The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (4 page)

I
remembered him as t
owering
over me
,
but now
I was looking
down at him.
Travelling to Mariehamn, I’d imagined my fat
h
er the way I’d seen him as a 10
-
year old.
He was still big, but there was a frailty about him
which led me to review my image
.

I stared at his
shaved
and
swollen
face.
Mum alway
s said there was a resemblance
.
Telling me I looked like my father had been her ultimate insult
. S
he
couldn’t bear
it. I couldn’t see
it
though
. Had it been in our smiles or
f
acial expressions? I
n our m
ovements? These signs of life were invisible on a dead man. I l
ooked at his stomach, chest,
shoulders. He was stouter than I remembered.
Was it beer, a bad diet, a sedentary life style, or
simply a matter of age? His hands were small for his size and didn’t look like the hands of a manu
al worker, but h
is legs were
surprisingly
long and m
uscular, which must have come from the skating
. His feet were big like mine – Carrie would have called them barges.
Different parts of t
he
body told different stories and
pointed to diffe
rent facets of his personality.

The
body
did remind
me of my f
ather, but i
t was
n’t him
. It was
a body he’d inhabited –
his skin.
At first I
’d
regretted com
ing
and
I couldn’t see what it would br
ing, but standing there
I realised that seeing his body would help me build a new image of him that wouldn’t be based on memories or
second
-
hand account
s
. It would be real
. Mine.

I
couldn’t help asking myself
w
hat
I would
have told
him
if he’d suddenly come alive.
What did I want to k
now and w
hat would he want to
know? I imagined him askin
g why I hadn’t been in touch
and me returning
the question
. Why hadn’t he
contact
ed
me? Would we have had anything to talk about? Seeing my dead fa
ther didn’t provide any answers, i
t only triggered new questions.

As I was leaving, the man in the dark suit said
t
he funeral would be in two days time, unless I had any objections
of course
. He
asked if I could drop off some clothes and
about flower arrangements. I trusted he woul
d do a better job than I in the floral
department.
Heading out after confirming
my father’s identity
at
the reception,
I nearly received a second
bump on the head as a man flung open
the door
in my face. It hadn’t been deliberate and he excused himself
profusely
, but I couldn’t
help thinking that luck
wasn’t on my side
since arriving on this island.

Driving back to the house with Dahl, I asked
where my father had drowned.

‘
In the sea…
’

I knew that.

‘
Where?
’

‘
Solviken. You m
ust have skated there as a kid.’

He was probably right, but it didn’t ring any bells
.

‘
Is it far?
’

‘
A 20
-
minute drive. I
also
have the details
of the couple who found him
,
in case you want to talk to them.
’

Dahl’s words ebbed away as I stared out the window
over the passing sea
,
with t
he sound of skates on ice
automatically
starting to echo in
my head. It was the rhythm of my childhood,
a constant alternation of
sound and silence.

‘
Why did he go for a dip in a re
mote bay in the freezing
winter?
’

The question had slipped out before I’d even thought about asking. I
was thinking out
loud. Dahl shrugg
ed.

‘
I’m from the ma
inland. We don’t do that either, but believe me
,
Henrik wen
t for a swim because he had to, because i
t was i
n his genes. That’s what these crazy islanders do
. Don’t try to read any metaphysics
into it. Why does a duck quack?’

He was right. Living here meant being
at the mercy of the elements and m
aybe that was something I couldn’t grasp as a
Londoner.
I’d spent my early years
on
Åland
and had expected to b
e able to
tap into my old self, but I seemed to have
been irreversibly transformed
by
London
.
Maybe
seeing the bay would help
.

7

Driving
out to
Solviken in my father’s car, I
called
Carrie
t
o
check
again that
she was alright.
She felt like the baby was about to drop out any minute. I told her to hang on
–
I was doing my best to get back
in time for the birth
.
I
wished she could have
been with me
in Mariehamn
.
Her level
-
headedness
would have helped me make sense of the situation.

