The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (27 page)

Boec
k was caught up in his poisonous rant
, his rifle
pointed
to the ground.
This was my chance. I’d managed to distract him from the task at hand. I took a deep breath and
leapt
at him, trying to kick the rifle out of his hand,
but B
oeck
simply took a step back and
watched me land
on the floor
. When I turned, I was
looking straight up
the barrel of his rifle.

‘
Get up!
’

I stood reluctantly
and he
immedia
tely jabbed
the rifle into my side
, holding it there
.
It was an antique, which
didn’t lessen my fear
as it
was yet a
nother sign of his ob
session with an imaginary past
.

‘
Go to the door.
’

I looked blankly at him, t
rying to win time.

‘
You don’t argue with a Swedi
sh Mauser. This one’s from 1936, m
ade in
Germany
with Swedish steel. Nothing beats pull
ing the trigger on one of these.
’

Surely, it wasn’t consistent using a German gun to support his argument. Made in
Germany
? Shouldn’t it have been made in
Sweden
? I didn’
t think it was worth bringing
up. H
e was savouring the moment and h
is eyes
were gleaming at t
he idea of killing me
. He took out his phone and d
ialled.

‘
Time.
’

I feared the worst and this time
I did not want to follow in my father’s footsteps.

‘
Walk.
’

‘
Where are we going?
’

‘
Walk!
’

I walked through the aisle
of the church
wi
th empty benches on both sides
–
no witnesses. We
arrived at the doors.

‘
Where are…
’

Boeck thumped me on the temple with the rifle b
efore I c
ould finish my sentence.
I shouted with pain
as t
he barrel hit me on the head again.

‘
Do what you’re told.
’

‘
You fucking c…
’

He hit me harder the third time and it made me stumble
. I was about to scream but held back when I saw Boec
k’s expectant eyes, r
elishing the idea of to striking
again.

‘
Move!
’

He jabbed
me towards the door with the rifle. My head was pounding
when I spotted the chair.
I had to t
ake advantage of the situation, hang onto whatever hopes I had.
I grabbed
it
and swung it at him, but it crashed against the door.
He’d been on his guard again and
charged at me,
the barrel
bearing
into my stomach,
p
inning
me against the wall
.

5
0

Coming out,
I was blinded by the
sun
light
shining straight into the bay.
We’d arrived in the dark but now there was an endless vista.
The ceiling was blue,
not a single cloud in sight
.
If it hadn’t
been for Boeck,
I would have said the c
hurch was in a magic location.

Boeck
looked to the side of the church
,
where a woma
n was being dragged towards the boathouse
. She must have
been transported
on one of the
snowmobiles parked nearby
. She was resisting
,
but the guard was too strong. It was
the
man with the
ponytail
again
. Her protests were silent –
s
he was gagged.
It was only when s
he’d almost rea
ched the
boathouse that I recognised her
.
It can’t have been a coincidence.
Boeck was too calculating not to have planned the encounter.
He was a sadist and
knew I’d been looking for her
–
the woman he’d
claimed he didn’t know
.
He was p
erfect
ly aware of the potential pain.

‘
Anna!
’

When I took a step towards her, Boeck thumped the barrel into my back and made me lie down on my stomach.
I watched from the ground as
Anna was shoved into the boathouse.

‘
Get up!
’

I stumbled
into the boathouse. At first
,
I couldn’t see anything, only hear Anna’s
moaning. O
nce my eyes got used to the dark I saw tha
t it
consisted of a two meter wide wooden decking along the three walls
,
with an opening to the sea on the fourth. In the middle was
water. The
first floor
balcony f
ollowed
the same floor plan
as the decking
. Anna was locked up in a cage
hanging mid
-
air
like
at the museum
. She was kicking and screamin
g, shaking the cage, which was swinging
back and forth.
The henchman with the pony
tail
was standing by a winc
h
,
waiting for Boeck’s signal. Boeck
nodded and
he
started lowering the cage.

