‘I told Carrie. If she doesn’t hear from me she’ll call Eva Mikaelsson.’
Boeck paused for a moment, but it was a futile attempt to call him back to reality. I had to do something to break his bubble, not that I had any high hopes. I’d damaged his body, scratched the surface, even made him limp, but that was it. He hadn’t flinched, his fanaticism outdid the pain by far. There was no limit to what his ideas could drive him to. He was so manic, on such adrenalin, or whatever it was that kicked in, that it was as if his body ceased to exist. He didn’t care about the physical world, about us, only about stimulating his own fantasies. He was deranged, disconnected, and I had nothing to lose. Telling him the truth might be the only way to make him engage.
‘I don’t buy your pseudo-political drivel. Your Swedish greatness talk is only an excuse to kill people. You need to take a good look at yourself. What you need is a head doctor. It’s so bad you have to jerk off at people dying in cages.’
Boeck gave me a glacial stare. I may have been wrong, but I’m sure some of it hit home, because for the first time he’d fallen silent. He didn’t lose his focus though. He nodded at Andri, who grabbed my arms and dragged me towards the cage, but I wasn’t finished with Boeck.
‘You talk about being a man. Killing people is never going to make you a man. It’s never going to get you out of this backwater. What are you really trying to prove?’
‘NO!’
Anna had come to and could see me approaching the hole. There was a terrified, empty look in her eyes – shock. Boeck’s scenario of pain had been planned to the minute and now it was my turn to be the bait. Anna was going to watch me die. I’d almost reached the cage and if I didn’t stop Andri, everything would be over for me. Boeck would be wetting himself with excitement. Andri was my last hope.
‘How do you know you won’t be next?’
Andri ignored me, his eyes locked on the cage.
‘Hey! I’m talking to you! You’ll end up in prison. You…’
Andri still didn’t react, even though I kicked away at his legs and lashed out trying to free my arms. When I bit his arm and pulled his ponytail, he finally reacted by giving me an elbow in the head. I was out.
51
She entered the hall holding her gun.
‘Magnus!’
When there was no response to her calls, she walked into the living room to look around. Magnus should be in. She’d seen the car parked outside and didn’t think he would have gone swimming again. He’d learnt his lesson and didn’t come over as the suicidal type.
She kicked against something on the floor. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could distinguish a broken chair. It wasn’t just broken, it was trashed. She checked the bedroom, but it was impossible to tell when Magnus last slept in the bed – no one ever made their beds properly any more. She went back to the hall, where his coat was hanging on the hook. Where was he? Had he gone back to the museum? It seemed insane, but she decided to check.
52
I was still out, but the faint sound of voices was starting to get through to me and when Andri lowered the cage into the cold water I came to immediately, staring straight into Anna’s panicking eyes while screaming in horror. I was completely numb; crushed by the cold, gasping for air, imploding. My limbs felt thick; my feet were gone; my hands too stiff to move. I kept trying to cling onto the cage, or I imagined I did, because my movements were futile compared to the effort I felt I was making.
Locking eyes with Anna’s pain, I saw my father and the images of my father’s death mixed in with my own. It was as if I was dying with him. I fought, clung, slipped, and climbed, frantically, in vain. Boeck wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at Anna. My death had no purpose. Not for me, but of course to Boeck it was loaded with meaning. I was dying to provoke the atrocious emotions reflected in Anna’s expression. He had revived her, but would he bother to revive me? Would there be a point? I didn’t know but it gave me some hope. It was false hope – I had to die to live, to find out whether Boeck would resuscitate me. If he did, what new experiment did he have in store? I was wasting my last few seconds of consciousness on speculation. I had to let go and soon lost track of time, quickly feeling warmer, calmer.
53
The window behind the museum reception had been boarded up and there weren’t any traces of new a break-in by Magnus, so Eva decided to drive by Boeck’s and her mother Riita’s place. Although she had seen Boeck’s car around the corner from the Sandberg house, she still found Magnus’ suspicions against Boeck hard to believe.
Her mother’s house was completely dark. Eva knew that her mother was visiting her sister in Helsinki – Boeck had said she’d be back in a couple of days. He should be there though, but Eva couldn’t see his car. Where could he be at this time? Did he have someone on the side?
She returned to the Sandberg house, but Magnus still wasn’t back. Where was everyone? There was definitely something wrong, but what should she do? Where could Magnus have gone?
54
This was it. My life was over and there was nothing I could do. My visit had been shorter than expected, but at least I was dying where I was born, not that I was convinced that it was necessarily a sign of fulfilment. My home was in London now. I was leaving without seeing my unborn child, unable to say goodbye to the woman of my life – Carrie.
I didn’t want to die, especially as I’d never felt more alive than in the last 24 hours. It had been a horrible experience, but coming so close to death also made me feel much stronger about everything I had and about the people I cared for.
I simply couldn’t accept that this was happening. I wasn’t ready to go this way. I’d expected to die of prostate cancer, possibly killed by a terrorist bomb or a super bug, but most likely in a bike accident on Euston Road. That would have been a predictable death, a coherent statistic. This wasn’t.
I’d given up, because I was determined not to die in anger, not to give Boeck my last moments. Maybe I should have prayed like when I locked myself out of the car, but this was different. There was no escape, no miracle to expect. I couldn’t rely on Boeck resuscitating me like he did with Anna. I had no choice – I accepted that I was dying and did my utmost to focus on the people I loved, trying to detach myself from the pain.
