The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (26 page)

The car slowed down before driving
into the church
bay and
stopping
in front of the t
imber
church.
I was led
in through the double doors and dumped into a
cloakroom
.
There was nothing except for a chair and a table with a wooden figure, possibly the one the craftsman had been carving when I first came to the church bay. The detail and precision of the woodwork was amazing, but what did Boeck see in it?
More importantly, what was he planning to do with me?

48

She dropped the keys as she was getting out of t
he car at the end of her shift.
It was when she
reached down
to pick them up that she
found it
–
Magnus’ passport.
It must have slipped out when
he gave her Anna’s
.

She looked
at his
photo ag
ain. There was something cheeky about his eyes. A no
-
brainer really
–
definitely
tastier
than
any of
the
local produce.
She took out Anna’s passport and o
pened it
too
. She looked old for her age and
Eva couldn’t help thinking about Magnus’ allegati
ons.
Come
to think of it,
t
here had been a few
unexplained disappearances in the last couple of years.
She knew because
her colleague
Ernst had been
in charg
e of the investigation
s
, but he hadn’t
uncovered anything suspicious.
He’d concluded that they’
d
left for the Swedish mainland and it was true that with its geographic location in the Baltic, Mariehamn had a lot of passing trade.
As for Boeck, she couldn’t believe he would
be involved in anything dodgy
.
Her mother would have told her.

She couldn’t figure out what
Boeck’s car
had been doing
parked around the corner from Ma
gnus when she’d dropped him off, but he was p
robably
just
visiting a neighbour.
Magnus was
starting to make
her paranoid.
She understood
why he was
overreactin
g. It
m
ust be emotional
r
edisc
overing
Mariehamn
after 20 years, not to mention losing his father,
walk
ing
into a burglary and be
ing
attacked on arrival
.
She knew how it
felt
to lose a father
. She’d been 10
at the time
. A policeman like
her, her father had
been shot by a
Serbian
bank robber
collecting funds
for ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Was this globalisation? A
Helsinki
cop killed in the Yugoslavian war. Her mother hadn’t been with anyone
for almost 20 years when she
met Boeck on a visit to
Mariehamn
.

Eva
drove over to drop off
Magnus
’ passport, but
the house was dark
and
she
slipped
it
through the letter box. That’s when she noticed the smashed window.
It could have been from the burglary, but she didn’t remember it being there
earli
er
. She would have noticed. There was a piece of wood on the ground that
look
ed like
a
chair
leg
.
She knocked at
the door and waited.
And a
gain, harder this time, but there was still no reaction
,
so s
he felt the door. It
was open. S
he pulled
out
her gun and w
ent in.

4
9

I’d been playing my father’s death over and over again in my head while waiting locked
-
up in the church cloakroom
. The whole thing was beyond my grasp. Why would anyone do that?
Why?

When Boeck finally arrived
I wanted to
expl
ode
,
but I couldn’t. I had to buy time, l
et
him do
his spiel, because he was a perceptive madman and
a
murderer. If he sensed
that
I was trying to manipu
late him in any way
, he would be merciless.
I had to keep him talking
whilst
working out
an escape route.

‘
What do you see when you look at him?
’

H
e nodded at the
wooden figure
on the
table
.

‘
An old man?
’

‘
It’s a peasant, but his beard is reminiscent of the Norse god Thor. When you meet a peasant with a beard like th
is, it’s like looking at Thor. It
conveys his divine power, keeps him alive. When beards disappeared because of continental fashion,
Sweden
lo
st one of its
transcendental
links to the past, to our customs,
our roots.
’

‘
So
your power is in your beard
?
’

‘
I’m afraid British cy
nicism doesn’t cut it with
me.
’

I had to ch
ange tack
–
he was serious about his beard.

‘
What did my father have to do with this?
’

‘
He introduced me to Rudbeck’s Atlantica.
’

‘
Rud
beck
?
’

‘
A 17th century genius from
Uppsala
. An architect, a musician, the discoverer of th
e lymphatic organ, you name it,
Olof Rudbeck
did it. He
makes Da Vinci look like a half
-
wit. He p
roved that most of what is
considered classic
al
culture
today
originally stemmed from
Sweden
. The m
onths, the zodiac, the seasons…
‘

Boeck was unstoppable. What was he on about?

