People were running around bumping into each other, hiding in or under the exhibited items, pulling at doors, trying to escape. I could hear a couple attacking a police officer, demanding that he do something. Meanwhile, Boeck took his time to aim, to make every bullet count, which made the whole thing even more terrifying. Although the police couldn’t see in the dark, they could see the sparks from his gun and kept returning fire. The metal platform of the cage must have protected Boeck, because bullets could be heard ricocheting off the metal while he continued shooting like clockwork.
As long as he was shooting, I knew that Boeck was still in the cage. I also tried to locate Ernst, but it was impossible with all the noise – the gunfire and everyone in shock, screaming. After the fate of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh, I’d expected Scandinavians to be prepared for the worst, but even though the bubble had burst again, the museum seemed filled with disbelief.
The Ålanders were hoping that their bit of Scandinavia was intact. They still lived in denial. They couldn’t any longer. The fairy tale was over. This nightmare was real and happening in Mariehamn, at the heart of the Åland archipelago, one of the most idyllic of places in the Nordic countries. The realisation was terrifying and the initial disbelief emblematic of the Nordic disillusion. It could happen to them, us – I was an Ålander too.
I’d failed. I’d set out to stop an assassination, but ended up witnessing a massacre. I was disgusted – all the previous deaths, my killings, running and chasing had been in vain.
99
The shooting stopped, but I wasn’t sure why. Had Boeck been hit? I would believe it when I saw it with my own eyes. He’d planned this mass execution – because that’s what it was – down to the very last detail and wouldn’t have left anything to chance. Besides, he was on his home turf, so he was bound to have an escape route.
Suddenly, I thought I could hear a faint buzzing sound, an electric engine? It must be Boeck moving the cage. Was he looking for a better shooting angle or preparing to run away? I was desperate to grab him, stop him – kill him. He wasn’t going to get out of this, not if I could help it.
I followed the faint sound of what I thought was the moving cage. Fumbling in the dark, I could hear it descending, because the engine emitted a deeper sound after a brief stop – as if changing into a lower gear. But where were the police? Had Boeck really managed to kill them all?
As I approached, the engine noise became louder and there was even some very faint daylight. It looked like it was coming from the water behind the submarine, but I couldn’t quite work out the source. The buzzing sound had stopped and I still couldn’t see the cage. When I paused to listen, I finally saw the cage being lowered into the water. It went so smoothly that I wouldn’t have seen it if it weren’t for the light from the water. It was almost ghost-like and I didn’t hear it submerging because of all the running and panicking in the museum. But the cage was there and I was sure it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Inside it, I’d seen the silhouette of a man in full diving gear. That was it – Boeck’s escape route. He was going to swim out of the museum. I should have known. I’d seen a diving suit hanging in the cage when I first came to museum. I had to stop him.
100
I shouted at the top of my lungs.
‘OVER HERE! HE’S…’
Before I could finish my sentence, a rubber arm came round my throat and locked into a death grip. I was suffocating. All that was left of my shouting was a fading gargle. I couldn’t see who it was, only distinguish an oxygen bottle and some kind of fan being dumped on the floor next to me, but in spite of the strong smell of rubber there was no mistaking the sickly pong – Ernst. He put his head against mine as he squeezed my throat and whispered into my ear.
‘Sleep tight, Magnus.’
He was going to kill me and then take the same way out as Boeck. Although I was doing my utmost to get out of his grip, my flapping and kicking made no difference. I gave it my all, but he wasn’t going to give me a second chance. This time he wasn’t going to leave me for dead until I’d truly taken my last breath. He was rock solid and I was about to pass out if I didn’t get any air soon. I tried kneeing him in the crotch but couldn’t reach. His lock was too tight and his body held firmly against mine. I tried knocking my head against his, but he only headbutted me back even harder. I couldn’t bear the idea of ending in a cloud of cheap aftershave. In a last desperate attempt at survival, I turned and bit his nose as hard as I could. I couldn’t see in the dark, but felt a piece coming off and spat it out. He groaned with pain and had to let go of me. I immediately picked up the oxygen bottle and whacked him on the head. I kept hitting him until I was sure he wouldn’t come after me again.
