‘I wasn’t sure if it was real or acted. Besides, she’s pregnant and I didn’t want to worry her.’
Boeck looked amused, but that didn’t mean I’d convinced him. He was unlikely to take any risks and Carrie would be in danger until he was neutralised. How could I warn her?
47
Still under the shock of Boeck’s revelations, I was shoved into the backseat of a Volvo SUV, while Boeck chucked the smashed DVD player with the footage of my father’s into the boot. Sitting next to the ponytailed henchman with my hands tied under my legs, my head was thrown against the cold window as the car spun onto the ice and into the dark. All I could see was the icescape illuminated by the headlights and the speedometer hitting 140 km/h. When I asked where we were going, Boeck turned on the car stereo – Bach blaring.
Having seen my father’s fate, I knew that Boeck could have killed me then and there, but he didn’t want to. Not yet. First he wanted to milk my reaction to his atrocities. He thrived on it and I was sure he had plans for me. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill sightseeing tour of the archipelago.
There must have been more to him than sadism. It was clear from the museum that he was an educated man with a sharp sense of aesthetics. So what had triggered the evil in him? Why would he risk everything for the sake of torturing people? Was it a death wish? I didn’t think so. There was a touch of megalomania, but there was more, something else. He really believed in what he did. It went beyond personal ambition and he was prepared to sacrifice everything, possibly even himself. It was the fact that he was a believer that made him so terrifying. Unfortunately, there was nothing insincere about his belief.
The car slowed down before driving into the church bay and stopping in front of the timber church. I was led in through the double doors and dumped into a cloakroom. There was nothing except for a chair and a table with a wooden figure, possibly the one the craftsman had been carving when I first came to the church bay. The detail and precision of the woodwork was amazing, but what did Boeck see in it? More importantly, what was he planning to do with me?
48
She dropped the keys as she was getting out of the car at the end of her shift. It was when she reached down to pick them up that she found it – Magnus’ passport. It must have slipped out when he gave her Anna’s.
She looked at his photo again. There was something cheeky about his eyes. A no-brainer really – definitely tastier than any of the local produce. She took out Anna’s passport and opened it too. She looked old for her age and Eva couldn’t help thinking about Magnus’ allegations. Come to think of it, there had been a few unexplained disappearances in the last couple of years. She knew because her colleague Ernst had been in charge of the investigations, but he hadn’t uncovered anything suspicious. He’d concluded that they’d left for the Swedish mainland and it was true that with its geographic location in the Baltic, Mariehamn had a lot of passing trade. As for Boeck, she couldn’t believe he would be involved in anything dodgy. Her mother would have told her.
She couldn’t figure out what Boeck’s car had been doing parked around the corner from Magnus when she’d dropped him off, but he was probably just visiting a neighbour. Magnus was starting to make her paranoid. She understood why he was overreacting. It must be emotional rediscovering Mariehamn after 20 years, not to mention losing his father, walking into a burglary and being attacked on arrival. She knew how it felt to lose a father. She’d been 10 at the time. A policeman like her, her father had been shot by a Serbian bank robber collecting funds for ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Was this globalisation? A Helsinki cop killed in the Yugoslavian war. Her mother hadn’t been with anyone for almost 20 years when she met Boeck on a visit to Mariehamn.
Eva drove over to drop off Magnus’ passport, but the house was dark and she slipped it through the letter box. That’s when she noticed the smashed window. It could have been from the burglary, but she didn’t remember it being there earlier. She would have noticed. There was a piece of wood on the ground that looked like a chair leg. She knocked at the door and waited. And again, harder this time, but there was still no reaction, so she felt the door. It was open. She pulled out her gun and went in.
49
I’d been playing my father’s death over and over again in my head while waiting locked-up in the church cloakroom. The whole thing was beyond my grasp. Why would anyone do that? Why?
When Boeck finally arrived I wanted to explode, but I couldn’t. I had to buy time, let him do his spiel, because he was a perceptive madman and a murderer. If he sensed that I was trying to manipulate him in any way, he would be merciless. I had to keep him talking whilst working out an escape route.
