The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (5 page)

When Lisa looked at me, I thought she
was going to speak
. S
he wasn’t
, but
I
’d come to talk and
really
couldn’t wait any
longer. I turned to Mikael. He
was contemplating
me in silence too
.

‘
Could you tell me about…?
’

He
interrupted me
with a smile
.

‘
I’ll leave you with Lisa.
’

He stood up, put his plate on the sink, went into the adjacent room and switched
on the television, with
Lisa following
him with her eyes.

‘
He cannot
take it. He fainted out there.
’

She spoke slowly without
missing a single chance
to pause in what was probably received
Åland delivery, but I was a Londoner used to cutt
ing to the chase. It took her so long to get going
that I managed to
pick up
the news headlines
from the other room
while she was warming up
. The Swedish King was
coming to Mariehamn to open a multicultural festival
and there were worries about
an injured ski jumper. Surely
,
there must be more
happening
on the mainland
–
hadn’t a tree fallen in the forest?
I never found out, because
Lisa
finally reached the moment of their
Sunday
skating
when they’d
found my father
.

‘
I hope you
don’t mind me saying
, but
there was something peaceful
about it
. He died in a beautiful spot. It was like a painting
, with his skin colour almost
as white
as the surrounding snow and ice, a
s if he’d been
sprinkled with talc
. It reminde
d me of my life drawing classes.
’

I tr
ied to picture what she’d seen.

‘
What do you think happened?
’

She looked up.

‘
Is there something wrong?
’

‘
I’m j
ust trying to understand.‘

Lisa paused to think before giving her impression.

‘
There was something about the way he was
l
ying next to the hole. It seemed so pointless to
have
died after
getting out of the water
, n
ot making it to the car.
’

She sh
ook her head before continuing and
I gave her all the time she needed
, because this was the closest I
would get to seeing my father’s death. Lisa was my eyes.

‘
Although he had no pulse,
I wrapped him in an emergency blanket and tried
to resuscitate him
. But the only result was water coming out of his lungs. There was no sign of life.
’

‘
My father’s solicitor said he drowned.
’

‘
I think t
he police concluded that he was killed by a combination of
water in the lungs
and hypothermia
.
Maybe h
is body was too numb to cough up the water
.
Hypothermia makes you lose control of your body, so he could have made it out
of the hole
,
but been unable to move any further.
’

It sounded like a horror scenario, a slow painful death.

‘
I’m really sorry about your loss.
’

I had to keep asking her questions. This would be my only chance.

‘
Anything else?
’

‘
It was neat.
’

‘
What do you mean?
’

‘
As if he’d deliberately lain down next to the hole.
’

‘
Do you think he’d planned it?
’

She looked at me in silence.
It
was something I
’d have to work out for myself.

‘
Did you know him?
’

‘
We know very few people.
We’re new in town
.
’

So much for the received Å
land accent
.

‘
Do most bays have swim holes?

‘
When they’re in a bay
, there’s
usually a house
in the vicinity, b
ut we aren’t the only ones to like peace and quiet
. The fishermen,
your father
…
I’m
really
sorry I can’t tell you more. All I can say is that the image of your father on the ice is forever engraved in my memory.
’

Whatever the true cause of
death,
h
e’d died
–
directly or indirectly
–
from a winter
swim, but
Lisa’s image of my whitened father lying next to the hole was disturbing.
The bay
had been his last
living
stop on earth. It was difficult imagining my fath
er dying like that in the cold
,
and
although it must have been terrible
,
I
couldn’t help feeling
emotionally
detached.
It felt so far removed from my life.
I didn’t know him.

8

I took a hot bath as soon as I returned to the house. Only a few days earlier
,
my father
would ha
ve sat in the same tub and
being a cold water swimmer, my guess
was he’d taken
a scorching one, n
o lukewarm piss substitute
for him
. His
swimming habits
pointed to
a man of extremes, but then quite a few Scandinavians were: silent as the grave and
on
milk in the week, but
wasted on aquavit and shouting down
the place in the weekends
–
the only time Scandinavians males dared approach the opposite sex. Along with female initiative, alcohol was the main
reproduction
fuel in the countries around the
Baltic Sea
.

I spent the evening picking up the pieces and trying to recreate some order
in my father’s burgled house
. I
also
gave Carrie
another call
, telling her I was sitting in the debris of my childhood with everything slipping, falling to pieces.
I wanted a coherent story, for myself and to pass on to our child, but I was more confused than ever.
The few memories and idyllic images I had were disintegrating.
I couldn’t understand how I’d
managed to combine the picturesque
memories of skating with my father
wit
h my mother’s spiteful
stories about him
.
I realised I’d treated my parents
as
totally separate entities
. I’d kept the brightness and the darkness
completely secluded
. Whatever I’d imagined
was evaporating
and n
othing about my father was cl
ear, solid or durable any more.

9

He’d
been a
shooting club member for as
long as he could
remember, b
ut this was different.
This was the meaning of his life.
Once he’d identified the right weapon,
he
’d started practis
ing
methodically
on multiple targets with a silencer
. D
istance wasn’t an
issue
–
they would be at 10 to 3
0
meters,
but he had to
be accurate, as he intended
to terminate as many units
as possible in a limited time
.
Every bullet must count.

1
0

Pastor Fredriksson
was tall, sinewy, slightly bent over. There was something Dutch about his look. He
could have been anything between 35 and 55. He wanted to know if I had any special requirements for the funeral.
I had no idea
what
my
father would have wanted
and didn’t
feel entitled to an opinion. Any of my father’s friends or colleagues
from Mariehamn
would know Henrik
much
better than I did, not that I’d met any of them yet.

All I could say was that h
e’d taught me to skate a
nd to play chess. That was it. Th
e
se were
pretty much
the
only
first
-
hand memories
I had
left. The rest of my associations with my father were poisoned by my mother’s backstabbing.
Apparently
,
m
y father had helped Fredriksson wi
th
youth projects and
given
most of his spare time
to the kids. He’d lived in the moment. I asked the pastor what he meant
by that
.

‘
I think you need to talk to Thor.
’

‘
Thor?
’

‘
They led the yachting club together. He was
probably
Henrik’s closest friend.
’

It was the first time I heard about Thor and the yachting club. I would go there immediately on
ce I was done with Fredriksson.

It felt odd
preparing to bury a father I didn’t know
.
He would be in the coffin,
but I hadn’t spoken to
him for 20 years.
The nearest I’d come to
a conversation was in the funeral home
, imagining what we would have said to each other.
T
he situation
was confusing and
I kept trying to get a grip.
I sti
ll couldn’t digest
my father coming back into my life as a dead man.
Yes, he’d been absent from my life, but until
now it hadn’t been definite.

Fredriksson stopped by the
grave
destined to host my father and asked if I’d discussed the
headstone inscription
with the undertaker. I hadn’t, but name
s and dates
would do. As f
or the final words at the funeral
,
mentioning the
skating
with my father
was
more evocative
than chess
playing and
–
for what it was worth
–
I did have a recurrent dream of skating with my father
.
I’d been having it
since leaving the island as a kid, but
w
hen I’d told my mother, she
wasn’t interested, so
from then on
I’d kept it to myself.

Fredriksson
wanted
to make a brief but vivid speech
and
thought
talking about
the skating was a
n excellent
idea. I
t was something I’d kept close to my heart and something Henrik
had always loved
.
Unbeknownst to each other
, w
e had kept
a joint
passion for sk
ating in spite of our 20
-
year separation
.
And
Fredriksson was right, the skating was a good metaphor for life
–
going against the wind,
mixing
blissful moments and
blizzards,
wide horizons
and
menacing
skies.