The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (32 page)

He screamed in pain as b
oiling water gushed
out from the br
ok
en pipe onto his cuffed hand
.
He tried to break the pipe by stamp
ing
wildly
on it. It bent
,
but wouldn’t break
and when it eventually did, the
pipe cut his burnt h
and.
He rushed to the kitchen tap to
cool the burn and rins
e the cut. He knew they couldn’t be far
. There
w
as no doubt he would catch them
.
He’d underestimate
d Magnus
once more
, but i
t would
n’t
h
appen
again. They
’d been too
soft
–
blo
ody communists.
Eva and Magnus should have killed him
when they had the chance
, because n
ow he was going to terminate
them
–
t
he English bastard and the Finnish bitch.

62

I’d never worked so fast. It was one of those moments whe
n supernatural powers appea
r. W
e
carried the Black Pearl out as if
it was
a rubber dinghy. Our
only objective was survival,
n
othing else mattered. Ev
a sat down in the cockpit first and
I squeezed in between her legs.
She was a tall woman, but sharing a
bucket with her was a lot more pleasant than
with Thor’s humongous backside.

She did the steering as we
shot off from the
yacht club in
the nick of time
, with Boeck’s Volvo SUV monster roaring
onto the ice behind us. It hadn’t taken him long to escape.
I
seriously
doubted we would
ever
shake him.
If
only
Eva
had
kill
ed
him with the spanner
,
it
could have saved our lives, but
we
were no
assassins.

The car was approaching fast and we were about to
be mauled. One of Boeck’s men
–
Andri again
–
aimed a moose rifle at us and pulled the trigger. The first bullet
went straight through the sail, t
he second through the mast. The Volvo was only yards away
now,
t
hreatening to run us over
any moment
.
They were so close that
I could see Boeck’s determine
d expression. I was panicking.

‘
We’ll never lose them.
’

Eva gave me a d
efiant you
-
just
-
watch
-
me look as a
nother bullet rippe
d the left side of the yacht. W
e suddenly changed direction and
were catapulted to the right
with
the ice yacht
balancing on
one
blade, leaning against the wind
,
with
the other blade hanging
in
mid
-
air. I thought this was it, t
he yacht wa
s finished
–
Boeck had killed it, u
s. B
ut when I looked at Eva, she was in total control and t
he yacht
st
ill racing ahead.
If there was such a thing as stunt yachting this must be it.
I looked back
,
but there was n
o trace of
the SUV. It had vanished
from the icescape
. I looked at Eva again.

‘
Where are they?
’

She nodded
,
and
I finally spotted the car spinning i
n the distance
,
way ahead of us
.
It had skidded almost a hundred meters
and was totally out of control
. Eva had out
-
manoeuvred Boeck. I
turned to give her
a dry
but spontaneous
kiss on the mouth, which was
all I had to offer with
the wind factor and the associated cracked lips. My mother had always called them
Baltic lips
. Was it the speed, the ice
, the infinite whiteness or
just
a
n adre
nalin injection? I wasn’t sure
,
but
I felt relief,
l
iberated.

We
’d
finally
lost Boeck
thanks to Eva using
a
favourable gust of wind
to sneak through a narrow passage between islands. I felt
very much
alive, but also guilty
for
almost
enjoy
ing the
excitement of the
moment
,
while Carrie
was on the point of giving birth back in
London
, not to mention
An
na
being brutally murdered and m
y father tortured to death.
I’d even killed a man but still managed to feel
detached. It must be survival instinct
–
i
t was all too much and there was no room for thinking. I was
caught
in a parallel universe, disconnected, apathetic, as if w
atching my
self in a mov
ie. The infinity of the ice
gave
m
e inner peace. The crispness, the sparkle and the
closeness of ice and sky reminded me of a Dutch painting. In spite of t
he flatness, there was height, a
subtle transition to the
sky
as the ice morphed into towering clouds at the horizon
. The
blades of the
ice yacht crackl
ed against the ice floor and there
was a
sweet murm
ur
–
t
he voice of the wind caressi
ng the ice on its way from
S
t
.
Petersburg
to
Stockholm
.