It was a nightmare s
eeing
Anna
go through exa
ctly what I’d seen my father
submi
tted to in the film
and h
er ‘noooooooo’ still echoes in my head to this very day. I roared
in anger and
tried
to reach the man with the pony
tail
to stop
him, but Boeck kicked me down, a
gain and again.
I was fo
rced to watch Anna
looking me in
the eyes, her face an open wound as the cage took her down into the water, leaving only her he
ad above the surface, so that I
could watch her suffer,
clasp
ing
onto life
.

She became weaker by the second. I crawled nearer
the winch
,
d
esperate
to get Anna out. She was only
meters away,
but she was in
the
cage
–
s
o ne
ar yet so far. I wanted to help, p
ull
her ou
t, but I couldn’t
,
as
Boeck
kept beating me with the rifle and k
icking me
back.
Watching
Anna die w
ithout being able to save her,
was the most horrible moment of my life.
I was totally powerless as
I watched her become one with my father.
To me, her death became
his.
I saw him die again.

After 25
minutes she stopped fighting
,
her movements became sparse
and she
eventually lost
control
of her body. She c
ouldn’t speak or shout, let alone
open her mouth.
She
was
so
paralysed
that
her
only sounds were
moans.
After a long struggle, s
he swallowed water, spluttered and
drowned
. It was the slowest
death
im
a
ginable,
a li
fetime of pain
.

I
looked at Boeck and wanted to say something but
couldn’t. No word could express the
disgust and hatred I felt.
He was a
sick freak and so
delighted,
so utterly pleased with himself that
I exploded and a
ttacked him.
He whacked the rifle at me, but I didn’t feel a thing. I punched, kicked and stabbed
my heel
into his
knee
as hard as I could.

‘
MURDERER!
’

His knee must have been injured, b
ut
he
pulled himself together
and whacked me on the side of the
head with t
he rifle. He
hit me full on l
ike a tennis player giving it all and following thro
ugh. I tried to punch
him again
,
but h
e pushed me back, aiming the rifle at my head. Any normal thug would have
finished me off then and there
, but n
o
t him, n
ot this sophisticated
monstrosity. He kept his focus and s
ublimat
ed his personal suffering into
a
higher purpose.
In hindsight, I’m sure that’s how he would have put it.

I tried to get up
,
but he kicked me in the head and I landed on my stomach, t
asting the ice.
I was shaking with
fear as the end was closing in on me. Anna had gone silent, given in, died
, while
I was caught up
in Boeck’s
dream
–
my
nightmare.

I realised
that he didn’t
only take pleasure in
murder and
watching
the pain of the victim, but
that
he also delighted in seeing the pain of the witness, observing
the spectator.
That’s why he’d brought me in
–
for a p
ain fea
st. Boeck wasn’t one of
us, h
e
looked
coldly at life. His evil went beyond the imaginable.
He was seriously fucked up.

He
wasn’t done. He
ordered Andri
–
I finally heard the pony
tail man’s name
–
to
pull Anna out, which he
did
. She was completely lifeless
as he winched her back to the jetty, but he
changed her into dry clothes with a skull cap and wrapped her in a survival. What wer
e they doing? They’d killed her and n
ow they were trying to save her?
Andri fetched a defibrillator and Boeck applied its pads to Anna’s chest. Who did he think he was toying
with people’s lives like this?

‘
She’s dead. Leave her alone.
’

‘
She’s in the metabolic ice box.
’

In the metabolic what?
Ho
w could he be so indifferent, so
coldly
analytical, in the face of someone’s destiny? Could he really be completely deprived of humanity? I’d always believed
–
or liked to believe
–
that even the worst of monsters had a core of em
pathy, a
heart fragment
ticking
away
somewhere.
Boeck
clearly
hadn’t, h
e was a
complete
robot, devoid of any humanity.

‘
In case of hypothermia the body shut
s down the m
etabolic functions. T
he circulation
stops
and the brain and other crucial organs are temporarily put on hold, thus minimising their need for oxygen and nutrition.
’