The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (9 page)

I kept scraping off the snow, then the ice, l
ooking for
a rock
.
I scrabbl
ed
with
my nails until
they broke
.
I tried to warm
my frozen fingers by breathing on them, but even tha
t wasn’t helping after a while, as t
hey were completely dead
. I scraped and scraped, w
ithout feeling my hands, fingers bleeding,
my b
ody shaking uncontrollably.
I was becoming an animal.
This was it,
I wouldn’t make it.

I couldn’t give up. As long
I was c
onscious I had to fight. T
here had to be
a way
out. There had to be
–
HAD TO
–
but I was so cold I couldn’t think clearly.
Trying to ignore the pain, I made a last
-ditch
effort to look round
. All I could see was pine trees, bushes, rocks and the damn car.
The damn car.
The car!

I shoul
d have thought of it
earlier
. I reached for th
e exhaust without thinking and
–
fucking pipe!
–
burnt myself. I cooled my hand in the
snow. How could the damn thing
still be so hot? Maybe it only felt hot because I was frozen, because I wanted to be burned. It occurred to me that I could use the car as a heater. I put my hands on the bonnet. It gave off some warmth and I lay down on it, but
I was too far gone.
I decided
to give the exhaust another go
. Using the towel to insulate
my hands
from the heat, I wriggled
the pipe.
When
i
t came loose
, a blast off heat blew
through the towel and I burnt myself again. I didn’t
care
–
I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. I could only see the burn on my
skin. I sat down in the snow.

Suddenly,
I was feeling better
. I was gradually
overcome with
a sense of well
-
being
as t
he pain of the cold
transformed into a warm wave
swelling
through my body
. I knew I wasn’t warm
, q
uite the opposite. I had to fight the
feeling
and f
orce
myself to dig again
to find a rock that would break the windscreen,
but t
he icy snow
stood its ground.
Although
I was tr
ying to be more aggressive,
my scraping
only
became weaker. My energy was fading
.
I couldn’t control my hands
any more
. I thought of
Carrie
. I wouldn’t get
the ch
ance to say goodbye and
t
o tell her how much I loved her. I’d never see our child. For the
first time in my life I prayed.

15

Finland was supposedly a bilingual country, but the Swedish schools were being shut down and
h
is parents had
been forced to send
him to a Finnish school.
H
e’d suddenly found himself as
the only
Swedish
-
speaking
Finn
in his class
. Swedish Finns
were see
n as arrogant imperialists and
h
is
classmates told him to go home to
Sweden
–
a country he’d never
even
visited.
He was being eradicated
like the rest of the Swedish minority in
Finland
.

To block out
the
racist
bullying
,
he
escaped into his lead soldiers, which he
m
oulded and painted
to reconstruct The Battle
of Narva from
1700, when Sweden had beaten Peter the Great
’s Russian army
. He’d started the sol
dier collection with his father
before continuing
with a
Finnish
-
speaking
classmate living in the same street. He thought he’d finally made a friend, but when
their teacher
asked
the classmate to list his best friends
, he omitted him
. From then on, h
e avoided the neighbour and buried himself in
his army display. It represented
Sweden
at its peak, when it had outdone
Russia
and been one of the great powers of the world. He focused on getting the colours of the uniforms
just
right
–
down to the smallest button and epaulette.
He didn’t need any friends now that he’d created his own world where
Sweden
ruled
. He
kept
his
neighbour
away, but he
insisted
on seeing the collection,
and o
ne day he finally let the classmate in with another friend
. They crushed the
soldiers by walking all over them
. His Swedish army was slaughtered.

Following the massacre
,
he developed
a protective shell
reinforced by a determination to resist
any more
racist
persecution
. He wasn’t going to put up with what his parents had suffered.
Sweden
was one of the great
nations of
the world and
always
would be.
As for
Finland
, it
was
just
a footn
ote. T
his knowledge helped him through school and strengthened him in his resolve to tur
n the tide. He would show them.