Solviken
turned out to be a typical Scandinavian inlet surrounded by granite rocks. It narrowed as it reached the snow
-
covered shore.
Dahl had claimed
I would
recognise
it, but
I
didn’t
, probably because I’d only
been he
re in
summer.

My father must have stood
on the
shore before walking
onto the ice. This very spot was where he’d la
st put his feet on earth
.
I tried to imagine this being the last moments of my life
.

I couldn’t quite pinpoint it at first
,
but something was bothering me. Then I realised what it
was. Although he’d died only a few days
ago
,
I couldn’t see a
ny
hole. I walked
on
to
the
ice to look
a
round.
My father driving this far for a dip simply didn’t make sense.
There must have been pre
-
drilled holes nearer home.
E
ven after searching the bay
,
I
still
couldn’t find
where he’d
jumped into the water
.
There had to be a logical explanation. I rummaged through
the
b
oot
of his car
to check if he’d
even
owned an
ice drill. Ice fishers would usually have one
,
but there was none
in the Skoda
.
I’d wanted to reconnect with my fath
er,
find the spot where he’d
died
. I
nstead
I was losing him. His trace was fading. The accountant in me needed things to add up. He’d died. So much was clear
, but
I
needed
to know exactly where and how. I glanced at the bay a last time before getting back into the car. That’s when I saw it. How could I have missed it? It had been staring me in the face all the time.

I walked back onto the ice. The iced
-
over hole w
as near the rocks on the left side of the bay.
It looked like a fishing hole
–
small for a gr
own man.
Dahl had mentioned Solviken being popular with fishermen.
Trying to imagine
my father coming here,
I looked back t
o the car from the fishing hole
. I’d brought a recent photo of him from the ho
use. I took it out, took it in.

He would have
undressed by the car and r
ushed
onto th
e ice,
a good 50
metres from the shore. Then what? H
e
plunged
and d
rowned
? If so, how did they find him? Thanks to the car? If he’d drowned, he would never have made it out of the water. He would have vanished under the ice and
s
ome spl
ashing children would have discovered
him next summer.
Now that I’d seen the setting,
I didn’t understand how he could have been found
so quickly
if he’d drowned. It just didn’t add up.

The wind was freezing
cold
, so
I returned
to the
car. I
couldn’t imagine anyone doing what my father had done. I trie
d to convince myself that
Dahl was right, that it’s
what Scandinavians do, but it still didn’t make sense.
I needed to know more and
hopefully the couple who’d found
my father
would be able to fill me in
.

The Forsmans lived
in a modest but comfortable apartment
on the first floor of a small town house in the centre of
Mariehamn
.
It was only 6
p
.
m
.
, but I’d caught them at dinner time and t
hey insist
ed I share
their meal.
Their living room could have been plucked directly from
an IKEA catalogue, except
their furniture was authentic and probably inherited or bought at local auctions. Where IKEA’s products would have been glossy, thei
r tables and shelves were matt and showed discreet signs of vintage wear.

Food
-
wise
,
things
had
moved on since my childhood
–
when I grew up a potato
-
free meal had been unthinkable in Mariehamn
, b
ut the
simple pasta with P
arma ham and roasted vegetables
served by the Forsmans
could have be
en dished out anywhere in Europe
. The only oddity
was the milk.
They’d
kept that tradition and
the Nordic habit of barel
y exchanging a syllable
over dinner
. I attempted seve
r
al times to ask about my father, but t
hey
only
nodded and chewed on
a
s
if they hadn’t eaten for days. One thing at a time
seemed to be the motto.
O
nly when their plates were empty did they
finally
look up
.
Lisa finished first, but didn’t talk until her husband Mikael had scraped every
last
trace of sauce off his plate. I’m sure he would have l
icked it clean if I hadn’t been there, as well as the knife and fork while he was at it.