The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (29 page)

Everything slowed down, almost comi
ng to a standstill. I felt
even
warm
er
and
could see Carrie
smiling
at me.
So did my father and
Anna. The
storm was over and the
y were
on orbit
in th
e blue sky against the blin
ding sun. I felt relieved with
my loved ones
around me.
I wasn’t fighting
any more
.
I was
just being
–
b
eing happy.

55

I could see myself lying
on my back s
taring at a glass ceiling. My thoughts were confused, my body boiling and freezing at the same time.
I was torn,
watching my body f
rom above, but
also
feeling it from the
inside
,
its
cold
ness
. I
must have been out,
dead. Was this it?

Suddenly there was crackling and sparkles. I tu
rned my head as far as I could and was able to distinguish
something
from t
he corner of my eye
–
a
fire
glowing in
a
huge kiln.
A man
-
s
ize
d
mould was wheeled out of it and
next to it I recognised
grey statues like the ones from the museu
m. I tried turning my head more but
couldn’t.
Looking at
my reflection in the
glass
ceiling
,
I could see that
I was
lying
in a mould
too
.
Suddenly I heard Boeck’s
voice
.

‘
I watched you at the museum. You were scared by the
statues. Now
you
know why. They’re petrified human beings. They have souls.
’

He was
t
he devil pe
rsonified.
I should have known
that he would resuscitate me
.
Watching
him walk over to the mould that had just been taken out of the kiln
,
I though
t
that
I
simply wanted th
is nightmare to end, b
ut
i
t had only just been rebooted
.

‘
I developed a mix that enters in symbiosis with the body. When heated, it penetrates the pores.
’

Boeck erected the mould with t
he help of a tipping mechanism and o
nce it was standing on the floor
,
he opened it
and
pulled out a new statue
with Andri’s help
.

‘
Meet the
eternal Anna.
’

The workings of his twisted mind were beyond my comprehension. It felt as if he
’d pulled
a f
illeting knife through my guts, thr
ough my brain, and then patched
it up again
as if nothing had happened. I was shattered. There really
was no point arguing with him.

‘
The stat
ues are the people, you and me, t
he grey visitors. As they accompany you through your visit
,
they absorb your emotion
s. You project your feelings onto them and see them differently. T
hey become loaded with emotions
and
reinforce your experience.
’

He was right about the identification with the statues, but his victims’ remains had nothing to do with it.
It was a madman’s justification
for unimaginable atrocities. He had no scruples and I was powerless. The only way to stop him was to kill him, to exterminate every single cell in his body, to give him a dose of his own medicine. Nothing else would do, and I’d never felt su
ch fury, such a desire to kill. But first I needed to know why my father had been found on the ice.

‘Why didn’t you put my father in a statue?’

‘He wasn’t an illegal immigrant.
No one cares when a nobody dies
, but if someone like Henrik
disappears
people will start
asking questions. His death had to seem natural.’

‘It didn’t though.
Everyone says it looked staged
.
’

‘I can’t bear things to be messy, but it made for quite a tableau, if I may say so myself.

I tried to stand up
to
pull his eyes out
, to stop the beat of the
heart
he didn’t have, but I’d lost all energy and barely managed to sit up, or
I thought I did. The movement was
purely
mental. My body didn’t budge. I was still
locked
in a horizontal position as
Boec
k came over to me with a needle, g
rabbed my arm and injected me. I was to
o
weak to resist.

‘
A top up. We have to anaesthetise before the maceration. It opens up the pores.
’

This wasn’t happening. I wanted out. I was caught in the mind gam
e of a lunatic, a
fanatic. Although I was
drowsy and
starting to lose
consciousnes
s
,
I could still see myself lying in the
mould.
It was like
watching
someone else’s b
ody. The unidentifiable brown soup
that
was poured onto me
reminded me of the sewers
. I was gone.
Fearing
that he might resuscitate me for yet another experiment,
I’d lost the ability to dist
inguish
life and death. I wanted to live or
die, n
ot be sentenced to
this
numbing
limbo
.
I wanted to die
once and for all
.
I wanted to know.
My last thought as I sunk into the darkness
of
the
grey
muck
was that this had to stop.

5
6

I couldn’t see because of the brown liquid covering my eyes, but
I heard a
faint voice coming through
. It sounded familiar
.
At the same time,
I
was still
hovering above, watching myself macerating in the mould,
desperately gasping for air
,
s
pluttering and spitting out the
sticky
muck being toppe
d up by Andri.
I felt cold, wet and couldn’t breathe.

She
must have been an angel, standing at the end of the tunnel
–
Eva, g
un in hand.
She was aiming at Andri, who
lo
oked questioningly at Boeck. Th
ink
ing he could keep control, the museum director
responded wi
th an appeasing hand movement.

‘
Don’t do this.
’

Ignoring him,
Eva
w
alked up to Andri.

‘
Lift his head
. He can’t breathe.
’

She’d nodde
d in my direction
. It was a direct order
,
but Andri hesitated and
Boeck tried to discourage her
again
.

‘
Eva, you
can’t
…
’

Boeck took a step towards her
, but she wasn’t having any of
it
and shot Andri
in the foot.
He screamed
with pain.

‘
Stand over there
.
’

She waved Andri o
ver to a spot next to the kiln.

‘
Sit down.
’

He was hopping around, unable to
stand still because of the pain in his foot.

‘
SIT DOWN.
’

Andri did and
Eva pointed the gun at Boeck.

‘
Now get Magnus out
.
’

He looked her in the eyes
–
a
face
-
off. They stared
at each other for a long time
,
but s
he didn’t fli
nch.
Her fierceness
became
intense
r
by th
e second. Her jaws were tense, every muscle ready to leap
. Boeck finally ob
liged, slowly turning to me, pulling me out of the mould and
put
ting
me down on the floor. The liquid had started to set, forming a jelly
-
like layer around my body.

‘
Back off.
’

When
Boeck stepped back, Eva came over
to w
ipe
my face. She turned me on my
side to clear my airways.
I
was totally soaked and didn’t have a clue
where I was. I
felt dopey, i
nside and outside my body at the same time.

‘
Take his clothes off.
’

She
looked sharply
at Andri.

‘
You help him.
’

Andri hopped over and they stripped me. I
was
weak and
moaning
, trying to
push them off. Why c
ouldn’t they leave me alone?
Eva threw them her coat.

‘Put that on and carry him out
to the SUV.
’

The men looked at each other
,
t
hen at Eva. She
aimed the gun at Boeck’s knee.

‘
NOW.
’

Boeck and Andri stopped outside, but Eva wasn’t wasting any time.

‘
Keep moving.
’

She opened the back door and t
hey laid me on the backseat of the SUV. Meanwhile, she took the ignition keys from the snowmobiles and was about to drop them in the hole in the ice, but changed her mind and chucked them in the car.
She must have thought Boeck
capable of picking them up at
the bottom of the bay, or of having Andri do it. She turned
the engine
on and the heating to the max
before looking at
Boeck.

‘
Phones on the ground.
’

‘
It’s in the car.
’

She
didn’t believe Boeck
and
s
hot at the ice in front of him.

‘
Phones.
’

The men took out their mobiles and carefully put them down on the ice.

‘
Kick them to me.
’

They did.

‘
Back off.
’

They took one step back.

‘
Further.
’

They continued
slowly backwards
,
while
Eva
took out the sim cards before
cru
shing the phones with her boot.

‘
Eva. Give me a chance to expl…
’

Boeck’s attemp
t
s were vain.

‘
Turn
round
.
’