We passed the fisherman’s cabin in the distance.
It looked peaceful with the smoke still coming out of the chimney pipe
. He was sitting in there unaware of what was going on in the outside world. May
be
he was right, maybe looking down was the right thing to do –
peering
inwards at
the origins of life.

The
peac
e didn’t last
, because it never did and
I
never learnt. I’d gone with the
moment again and
suddenly
i
t was as if a storm blew up. There was
a
n ear
-
dea
fening noise
,
but w
e couldn’t place it
, until
the choppe
r shot up from behind an island and
I recognised the air force helicopter from the museum. It skimmed the ice above us, peppering us with bul
lets and
I automatically ducked
, pulling
Eva down with me.
This time w
e were
definitely
out of our depth
. A man holding a
megaphone waved for us to stop
,
but Eva ignored him
.

‘THIS IS THE LAST WARNING.’

The yacht came to a standstill as s
he pulled up against the wind.

‘
What are you doing? We’re sitting ducks. They’ll kill us!
’

A bullet hit
the ice right next to the yacht, while
Eva took out a rifle and aimed.

‘
Where did you get that from?
’

She answered
with her eyes firmly on her
target
–
the tail rotor.

‘
Your father’s.
’

My father the hunter, t
he cannibal, I thought, as a
bullet hit me in the foot
, signalling that
this was
a bad
time for reminiscing.

‘
AAAaaaaaou
ch
!
’

Blood
was
po
uring out of the hole in my shoe, but
Eva didn’t flinch, her eyes still locked on target. Couldn’t she fucking see I’d been shot in the foot
?! T
his was a matter of life and death. We were
being
slaughtered.

Eva’s action seemed to h
appen in s l o w
-
m o t i o n and t
ime stopped. The pain in my foot was so excruciating that
I’d blocked out all sounds. Eva
gave me a determined glance, before aimi
ng at the tail rotor again a
nd squeezing
the trigger.
This was
it,
all or nothing.

I thought she’d missed, but t
hen, abruptly, the helicopter lost its composure and started swinging ominously like a drunken bee. For a moment, it looked like it was
going to crash on top of us
,
and we ran for our lives, but t
he pilot m
ade a miraculous recovery
. Not for long
though
–
the machine
crashed 75 meters from the Black Pearl, exploding into a blinding fireball. The
noise was ear
-
splitting and
I pu
t my arm around Eva, holding
her firmly. She’d saved my life
for the third time. We stood holding each other, watching the fire until it was almost extinct. All that was left was a flaming hot black carcass slowly sinking through the melting ice.

63

The silence returned and so
did the agony in my foot after the
distraction of the helicopter.
Eva saw my face screwed up in pain.

‘
Let’s check it out.
Quick!
’

I sat down on the yacht and she
yank
ed off my boot. It was torture
–
t
he sock
was
drenched in blood.

‘
You’re lucky. It’s gone through the foot.
’

‘
Lucky?
’

‘
It could have stayed in.
’

She took out a first aid box
from a storage compartment and
disinfected the
wound methodically.

‘
Easy!
’

‘
Pain won’t kill you. It’s a sign of life.
’

I didn’t know there were stoics in
Scandinavia
, but m
aybe Boeck
’s Rudbeck
had a point after all.
Maybe t
here was som
ething Greek about the Swedes.
Tying a compress around my foot, she
looked up and smiled as
I wa
tched her work in concentration
. I had to ask her.

‘
Think we’ll get out of this alive?
’

‘Thinking won’t get us anywhere
.
’

She moved to stand up
–
my wound was dressed, but I held her back and l
ooked her in the eyes.

‘
Thank you.
’

‘
We need to keep moving.
’