and
I had to do somet
hing. I did. U
sing the two men as leverage
, I swung my leg up to
kick a fire alarm b
utton. I only had
one chance and of course
I blew it. One of the guards held down my leg and stood in front of the button. In a last desperate attempt, I threw myself into him,
bang
ing him into the
button and unleashing the ear
-
splitting alarm
.

44

There was only one police officer waiting out
side the museum. No SWAT team, just
the female pol
ice officer who’d saved my life
–
agent
Eva
Mikaelsson. I couldn’t help seeing it as a Kafkaesque loop.
Whatever I did
in this godforsaken place
, I bumped into the same police officer.
The guilt of shooting the man in the woods hit me again when I saw her. I’d
managed to repress
it while in the museum, but it wouldn’t go away.

I
’d
feared the worst
from Boeck
w
hen t
he steel shutters went
down
, especially a
fter
what I’d been through in the church bay
, but
when the guards took me to him,
h
e
was very understanding. He said that it must be very hard for me to come back to Mariehamn, coping with my father’s death.
The muse
um wouldn’t even press charges
. I seriously started to doubt about what I’d seen at the church. T
he footage and stills taken by my father pointed to
the utmost
integrity. I wasn’t an expert, but these were images I could relate to.
Although they weren’t of humans
,
they
suggested
exceptional humanity.
Could the
man commissioning
these images really be involved
in abduction and
molestation
?
Maybe Eva had been right. Maybe
b
eing away from
London
and having to process so many new impressio
ns
put me in a state of emotional overload
. Why hadn’t I listened to her
when she’d said it was just a film shoot
?

She
needed to establish wh
at I was doing
at the museum
and w
e could have gone back to the police station, but she had to make a stop and suggested I accompany her. It would save her time. The contrast between the men dragging me down the corridor and this friendly police officer didn’t make sense.
It all seemed too easy.
If I’d b
een found in a
London
museum, I would have been treated less informally. Here, being picked up by the police felt like a re
lief, almost a reward
.
Once aga
in I was thrown by
the informality of
a culture I
thought I knew.

The head
lights opened a tunnel onto
the winding winter lane.

‘
Where are we going?
’

‘
To the end of the road.
’

I liked to think that her answe
r had some deeper signification, but m
y expe
rience of Scandinavians told me
she meant
what she said, nothing more n
othing less. I still held on to the first option
though
–
t
he idea of going to the end of the road appealed to me.
If only I’d known then that
we
woul
d be doing exactly that
.

‘
Coffee?
’

Surely, everything was closed at this time of night.

‘
The thermos is on the backseat.
’

I reached f
or what turned out to be an
enormous pump
thermos
.

‘
You must drink a lot of coffee.
’

‘
What were you doing in the museum?
’

She
obviously
didn’t do small talk
–
another local trait
.

‘
I lost track of time.
’

‘The truth please
.
’

She’d spoken without looking at me as s
he
kept her eyes
locked on the road,
handling
the car like a rally driver.
Her driving was fast but firm. S
he s
lid
and counter
-
steered through the be
nds, barely touching the brakes,
o
bviously enjoying the control. I would
have spun out at the first turn and
could
n’t
help admiring
her skill. Her
touch
was
so light
that
it felt like the car
was dancing.