‘What do you see when you look at him?’
He nodded at the wooden figure on the table.
‘An old man?’
‘It’s a peasant, but his beard is reminiscent of the Norse god Thor. When you meet a peasant with a beard like this, it’s like looking at Thor. It conveys his divine power, keeps him alive. When beards disappeared because of continental fashion, Sweden lost one of its transcendental links to the past, to our customs, our roots.’
‘So your power is in your beard?’
‘I’m afraid British cynicism doesn’t cut it with me.’
I had to change tack – he was serious about his beard.
‘What did my father have to do with this?’
‘He introduced me to Rudbeck’s Atlantica.’
‘Rudbeck?’
‘A 17th century genius from Uppsala. An architect, a musician, the discoverer of the lymphatic organ, you name it, Olof Rudbeck did it. He makes Da Vinci look like a half-wit. He proved that most of what is considered classical culture today originally stemmed from Sweden. The months, the zodiac, the seasons…‘
Boeck was unstoppable. What was he on about?
‘Applying interdisciplinary methods, his magnum opus Atlantica demonstrated – in 3000 pages, the result of 30 years of research – that Sweden was, is Plato’s real-life Atlantis. Everything worthwhile about western civilisation originated in Sweden.’
‘So what did my father do?’
‘No photographer could catch the soul of people like he Henrik.’
‘Why did you kill him if he was so brilliant?’
‘He tried to unmask my project. He didn’t understand the cause.’
‘What cause? What could justify killing a man?’
‘I had to kill him or risk everything being wasted. When I wouldn’t listen, he contacted the police and they told me. It was Henrik or Sweden’s future.’
This meant Boeck had support in the local police, unless he was bluffing. Was that how he’d found out about Carrie? Was it Eva? Had he used her to hear me out? I didn’t want to believe it, but it was a small police force and Boeck had demonstrated that he would do anything to achieve his goal, whatever the human cost. I hoped that Anna was still alive. I needed to win time.
‘Where’s Anna?’
Boeck didn’t answer.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Sweden has lost its way.’
‘How will your ‘cause’…’
‘Everyone knows about the great history of Sweden, but we strayed. We need to eliminate the foreign influence, the infestation, the Bernadottes.’
‘What, the Swedish royal family?’
‘They’re usurpers. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s marshals, was adopted by Charles XIII of Sweden in 1810 to become King and founder of today’s Royal house. Imagine Queen Elizabeth ignoring Prince Charles and adopting some French general to make him her heir. How do you think that would go down at Lord’s – a French general moving into Buckingham Palace? It’s hardly cricket, is it? And Bernadotte wasn’t even a good general. He was useless in the battlefield and couldn’t even be bothered to fight to keep Finland – typical surrender-monkey. Like all the French, he was all appearances and no substance. He started the decline of Swedish manhood. Today we’re run by a bunch of effe
minate poofters.’
‘It’s hard to find anyone without foreign blood. You’ll have to get rid of half the Swedish population.’
‘We have to protect Swedish values, stop their dissolution. Why do you think Palme was killed?’
‘I don’t think you can…’
‘Why was the only assassinated Swedish Prime Minister an immigrant’s son? Do you really think it was a coincidence? It wasn’t. I know what I’m talking about. Sweden is reacting. We’re fighting back.’
‘And what are you going to do when the King is dead?’
‘Change never comes easy.’
‘But what will you do!?’
‘It will be chaos, healthy chaos. I’m not going to try to seize power if that’s what you think. That’s not what this is about. It’s about making Sweden realise that there’s something fundamentally wrong. It will be a turning point. No one would give the throne to an immigrant today. The question is legitimate, especially as there was a true heir when Bernadotte was adopted. Illegitimate then, but legitimate by modern standards.’
‘So what? History can’t be changed.’
