The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (3 page)

I seemed to have a
t least one thing in common with him
–
t
he Mexican film star
.
T
he huge poster
of her
on the wall was an immature choice for a man his age, but there was nothing
unformed about her curves and
look of determination.
Maybe
the voluptuous
colour poster was
meant as
an ironic touch in a house dominated by
what I assumed were my father’s
black and white portraits.
The contrast certainly
reinforced
the qualities of
bot
h the poster and the photo
s.

He
had hundreds of photography books and Scandinavian films from the silent era
,
when
Sweden
and
Denmar
k
had been at forefront of
cinema
.
There were old photos of me on the chest of drawers in the bedroom and I found a whole b
ox
covering
my first 10
years. I’d seen some
of the pictures
my mother’s album
s
,
but my father had always been
snipped
out.

Now I could se
e the whole picture and t
he fact that he’d kept them
suggested he cared, so
why
ha
dn’t he contacted me? Why 20
years of silence?
T
h
is was too close, too strange, too much,
a
nd not something I’d really
thought
about
. I sat down on his bed, confused.

I lost myself staring at a photo of me and my father skating. My old skates were
still
hanging on the wall next to his –
a
pair of
old school
Dutch Vikings.
Unlike the more common ice hockey and touring skates
,
speed skates have a low s
hoe and much longer blades, allowing
longer st
rokes. Once you’ve built up
speed
,
you can easily reach 40 to 50
km/h
a
nd even faster with a tailwind.

I tried his on.
They were a tight fit and i
t was good
to see that I’d
overtaken his size
, but it
was scary
at the
same time
. Now that he was dead and I had larger feet, there was nowhere to hide
.
I
had to
face the world alone.

Slipping
–
well cramming
–
my feet
into the skates was a great feeling
once they were in
. I
t brought up memories of skating
as a kid
,
as well as literally putting me in my father’s shoes. Doing the
laces up with frozen fingers had
always
been a pain
, but it was worth it, because the skating experience was a direct function of the tightness
–
the
more painful the fit
,
the better the gliding
.

My father never left the house without his flask
of home
-
brewed
aquavit.
T
he
distilling equipment was
set up in a broom cupboard in the basement.
As a kid I’d been terrified of the secret room
–
all that bubbling and glass work reminded me of witchcraft, but h
ome
-
made
aquavit was a
well
-
established
tra
dition outside the big cities
in
Scandinavia
. G
overnment campaigns alleging that homemade spirits could lea
d to blindness were
of little discouragement
. Everyone knew that they were
only after tax benefits, as h
ome
-
distilling meant lost income for the state
’s alcohol
monopoly
–
alcoholic drinks could only be bough
t
in special state
-
owned shops
.

Home
-
brewing was done by
everyone
and i
t was tolerated for personal consumption.
It was the
currency in an
underground bartering
economy. I poured myself a glass and downed it
–
a real throat
-
clearer.
I couldn’t imagine my bosses at the
BBC accountancy department paying my overtime in bottles of in
-
house aquavit. It was a s
hame, because t
here was an element of resistance in this custom that appealed to me. It wasn’t the heavy drinking.
It was the grey zone,
the tacit acceptance of relatively harmless illegal activities when they were a private matter.
T
he depolarisation of right and wrong
appealed to me
.
It seemed more
pragmatic,
in touch with reality.

An old
-
fashioned photo lab had been set up in one of the basement rooms.
It looked like
my father
had
been
using a 35 millimetre film
camera.
There were
still chemicals in the baths,
but
no trace of
any
photos
.

I found a freezer crammed with
large chunks of meat.
At first I thought it looked like
human flesh, but
my father was neither
a serial killer nor a cannibal.
I remembered t
hat he used to hunt. T
he meat must be moose
.

By the time I’d changed into dry clothes and ga
ve Carrie
a ring,
I was tipsy and emotional. I’d
left her
in our
Holloway
flat at the crack of dawn. I
really
didn’t like leaving her alone, espe
cially as
she was
pregnant and due the following week. I didn’t tell her
about the burglary or the bump
on my head
,
because I knew she’d go bonkers an
d tell me I had to have a scan.

