Below Zero

by Eva Hudson

  Thoughts started to assemble themselves in order. A little regiment of clarity reported for duty inside Ingrid’s head. She looked at the lamp, looked at the burner and down at the bench she was sitting on. She could make a fire. All she needed was some kindling. She glanced at her backpack and an eyebrow automatically rose up with satisfaction: the Libresse. They’d burn brilliantly.

  Suddenly filled with energy, Ingrid tried the slats she was sitting on to see if any of them moved. She felt sure she’d be able to pry off one or two of them, but quickly realized that breaking them into pieces small enough to fit into the wood burner would be a different matter. They were two inches thick: it’d take more than a good, hard kick to break them. Her bubble of energy instantly burst and she slumped back down.

  She wasn’t sure if she should put her sneakers on. Dry socks inside wet shoes didn’t make a lot of sense, but she had to be ready to run or fight if she was given the opportunity to do so. She bent forward and squeezed her dry feet into her sodden Nikes.

  Through the wall, Ingrid could hear her captors walking and talking. One of them had a persistent cough. In these conditions it wouldn’t be long before she did too. She started shaking her head. An involuntary action. A physical manifestation of disbelief. It still wasn’t sinking in that this had happened, that this was happening. She’d wake up. She’d leave the movie theater. She’d snap out of whatever psychosis she was experiencing. She must have had a bang to the head.

  Denial was another tool she’d read about. It allowed captives to function. Stopped them really going crazy. Denial gave you respite from dealing with the impossible present. It was probably evolutionary.

  It took a while, but Ingrid slowly became aware of another sound. It sounded like a drip, but a drip would make a regular noise, like a metronome. This had a pattern, a rhythm. She pressed her ear against the log wall and almost instantly felt a vibration. A tap. Then another one. It was like a waltz. Quick, quick, slow. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.

  She tapped back, the same pattern, performing an acoustic dance with whoever was on the other side of the wall. They stopped for a while, then tapped again. Ingrid replied, then tapped a rhythm of her own and waited.

  A second later she got a reply. A perfect echo.

  Someone on the other side of the wall wanted to talk to her.

  Transcript from Riksdag Committee Hearing 23

  December 15 2015

  BILUNGS: Thank you for joining us today. If you would please formally state your name and occupation.

  FRIESE: Björn Erik Friese. I am a lawyer.

  BILUNGS: More specifically, you are a human rights lawyer, is that correct?

  FRIESE: Yes.

  BILUNGS: And you work for Osberg and Nyquist?

  FRIESE: I do.

  BILUNGS: Mr Friese, I will encourage you to speak freely. This is not an enquiry, you are not in court; we are only here to establish the facts of the events of December 15 and 16th last year. [Pause] Can you please tell the committee when you first heard of the situation unfolding in Stockholm on Monday the15th?

  FRIESE: You mean the bomb at the National Museum?

  BILUNGS: If you think that’s relevant, but I suspect it would be more pertinent to start with the call from Sergeant Sami Holm.

  FRIESE: Sure. I was at my office, in Osterlångg; I was having a video conference call with colleagues in London, an extradition matter. I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket. Then it buzzed again. You know, it can take so long to set up these conference calls that I didn’t want to interrupt it. But then my assistant Pia—do you need her full name?

  BILUNGS: Please.

  FRIESE: Pia Olin. She knocked on the door, indicated she needed to speak to me. She waited inside the conference room door, waving her phone at me… It became obvious that she had something important to tell me.

  BILUNGS: And what did she say?

  FRIESE: She suggested that I step out into the hallway and told me that she had a police officer on the phone for me. This is not so unusual, but I could tell from the expression on Pia’s face that this was not a client who had absconded or something like that. She was scared. At least, that’s how she looked. [Pause. BILUNGS indicates for FRIESE to continue] I took the phone from her hand, introduced myself and then Sergeant Holm apologized for not visiting me in person but in the circumstances she said she hoped I would understand.