‘History needs to be set right. The King had a son – Carl Löwenhielm. His descendants lay no claim to the throne, but if anyone should be there, it’s them. I understand marriages with foreign royal houses, but there has to be some principle. A spine, a Swedish line. Otherwise all meaning is lost and there’s no grounding in national reality, no legitimacy. All we have now is a royal charade combined with the socialist sissies destroying the country in the name of multiculturalism. People have had it with immigrants taking the piss, using Scandinavia as a training camp for Marxist terrorism. Fundamentalism is funded by our tax money. We even pay for the cockroaches to have their own mosques. It has to stop before it’s too late, before the infestation becomes permanent. They openly attack our culture and we still give them money. They breed like rabbits and suck our welfare system dry. It needs to stop. They have to go, or the Swedish decline will be terminal.’
Boeck 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 Boeck 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 immediately jabbed the rifle into my side, holding it there. It was an antique, which didn’t lessen my fear as it was yet another sign of his obsession with an imaginary past.
‘Go to the door.’
I looked blankly at him, trying to win time.
‘You don’t argue with a Swedish Mauser. This one’s from 1936, made in Germany with Swedish steel. Nothing beats pulling 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. He was savouring the moment and his eyes were gleaming at the idea of killing me. He took out his phone and dialled.
‘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 with empty benches on both sides – no witnesses. We arrived at the doors.
‘Where are…’
Boeck thumped me on the temple with the rifle before I could finish my sentence. I shouted with pain as the 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 Boeck’s expectant eyes, relishing 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 take 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, pinning me against the wall.
50
Coming out, I was blinded by the sunlight 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 church was in a magic location.
Boeck looked to the side of the church, where a woman 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 – she was gagged. It was only when she’d almost reached 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 perfectly 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. Once my eyes got used to the dark I saw that 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 followed 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 screaming, shaking the cage, which was swinging back and forth. The henchman with the ponytail was standing by a winch, waiting for Boeck’s signal. Boeck nodded and he started lowering the cage.
It was a nightmare seeing Anna go through exactly what I’d seen my father submitted to in the film and her ‘noooooooo’ still echoes in my head to this very day. I roared in anger and tried to reach the man with the ponytail to stop him, but Boeck kicked me down, again and again. I was forced 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 head above the surface, so that I could watch her suffer, clasping onto life.
She became weaker by the second. I crawled nearer the winch, desperate to get Anna out. She was only meters away, but she was in the cage – so near yet so far. I wanted to help, pull her out, but I couldn’t, as Boeck kept beating me with the rifle and kicking me back. Watching Anna die without 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 couldn’t speak or shout, let alone open her mouth. She was so paralysed that her only sounds were moans. After a long struggle, she swallowed water, spluttered and drowned. It was the slowest death imaginable, a lifetime 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 attacked 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, but he pulled himself together and whacked me on the side of the head with the rifle. He hit me full on like a tennis player giving it all and following through. I tried to punch him again, but he pushed me back, aiming the rifle at my head. Any normal thug would have finished me off then and there, but not him, not this sophisticated monstrosity. He kept his focus and sublimated 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, tasting 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 pain feast. Boeck wasn’t one of us, he 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 ponytail 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 were they doing? They’d killed her and now 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? How 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 empathy, a heart fragment ticking away somewhere. Boeck clearly hadn’t, he was a complete robot, devoid of any humanity.
‘In case of hypothermia the body shuts down the metabolic functions. The circulation stops and the brain and other crucial organs are temporarily put on hold, thus minimising their need for oxygen and nutrition.’
Temporarily on hold? It sounded ominously close to death and the last place I wanted to be, but Boeck had another surprise in store. Anna’s body shook when he activated the defibrillator pads. When he tried again, he got a heartbeat, Andri took over, wrapping her in the blanket again and giving her mouth to mouth. The whole thing was surreal and I really couldn’t understand Boeck. When Anna finally came to, Andri gave her a hot drink. I couldn’t believe she was alive again after what she’d gone through.
The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) Page 12
