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

by Nilsson-Julien, Olivier

  I found a freezer crammed with large chunks of meat. At first I thought it looked like human flesh, but my father was neither a serial killer nor a cannibal. I remembered that he used to hunt. The meat must be moose.

  By the time I’d changed into dry clothes and gave Carrie a ring, I was tipsy and emotional. I’d left her in our Holloway flat at the crack of dawn. I really didn’t like leaving her alone, especially as she was pregnant and due the following week. I didn’t tell her about the burglary or the bump on my head, because I knew she’d go bonkers and tell me I had to have a scan.

  Of course she would be right, but I couldn’t face spending half a day in a hospital waiting room to end up being told to wait for the bulge to go. What bothered me more though was that by being in Mariehamn, I risked missing the birth. I really wanted to be there with her. We’d been through so much together, including three miscarriages before getting this far.

  I’d been watching Carrie like a hawk for the past few months, checking everything she ate, every step she took. I’d kept her locked up in the flat for most of the pregnancy and we hadn’t spent a single night apart since I’d moved in. I had to control myself not to ask her what she’d eaten.

  6

  Dahl found me cuddling my old skates with glazed-over eyes. Once he spotted the bottle on the table, he gathered I was on a sentimental slide.

  ‘Time travelling are we?’

  My father’s solicitor was tall with the look of someone on dairy, beer and aquavit – square with bloodshot eyes, bulky but not floppy. He nodded as he reached out for my hand.

  ‘My condolences.’

  I shook his.

  ‘Aouch!’

  He’d just seen my bump.

  ‘Here, this should do it.’

  He handed me a pack of painkillers. I took two and flushed them down with the aquavit.

  ‘You need to identify the body before we can talk about the will. Are you ready to go now?’

  The question caught me off-guard. Until then it had been as if my father didn’t exist. He’d been an imaginary character from a distant past. I wasn’t prepared to face his body. Subconsciously, I’d assumed I would be going straight to the funeral – that’s what usually happened in the movies. It simply hadn’t occurred to me to think about what would happen to it before. It was the first time I was dealing directly with a person’s death and I didn’t particularly want to see my deceased father. I would have preferred to hold on to what was left of his living memory, but Dahl was waiting patiently for my decision.

  He stayed in the car while I went into the funeral home, where the receptionist had me sit in an armchair until the undertaker came to greet me. He led me down a long corridor and stopped at the last door. The place was dead silent and immaculately clean. Did I want to be left alone with my father? I did. A priest was available if I wished but although I didn’t, the man seemed to insist. I wasn’t sure who he felt sorrier for, the priest or me. I didn’t care. I wanted to go in on my own. I didn’t need a priest to tell me what to feel.

  My father’s body was lying in the middle of the room. He was covered by a white sheet, except for his face and arms. There were three candles burning on a table along the wall. So this was what they called a show room – the last chance for mourners to see their loved one. The candles and the sheet reminded me of the Saint Lucia day celebrated in the Nordic countries, when a – usually blonde – girl in a white gown with a crown of candles on her head leads a procession through the winter darkness. But my father made for an unlikely Lucia – he was neither girl, nor blonde. Looking at his body from a distance felt surreal. It could have been anyone, but it was my father, stripped of everything that had surrounded him in life. Stepping closer, I could see his face. It was familiar, but I wouldn’t have recognised him in the street.

  I hesitated before removing the sheet, possibly out of fear of being disgusted, or simply of death. There was also something more visceral, a feeling akin to remorse. I’d let him down by letting him die alone. Him, my father. The words felt odd together. ‘My’ and ‘father’ hadn’t been juxtaposed for a long time in my life. I carefully lifted the sheet to see the whole body. Seeing my procreator could be an indication of my own future, but looking at the body, the dominant feeling was emptiness. Coldness. His body didn’t reveal anything personal. It was strictly physical. There was nobody there, no one home. Nakedness is often associated with intimacy, but I could see nothing more impersonal than my father’s naked body in the funeral home. It was lying in the most sterile of places, deprived of its defining environment and isolated from my father’s belongings.