Of course she would be right, but I couldn’t face spending half a day in a hospital waiting room to end up being to
ld to
wait
for the bulge to
go. What bothered me more
though
was that by being in Mariehamn, I risked missing the birth. I really wanted to be
there with her. W
e’d been through
so much
together, including three miscarriages before getting this far
.

I’d been watching Carrie
like a hawk for the past few months, checking everything she ate, every step she took. I’d kept her locked up in the
flat for most of the pregnancy and w
e hadn’t spent a single
night apart since I’d moved in.
I had to control myself
not to ask her what she’d eaten.

6

Dahl found me
cuddling my old skates
with glazed
-
over eyes
. Once he
spotted
the bottle on the table
,
he gathere
d I was on a sentimental slide.

‘
Time travelling are we?
’

My father’s solicitor was tall with the look of some
one on dairy, beer and aquavit
–
square with bloodshot eyes, bulky but not floppy. He nodded as he reached out for my hand.

‘
My condolences.
’

I shook his.

‘
Aouch!
’

He
’d just seen my bump
.

‘
Here
, this should do it
.
’

He handed me a pack of painkillers.
I took two
and flushed them down with the aquavit.

‘
You need to id
entify the body before we can talk about
the will.
Are you ready
to go now
?
’

T
he question
caught me off
-
guard
. U
ntil then it had been as if my father
didn’t exist
. He
’d been
an imaginary character from a distant past
.
I wasn’t prepared to face his body.
Subconsciously,
I’d assumed I would be going straight to the funeral
–
that’s what u
su
ally happened in the movies.
It simply
hadn’t
occurred to me to think
abo
ut what would happen to it before
. It was the first time I was dealing directly with a person’s death and I didn’t
particularly want to see my deceased
father. I
would have
preferred to hold on to what was left of his living memory
, but
Dahl w
as waiting
patiently for my decision
.

He
stayed in the car while I went into the funeral home
, where t
he receptionist had me sit
in an armchair until the undertaker
came to greet me. He
le
d
me
down a long corridor and stopped
at
the last door. The place was
dead silent and
immaculately clean
. Did I want to be left alone with my father? I did. A priest was available if I wished but
although
I
didn’t
,
t
he man seemed to insist. I wasn’t sure
who
he felt sorrier
for
, t
he priest or me. I didn’t care.
I wanted to go in on my own.
I didn’t need a priest to tell me what to feel.

My father’s body was lying in the middle of the room
.
He was covered by a
white
she
et
,
except for his face and arms
.
There were three candles burning on a table along the wall.
So t
his wa
s what they called a show room
–
the last chance for mourners to see their loved one.
The candles a
nd the sheet reminded me of the
Saint Lucia
day celebrated in the Nordic countries
, when a
–
usually blonde
–
girl in a white gown with a crown of candles on her head leads a procession through the winter darkness. But my father made for an unlikely Lucia
–
he was neither girl, nor blonde. L
ooking at his
body from a distance felt surreal. It could have be
en anyone, but i
t was my father,
stripped
of everything that
had surrounded him in
life
.
Stepping closer
, I could see his face. It was
familiar
,
but
I wouldn’t hav
e recognised him in the street.

I hesitated before removin
g the sheet, possibly out of fear of being disgusted
, or
simply
of death.
There was also something more visceral, a feeling akin to remorse. I’d let him down by letting him die alone.
Him,
m
y father.
The words felt odd
together
. ‘My’ and ‘father’ hadn’t been juxtaposed for a long time in my life.
I carefully lifted the sheet to see the whole body. Seeing my procreator could be
an indication of my own future, but l
ooking at the body,
the dominant feeling was
emptiness. Coldness. His b
ody didn’t reveal anything personal
.
It was strictly physical. T
here was nobody there, no one home.
Nakedness is often associated with intimacy, but I could see nothing more impersonal than my father
’s naked body in the funeral home. It was lying in
the most sterile of places
,
deprived of its defining environment and
isolated from
my father’s
belongings
.