  BILUNGS: What did Sergeant Holm say to you?

  FRIESE: She said that there were unconfirmed reports that my wife had been taken from the Republik café. I asked her what she meant by ‘taken’ and she said that eyewitnesses claimed they had seen Anna, my wife, being placed in a large black car, a Range Rover, possibly, by armed men and was then driven away at speed. I asked her if she was sure. [Pause] She said she could not confirm the reports, but if they were true she wanted to give me the chance to get Stefan, our son, to a place of safety—

  BILUNGS: She knew you had a son?

  FRIESE: Nodding. Though she may have said ‘children’ or ‘family’, something like that.

  BILUNGS: She did not mention Stefan by name?

  FRIESE: Not that I recall. I asked her if she had informed Sager House and she said that she hadn’t—

  BILUNGS: Just to be clear, Sergeant Holm called you before she called the Statsminister’s office to inform them that—according to witnesses—the Minister for Climate and the Environment had been abducted at gunpoint?

  FRIESE: That is what she said, yes.

  BILUNGS: Did you think that was odd?

  FRIESE: To be honest, I was only thinking about Stefan at that moment. I could not remember if he was with the child minder or if it was one of the days he was with his grandmother. That was my focus. In those moments. But very quickly, within a minute I would say, I realized that the police officer, Sergeant Holm, was mistaken.

  BILUNGS: And you told her that?

  FRIESE: [Nodding] Anna had a full day of meetings—she was preparing for the Paris climate talks—and there was simply no way she would be having lunch in the Republik, even though we like it there. We often ate there. We still do, despite everything. So, I called Anna, just to reassure myself, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I got Pia to call Anna’s office, and Kasper, Anna’s assistant, confirmed that Anna was here in the Riksdag. I think maybe even in the committee room right next door. Not sure why I would remember that.

  BILUNGS: And Miss Skyberg’s assistant, Kasper—this is Kasper Sjöberg?

  FRIESE: Yes.

  BILUNGS: Mr Sjöberg was sure Miss Skyberg was in a meeting next door?

  FRIESE: Positive.

  BILUNGS: And your son?

  FRIESE: Pia checked the diary. He was with his grandmother, Anna’s stepmother Sofia, and I called her and told her to expect that the police would probably knock on the door at some point. In fact, while we were on the phone, uniformed officers arrived. They stayed, parked outside, all day. I should like to say that, given the demands placed on the Stockholm police that day, they were very dedicated to the needs of my family and I should like their efforts to be recognized by this committee.

  BILUNGS: But you were not able to reach your wife?

  FRIESE: No, like me, she was also on a conference call, but her conference calls are a little more important than mine. Certainly at that time, and she was not contactable.

  BILUNGS: But you were nonetheless sure that it was not your wife who had been abducted.

  FRIESE: [Pause] Obviously, given the nature of Anna’s work, and given what happened to Anna Lindh, and before her Olof Palme, there was always a small piece of me that feared that what Sergeant Holm was telling me was true. You know, the eco terrorists, some of them will do stupid things to make the world pay attention. In the run-up to the Paris talks, I suppose I believed it was possible she really had been taken. And then, when the news reports started to come out… Well, you can imagine. TV4 is saying there are unconfirmed reports that Anna Skyberg has been kidnapped. And then, when thos
e reports ceased, you started to think that possibly you had imagined it. I admit, it was a little hard to be sure they were mistaken until I had spoken to Anna.

  BILUNGS: And when was that?

  FRIESE: A little after two, I think. She left her meeting to be greeted by armed officers who explained to her she might be the target of a kidnap. She had already spoken to Sofia, her father’s wife, at this point and was alarmed but reassured that Stefan was being protected. She had been told she would not be allowed to leave the Riksdag until the situation was under control. She wanted to know that I could rearrange my schedule to take care of Stefi.

  BILUNGS: I would like to return to your phone call with Sergeant Holm. How did she seem to you?

  FRIESE: In what way?

  BILUNGS: I would just like to form an idea of your impression of her.