  I remembered him as towering over me, but now I was looking down at him. Travelling to Mariehamn, I’d imagined my father the way I’d seen him as a 10-year old. He was still big, but there was a frailty about him which led me to review my image.

  I stared at his shaved and swollen face. Mum always said there was a resemblance. Telling me I looked like my father had been her ultimate insult. She couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t see it though. Had it been in our smiles or facial expressions? In our movements? These signs of life were invisible on a dead man. I looked at his stomach, chest, shoulders. He was stouter than I remembered. Was it beer, a bad diet, a sedentary life style, or simply a matter of age? His hands were small for his size and didn’t look like the hands of a manual worker, but his legs were surprisingly long and muscular, which must have come from the skating. His feet were big like mine – Carrie would have called them barges. Different parts of the body told different stories and pointed to different facets of his personality.

  The body did remind me of my father, but it wasn’t him. It was a body he’d inhabited – his skin. At first I’d regretted coming and I couldn’t see what it would bring, but standing there I realised that seeing his body would help me build a new image of him that wouldn’t be based on memories or second-hand accounts. It would be real. Mine.

  I couldn’t help asking myself what I would have told him if he’d suddenly come alive. What did I want to know and what would he want to know? I imagined him asking why I hadn’t been in touch and me returning the question. Why hadn’t he contacted me? Would we have had anything to talk about? Seeing my dead father didn’t provide any answers, it only triggered new questions.

  As I was leaving, the man in the dark suit said the funeral would be in two days time, unless I had any objections of course. He asked if I could drop off some clothes and about flower arrangements. I trusted he would do a better job than I in the floral department. Heading out after confirming my father’s identity at the reception, I nearly received a second bump on the head as a man flung open the door in my face. It hadn’t been deliberate and he excused himself profusely, but I couldn’t help thinking that luck wasn’t on my side since arriving on this island.

  Driving back to the house with Dahl, I asked where my father had drowned.

  ‘In the sea…’

  I knew that.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Solviken. You must have skated there as a kid.’

  He was probably right, but it didn’t ring any bells.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘A 20-minute drive. I also have the details of the couple who found him, in case you want to talk to them.’

  Dahl’s words ebbed away as I stared out the window over the passing sea, with the sound of skates on ice automatically starting to echo in my head. It was the rhythm of my childhood, a constant alternation of sound and silence.

  ‘Why did he go for a dip in a remote bay in the freezing winter?’

  The question had slipped out before I’d even thought about asking. I was thinking out loud. Dahl shrugged.

  ‘I’m from the mainland. We don’t do that either, but believe me, Henrik went for a swim because he had to, because it was in his genes. That’s what these crazy islanders do. Don’t try to read any metaphysics into it. Why does a duck quack?’

  He was right. Living here meant being at the mercy of the ele
ments and maybe that was something I couldn’t grasp as a Londoner. I’d spent my early years on Åland and had expected to be able to tap into my old self, but I seemed to have been irreversibly transformed by London. Maybe seeing the bay would help.

  7

  Driving out to Solviken in my father’s car, I called Carrie to check again that she was alright. She felt like the baby was about to drop out any minute. I told her to hang on – I was doing my best to get back in time for the birth. I wished she could have been with me in Mariehamn. Her level-headedness would have helped me make sense of the situation.

  Solviken turned out to be a typical Scandinavian inlet surrounded by granite rocks. It narrowed as it reached the snow-covered shore. Dahl had claimed I would recognise it, but I didn’t, probably because I’d only been here in summer.

  My father must have stood on the shore before walking onto the ice. This very spot was where he’d last put his feet on earth. I tried to imagine this being the last moments of my life.