I was numb, hovering in a blizzard. The whiteness was blinding, with voices echoing in the distance, Carrie appearing and disappearing. When I reached out, she did too, but the snow storm separated us again. I was left alone in the turbulence, until Anna appeared with my father. They were close, pointing at me reproachfully. I tried to move, but I was stuck on a trajectory. We were on unalterable orbits, kicking our legs, flapping our arms. The storm intensified and I tried to push Anna and my father away, but they kept pointing at me. The wind became violent, almost piercing. Carrie shot past with her pregnant belly while Anna and my father blew away. I couldn’t see them anywhere. I was alone in the over-bearing whistling of the storm. It all became a blur.
Everything slowed down, almost coming to a standstill. I felt even warmer and could see Carrie smiling at me. So did my father and Anna. The storm was over and they were on orbit in the blue sky against the blinding sun. I felt relieved with my loved ones around me. I wasn’t fighting any more. I was just being – being happy.
55
I could see myself lying on my back staring at a glass ceiling. My thoughts were confused, my body boiling and freezing at the same time. I was torn, watching my body from above, but also feeling it from the inside, its coldness. I must have been out, dead. Was this it?
Suddenly there was crackling and sparkles. I turned my head as far as I could and was able to distinguish something from the corner of my eye – a fire glowing in a huge kiln. A man-sized mould was wheeled out of it and next to it I recognised grey statues like the ones from the museum. 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 the devil personified. 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 thought that I simply wanted this nightmare to end, but it 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 the help of a tipping mechanism and once 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 filleting knife through my guts, through 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 statues are the people, you and me, the grey visitors. As they accompany you through your visit, they absorb your emotions. You project your feelings onto them and see them differently. They 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 such 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 Boeck came over to me with a needle, grabbed my arm and injected me. I was too 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 game of a lunatic, a fanatic. Although I was drowsy and starting to lose consciousness, I could still see myself lying in the mould. It was like watching someone else’s body. 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 distinguish life and death. I wanted to live or die, not 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.
56
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, spluttering and spitting out the sticky muck being topped 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, gun in hand. She was aiming at Andri, who looked questioningly at Boeck. Thinking he could keep control, the museum director responded with an appeasing hand movement.
‘Don’t do this.’
Ignoring him, Eva walked up to Andri.
‘Lift his head. He can’t breathe.’
She’d nodded 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 over 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 she didn’t flinch. Her fierceness became intenser by the second. Her jaws were tense, every muscle ready to leap. Boeck finally obliged, slowly turning to me, pulling me out of the mould and putting 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 wipe 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, inside 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 couldn’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, then 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 they 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 shot 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 crushing the phones with her boot.
‘Eva. Give me a chance to expl…’
Boeck’s attempts were vain.
‘Turn round.’
‘What are you doing? I’m your father for godssake!’
‘No you’re not.’
Furious, she fired the gun into the air. They did as she asked and turned around.
‘Walk.’
Boeck looked back to see Eva’s gun pointed at him. She hated him. He was a murderer and she wanted to kill him so much it made her shake. All her senses were on red alert. She did shoot, but in the air. I was groaning in the car as she watched them go. Once the men were far enough, she jumped into the SUV and we skidded off. Eva put all her anger into the acceleration.
57
As Eva drove me to the dog lady’s house, I thanked her for saving me once more. She was sorry she hadn’t believed me from the start.
‘Why didn’t you tell me Boeck was your father?’
‘I couldn’t imagine him being involved in anything like that.’
‘How can you not know about your own father’s activities?’
‘He’s my stepdad, if even that.’
‘Your mother must have known.’
‘She’s never told me anything. Maybe she’s afraid, maybe she doesn’t want to put me at risk, or maybe she just doesn’t know. She can’t possibly keep tabs on everything he does.’
‘We have to talk to her. She must know more.’
When we arrived at the dog lady’s house, I had a hot show
er and put on some dry clothes, while Eva tried to get hold of her mother, who was visiting her sister in Helsinki. There was no answer, so she would have to try later. Once I was dressed, I sat down at the kitchen table and the old woman brought me a bowl of soup and a sandwich. I had three dogs staring at me from the floor and they immediately made me sneeze. It wouldn’t be long before I started wheezing as well. When I told the woman that dogs gave me asthma, she suggested taking them out of the room.
Why do people never understand that taking animals out makes no difference whatsoever? The house would have to be disinfected for me to spend time in it without having an asthma attack. It reeked of dog. The air and the furnishings were impregnated with canine essence. Gasping for air, I stood up and stumbled to the front door holding the plate with the bowl of soup. I had to get out or the mongrels would suffocate me. I didn’t need this. I’d already died and resurfaced in extremis.
‘Wait.’
Eva held me back, but I couldn’t hold back the tears when I spoke. It was all too much.
‘I need air. You really won’t like me if I have an asthma attack. I become extremely irritable.’
‘It’s too cold outside. Let’s go to the attic. It’s not exactly tropical either, but at least the dogs never go there.’
Once in the attic, we agreed that we needed to escape from the island as soon as possible. There was no time to lose. If caught, Boeck would show us no mercy. Murder was his panacea and unless we moved quickly, we would end up in his cage.
I insisted on contacting the police first, but Eva was adamant there was no colleague she could trust. Boeck was best buddies with the chief of police and very resourceful when it came to digging up information. Eva usually did the rounds on her own. It was a small police force and the chief of police was always away at conferences. The only other colleagues were Jacob and Ernst. Jacob was the cuddling policeman, more of an administrator than a policeman really. And extremely slow at that. Even if the chief wasn’t involved, he was still friends with Boeck and likely to pass on any seemingly absurd allegations. This applied to the two others too.
The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) Page 13