  FRIESE: [Pause] I don’t know what to say. It’s not like she was standing in front of me. It was a short conversation.

  BILUNGS: Did she seem anxious?

  FRIESE: No, not especially. Nervous, perhaps.

  BILUNGS: How do you mean?

  FRIESE: She might have stuttered, stumbled over the odd word. I didn’t think anything of it.

  BILUNGS: And you didn’t think it odd that she had called you first, that she knew you had a son?

  FRIESE: Well, at the time, I was only thinking about whether or not there was any chance Anna could have been in the Republik.

  BILUNGS: And thinking about it now—I mean, in your work, you must have many dealings with the police— do you think her actions were appropriate?

  FRIESE: I have no comment to make about the actions of Sergeant Holm.

  BILUNGS: Very well. If we could turn now to your first contact with the kidnappers.

  20

  Ingrid twisted round, pressing her ear into the log wall. She could hear men talking, but the tapping had stopped. Then she heard something unexpected: a bugle call. Images of shined buttons, peaked caps and parade grounds entered her head. It was a ringtone and when the call was answered one of the voices got louder. The only words she could make out were ‘hello’, ‘yes’ and ‘fuck’. The rest was unintelligible.

  The voice got louder. Angrier. There was a thud. A thump. Then another voice joined in. They were arguing. Another thud. Were they fighting too? Then the bugle sounded again.

  “Hello?”

  There was a long silence. Ingrid became aware of her own pulse as her ear pressed into the wood. De-dum, de-dum. She started to tap along.

  “OK.”

  Then more voices, clamoring. It sounded like there were more than two of them. Had their instructions been changed? Was that what was happening? She pressed her ear as close as she could, hoping to make out what they were saying. She listened hard and tuned in to a sound that didn’t appear to be made by a grown man. Singing. Tuneless singing. It sounded like a child.

  Jesus, no.

  A flash of Megan, a surge of anger. She could no longer feel the cold. Why would they keep the kid in with them? Why not put the kid in the same room as her? She didn’t want to answer that question. She’d spent five years working in Violent Crimes Against Children. She knew why adults kept children against their will.

  You goddamn fucking bastards.

  Ingrid sucked down her rage. Just like all the times she’d walked into crime scenes and witnessed what the sickest minds are capable of. Children kept in closets, cellars. Feces, both animal and human, left for days on carpets that wriggled with maggots. Track marks in spindly arms, parents who actually inject their heroin into their nine-year-olds to make them feel better, or make them shut up. Ingrid knew how anger clouds your reactions, makes you miss things. You have to park it. Box it. Only open it up when the case gets cold and you need the rage to push you forwards. If you can’t control your anger, an instructor at Quantico once told Ingrid, you’d better not work with kids. She breathed deep and hard.

  Then she heard it. De-dum, de-dum. An echo to match her thundering heart. The kid was tapping on the wall when the men were arguing, when it was safe to make a noise. Ingrid’s brain snowglobed with screwdrivers and lighting fires and fistfights with Mohammed, trying to figure out how she could get the kid out of there.

  She tapped back, in the hope that knowing she was there and paying attention would offer some comfort. De-dum, de-dum. Then it hit her, like a fist to the face: the kid couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the components.

  She clenched her teeth, the muscles in her jaw tightening.

  In the ten years—no, eleven—she had been in law enforcement, Ingrid had worked on over a dozen kidnappings. After Megan, they were the cases she muscled her way in on. In her experience, there were three reasons why people abducted children: sexual gratification, revenge and money.

  If sexual gratification was their motive, why has she been taken? If you wanted to abuse a kid, you didn’t want an adult hostage in the next room. Revenge was a possible motive, but in the cases she’d worked in VCAC that was usually only in custody cases. Again, if that was their reason, it didn’t make sense for them to be holding her too. So that left money. They had to be holding the kid for ransom. Did that mean they were holding her for ransom too?