‘
Applying interdisciplinary methods, his magnum opus Atlantica demonstrated
–
in 3000 pages, the result of 30 years of research
–
that Sweden was, is Plato’s real
-
life Atlantis. Everything worthwhile about western civilisation originated in
Sweden
.
’

‘So what did my father do
?
’

‘
No photographer
could catc
h the soul of people like he Henrik
.
’

‘
Why did you kill him if he was so brilliant?
’

‘
H
e tried to unmask my project. He didn’t understand the cause
.
’

‘
What cause? What could justify killing a man?
’

‘
I had to
kill him or risk everything
being wasted. When I wouldn’t li
sten, he contacted the police and
they
told me
.
It was Henrik or
Sweden
’s future.
’

This meant Boeck
h
ad support in the local police, unless he was bluffing.
Was that how he’d found out about Carrie? Was it
E
va?
Had he used her to hear me out? I didn’t want to believe it, but i
t was a small police force and
Boeck had demonstrated that he would
do anything to achieve his goal, w
hatever the human cost. I hoped that Anna was still alive. I needed to win t
ime.

‘
Where’s Anna?
’

Boeck didn’t answer.

‘
Why are you doing this?
’

‘
Sweden
has lost its way.
’

‘
How will your ‘cause’
…
’

‘
Everyone knows
about the great
history of
Sweden
, but
we strayed.
We need to eliminate the
foreign influence, the infestation
, t
he Bernadottes.
’

‘What
,
the Swedish r
oyal family?
’

‘
They’re usurpers. Jean
-
Baptiste Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s marshals, was adopted by Charles XIII of
Sweden
in 1810 to beco
me King and founder of today’s Royal house. Imagine Queen Elizabeth
ignoring Prince Charles
and
adopting some French general
to make him her heir. How d
o you think that would go down at Lord’s
–
a
French general moving into
Buckingham
Palace
? It’s hardly cricket, is it?
And Bernadotte wasn’t even a
good general
. He
was useless in the battlefield and c
ouldn’t even be bo
thered to fight to keep
Finland
–
typical surrender
-
monkey. L
ike all the French
,
he was all appearances and no substance. He started t
he decline of Swedish manhood. Today we’re run by a bunch of
effeminate
poofters
.
’

‘
It’s hard to find anyone without foreign blood.
Y
ou’ll have to get rid of half the Swedish population.
’

‘
We have to protect Swedish values, stop
their dissolution.
Why do you think Palme was killed?
’

‘
I don’t think you can…
’

‘
Why was the only assassinated Swedish Prime Minister an immigrant’s son? Do you really think it was a coincidence?
I
t wasn’t.
I know what I’m talking about.
Sweden
is reacting. We’re fighting back.
’

‘
And what are you going to do when the King is dead?
’

‘
Change never comes easy.
’

‘
But w
hat will you do!?
’

‘
It will be chaos, h
ealthy chaos. I’m not going to try to seize power
if that’s what you think
.
T
hat’s not what this is about. It’s about making
Sweden
realise that there’s something fundamentally wrong. It w
ill be a turning point.
N
o one would
give the throne to an immigra
nt
today
. The question is legitimate, especially as
there was a true heir
when Bernadotte was adopted
. Illegitimate then, but
legitimate by modern standards.
’

‘So what? History can’t be changed.’

‘
History needs to be set right.
The King had a son
–
Carl Löwenhielm. His descendants lay no claim to the throne, but if anyone should be there, it’
s them. I understand marriages with foreign
royal houses, but there has to be some principle. A
spine, a
Swedish line.
Otherwise all meaning is lost and t
here’s no
grounding in
national
reality, n
o legitimacy.
All we have now is a royal charade combined with
the
socialist sissies
destroying the country in the name of multiculturalism. People have had it with immigrants ta
king the piss, using
Scandinavia
as a training camp
for Marxist terrorism. F
undamentalism
is funded by our tax money.
We even pay for the cockroaches
to have their own mosques.
It has
to s
top
before it’s too late, before the infestation becomes permanent. They openly attack our cultur
e and we still give them
money.
They breed like rabbits and suck our welfare system dry.
It needs to stop. They have to go
, or the Swedish decline will be terminal
.
’