16

I was skating through the archipel
ago’s stunning icescape. W
eightless, gliding
, free as a bird, until the ice
abruptly
gave way
and I sank through it.
I desperately tried to climb back up, but
it
kept breaking in fr
ont of me
–
an endless canal.
When I looked round
,
desperate for help, all I
could
see
was
emptiness. The icescape merge
d
w
ith the sky at the horizon and t
here was absolutely no land in sight,
n
othing to reach for, no hope
.

I’d landed in
side
a whit
e void, a sphere of ice.
I scraped and scraped and t
he scraping on the ice echoed, becoming scraping in the snow. I was naked, an animal digging
for a rock
and I
finally
found
one, a giant
st
one
the size of a medicine ball. I lifted it above my head and catapulted it against the car. When it bounced off
,
I tried again, but there still wasn’t a scratch on the car.
It was so spotless
and scornful that it
seemed
made o
ut of armour
plating. I was frozen numb. I
was lost but
couldn’t give in
.
I picked up the stone again and hurled it at the windscreen with a roar.

The
female police officer
and the
nurse
chatting
at the end of my bed
jumped out of their skin
and i
f it weren’t for the police woman’s fast reflexes, they would have been hit.
S
he’d spotted
me lift
ing
something out of the corner of her eye
and shoved
the nurse to the side
as t
he jug crashed on the floor behind them.

I came to standing on the be
d with two women staring at me
and a
fter a momentary conf
usion
I
quickly slipped back under
the sheets. The nurse checked my
temperature, which was
normal, so I was left with the police officer
–
Eva Mikaelsson
. She
m
ust have been
about my age and h
er blue eyes looked familiar
, but t
hey were proba
bly just stereotypically Nordic. Or maybe
I remembered her for frisking me and holding
me at gunpoint. She got straight to the point
this time too
.

‘
Idiot!
’

Now w
hat had I done to her?

‘
People like you don’t deserve to live
.
’

I noti
ced the bandage on my left hand and
i
t
slowly
dawned on me what this
might be
about.

‘
You could have lost much more...
’

‘
What?
’

‘
…than
a
pinkie and a
toe.

I peered under the covers. My right foot was bandaged
too.

‘
That bloody car!
’

‘
Those clever little Skodas lock
automatically after 30 seconds
.
You’re not the first one to be caught out.
’

‘
What a stupid invention.
’

‘
What did you think you were doing?
’

‘
I wanted to understand my father.
’

‘
By following him into the grave?!
’

She was right,
I should have told someone about my farewe
ll swim, but if I’
d tol
d Carrie
she would never have let me go
.

‘
Who found me?
’

‘
I did.
’

‘
How did you know I was there?
’

‘
I happened to drive past.
’

‘
Happened?
’

‘
Five minutes later and you’d have been dead.
’

Eva
had to go
.
I liked her way of cutting the crap.
I suspected not much got by her
and what did was viewed with quiet irony.
It was my stupid fault that I’d almost died, but she’d been there to pick up the pieces. She was right
,
I needed to be more careful with my life.

‘
Guess I should thank you.

‘
Don’t do it again, not without a sauna.
’

As she left,
I finally realised what was odd about my father’s swim. I could suddenly recall him having a winter dip and running back
to the sauna. I used to hate sitting in the sweat box
, because
I couldn’t breathe, but he would force me to stay, telling me to relax. I’d never been able to take it and
used to
gasp for air like a fish on dry land. He argued with mum about it every time we got home. She
just couldn’t
understand the obsession with physical sensations. Wh
at was the point of being freezing cold
or over
-
heated? How could anyone prefer a cold swim to a nice cup of tea?
I thought the
y made for a great combination (provided
I didn’t get locked out again while swimming
), b
u
t
my mother
couldn’t bear the Scandinavian obsession with nature.
The poor woman
hated camping,
but had ended up in a culture that
was happiest under the canvas and crapping in the woods
.