  She shook her head, trying to loosen some sense from the facts that she knew. She thought about the gunmen in Republik. Two Somalis, one North African. They hadn’t worn masks or disguised their identities. That usually meant they were preparing for martyrdom. But there had been no suicide-by-cop, just the taking of valuables and one single unidentifiable female.

  Ingrid pictured her hand dropping her wallet containing over two thousand dollars and nothing else into the younger man’s sack. Did that explain it? That they thought she was rich? There hadn’t been any ID in the wallet, no driver’s license, so if they were hoping to get a ransom for her, who the hell were they going to call?

  Her husband.

  They had taken everyone else’s wallet too. Assuming an average of fifty dollars a wallet, they’d have maybe another grand to add to the money they’d gotten from her. Not exactly a raid on Fort Knox. Certainly not the kind of compensation for going to jail for decades for kidnap and firearms offenses. They’d probably get done for the murder of the man who hit his head too. That meant life behind bars. Why would they risk that?

  She couldn’t work it out. Maybe the cold or the hunger was impairing her thinking. It was more important to figure out a way of escaping. She thought about the screwdriver. A quick jab into the eye was the obvious choice. Ingrid imagined Mohammed coming into the room, the door open behind him, possibly bringing her something to eat… Unless she could take him out with a single hit, there would be a struggle. The other men in the room next door would hear. They would overpower her. But… It might give the kid a chance to escape. If she could make a big enough fuss, if she fought like a mustang, the kid could slip away.

  But slip away into what? Twenty below? Middle of the forest. She knew nothing about the kid. Didn’t know what he or she was wearing. Most likely all that would happen was that she would end up tied hand and foot and the kid would simper in a corner and not even try to leave. Ingrid had seen that too: victims who had plenty of chances to escape but never took them because no one ever told them they could.

  Ingrid pulled the screwdriver from her sock and realized just how tiny it was. Almost useless. Then a memory surfaced: a lazy night she’d spent at Ralph’s—a name that no longer made her heart skip a beat—watching Doctor Who. Ralph had made her watch about five episodes back to back, hoping he could make her see why it was the best show on TV. One way or another, Ingrid had always attracted the nerds and the geeks. Ralph’s attempt at conversion failed, but Ingrid had learnt that the Doctor’s only weapon was a screwdriver. A sonic screwdriver, admittedly. All he had to do was point it at a problem and it immediately solved itself. Remembering how Ralph’s long legs had entwined with hers on his couch, she pointed the tiny screwdriver at the door.

  And a solution to her pr
oblem immediately presented itself.

  21

  Ingrid swiped one of the lamps and inspected the timber closely. The wood of the doorframe was almost as rotten as the roof. If she could dig out the rot around the hinges, the door would simply fall open.

  Her bound arms started to hurt holding the flickering lamp at shoulder height, so she placed it at her feet while she thought things through. On the plus side, it wouldn’t be too noisy. If the men were talking next door, and the wind was howling, she doubted her captors would notice her scraping away at the rot. Another bonus was that—unlike the roof option—it was achievable. Elation surged through her like fire: if she managed to open the door without attracting attention, it could be hours before they even realized she had gone. Her head started to nod in affirmation: this was it. This was her way out. She could raise the alarm, save the kid. Her thoughts swirled like snow outside an air vent, tumbling and falling, rising and darting.

  She gripped her fingers around the handle of the screwdriver and started digging, flicking out splinters, taking control. She started with the top hinge, where the wood was so soft it felt like she was scooping out a pumpkin. After a few minutes, she pressed an index finger into the hole, digging out fibers with her nail, hoping to feel the metal of a screw. She wasn’t even a knuckle deep.

  Assuming each of the three hinges had three screws, that meant nine holes she’d have to make. A couple hours, tops. Perfectly doable. She’d need to be strategic, though. She couldn’t do all three screws on one hinge in case the door shifted, started to stick, and alerted Mohammed to her plan. It’d have to be one screw from the top, one from the middle, then one from the bottom, then repeat.