  I couldn’t quite pinpoint it at first, but something was bothering me. Then I realised what it was. Although he’d died only a few days ago, I couldn’t see any hole. I walked onto the ice to look around. My father driving this far for a dip simply didn’t make sense. There must have been pre-drilled holes nearer home. Even after searching the bay, I still couldn’t find where he’d jumped into the water. There had to be a logical explanation. I rummaged through the boot of his car to check if he’d even owned an ice drill. Ice fishers would usually have one, but there was none in the Skoda. I’d wanted to reconnect with my father, find the spot where he’d died. Instead I was losing him. His trace was fading. The accountant in me needed things to add up. He’d died. So much was clear, but I needed to know exactly where and how. I glanced at the bay a last time before getting back into the car. That’s when I saw it. How could I have missed it? It had been staring me in the face all the time.

  I walked back onto the ice. The iced-over hole was near the rocks on the left side of the bay. It looked like a fishing hole – small for a grown man. Dahl had mentioned Solviken being popular with fishermen. Trying to imagine my father coming here, I looked back to the car from the fishing hole. I’d brought a recent photo of him from the house. I took it out, took it in.

  He would have undressed by the car and rushed onto the ice, a good 50 metres from the shore. Then what? He plunged and drowned? If so, how did they find him? Thanks to the car? If he’d drowned, he would never have made it out of the water. He would have vanished under the ice and some splashing children would have discovered him next summer. Now that I’d seen the setting, I didn’t understand how he could have been found so quickly if he’d drowned. It just didn’t add up.

  The wind was freezing cold, so I returned to the car. I couldn’t imagine anyone doing what my father had done. I tried to convince myself that Dahl was right, that it’s what Scandinavians do, but it still didn’t make sense. I needed to know more and hopefully the couple who’d found my father would be able to fill me in.

  The Forsmans lived in a modest but comfortable apartment on the first floor of a small town house in the centre of Mariehamn. It was only 6 p.m., but I’d caught them at dinner time and they insisted I share their meal. Their living room could have been plucked directly from an IKEA catalogue, except their furniture was authentic and probably inherited or bought at local auctions. Where IKEA’s products would have been glossy, their tables and shelves were matt and showed discreet signs of vintage wear.

  Food-wise, things had moved on since my childhood – when I grew up a potato-free meal had been unthinkable in Mariehamn, but the simple pasta with Parma ham and roasted vegetables served by the Forsmans could have been dished out anywhere in Europe. The only oddity was the milk. They’d kept that tradition and the Nordic habit of barely exchanging a syllable over dinner. I attempted several times to ask about my father, but they only nodded and chewed on as if they hadn’t eaten for days. One thing at a time seemed to be the motto. Only when their plates were empty did they finally look up. Lisa finished first, but didn’t talk until her husband Mikael had scraped every last trace of sauce off his plate. I’m sure he would have licked it clean if I hadn’t been there, as well as the knife and fork while he was at it.

  When Lisa looked at me, I thought she was going to speak. She 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 cutting 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, as if he’d been sprinkled with talc. It reminded me of my life drawing classes.’

  I tried to picture what she’d seen.

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  She looked up.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand.‘

  Lisa paused to think before giving her impression.

  ‘There was something about the way he was lying next to the hole. It seemed so pointless to have died after getting out of the water, not making it to the car.’

  She shook 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 the police concluded that he was killed by a combination of water in the lungs and hypothermia. Maybe his 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 Åland accent.

  ‘Do most bays have swim holes?

  ‘When they’re in a bay, there’s usually a house in the vicinity, but 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, he’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 father dying l
ike 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 have sat in the same tub and being a cold water swimmer, my guess was he’d taken a scorching one, no 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 with 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 nothing about my father was clear, solid or durable any more.

  9

  He’d been a shooting club member for as long as he could remember, but this was different. This was the meaning of his life. Once he’d identified the right weapon, he’d started practising methodically on multiple targets with a silencer. Distance wasn’t an issue – they would be at 10 to 30 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.