101
It was the last thing I wanted to do after what I’d been through on this godforsaken island, but I was way past the point of no return. I had to get Boeck – it was him or me. I squeezed into Ernst’s diving suit and put on the aqualung. The fan he’d dropped on the floor was one of the portable underwater propellers from the mini-sub display. It was enclosed in a cage with a handle on each side. I grabbed it, walked across the sub and jumped into the water without thinking.
Although I was prepared for the worst and wearing a wetsuit, the cold water was just as much of a shock as the first time. As soon as my eyes got used to faint the light, I started looking for Boeck but couldn’t see any trace of him under the water. He’d had a head start must already have swum under the gates leading out to sea. After a couple of failed attempts, I finally managed to turn on the propeller. Following the light coming from the water, I glided under the gates and out under the open ice, where I switched off the propeller and looked around for Boeck.
I still couldn’t see him, but I could hear a high-pitched noise and I knew it must be him – my propeller sounded the same. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from though. It was omnipresent. I kept looking around, but still couldn’t see Boeck. It didn’t help that the water was shallow – I couldn’t stand up because of the ice ceiling. Only once my eyes adjusted to the light, did I see movement in the distance, a light reflection. I turned on the mobile propeller again and headed after him.
I had to stop him before he got out of the water and jumped into a car or onto a snowmobile, but even with the diving suit, the cold water’s grip on my body felt tighter every second. It squeezed and suffocated me, compressing every part of me. I put the underwater scooter on max speed and worked the flippers as hard as I could. I was frozen to the bone, but there was no turning back. I managed to get closer to Boeck, but I had to remain alert and constantly try to swim behind the few available rocks. If he spotted me, any surprise momentum would be lost. He would either accelerate or attack me. I thought I’d never catch up.
When I finally did, I was so numb and weak that everything was becoming a blur. I fumbled for his mouthpiece and Boeck was totally taken by surprise as I pulled it off. For a moment, he seemed to think that his aqualung had got caught on something. Clearly, he never believed anyone could stop him at this point, but once he realised it was me, he pulled a diving knife and tried to stab me.
He missed my upper body, but cut into my thigh. Blood surged out of the hole in my wetsuit and my leg felt even colder. He’d missed because we were still in shallow water and he’d banged his head against the ice. When he tried to stab me again, I grabbed the wrist of his knife hand with my left hand and pressed it down against the seabed, forcing him to bend over to hold onto the knife. At the same time, I picked up a rock from the seabed with my other hand and whacked him with it. I thought the blow would never reach his head, because underwater all the movements were so slow, so slow that although Boeck saw the rock coming, he was unable to avoid it.
By now, he was reaching desperately for his aqualung. It was as if everything happened in slow-motion – the rock crushing his mask, him struggling to pull it off, me hitting him until he stopped moving. But the rock hadn’t finished him off. He suddenly leaped and hung onto my aqual
ung, yanking it and opening the valve on my bottle, letting the air out. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. By the time I got hold of the valve, all my oxygen was gone. Boeck was even further gone – gasping for air that wasn’t there, swallowing water, drowning, hovering in the ice cold Baltic surrounded by blood. The lid was on and staying on – we were definitely trapped under the ice.
My hands were so frozen and numb that I couldn’t switch on the propeller again, let alone pick it up from the seabed. I couldn’t even bend my fingers. I’d lost my grip. I tried to swim back to the museum, but my arms and legs wouldn’t respond any more. It was as if all my joints were locked, paralysed by the arctic waters. They say that when you die, you see your life in flashback. I didn’t. All I saw was what I hadn’t done, what I should, what I could have done. My lungs were imploding, trapped between the seabed and the ice, between the rock and a hard place.
102
I was lucky, very lucky, although after what had happened, with all the pain and grief, I wasn’t sure lucky was the right word. But I survived, I lived to tell the tale. It had to be remembered. As a warning, to remind people that we need to keep our feet firmly on the ground. Atrocities keep happening, but we never learn – they reoccur, the fanaticism grows like the plague. We must never forget. We mustn’t let victims die in vain.
It wasn’t the Finnish mainland cops, the ones who’d refused to listen to Eva when she’d tried to warn them about Boeck. They’d only rung Mariehamn and talked to the walrus, who’d confirmed that everything was fine – Boeck was a pillar of the community and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Nor was it the police brought in for the festival. Yes, they helped rescue me in the end, but it was Thor who found me in the nick of time. He’d wondered where I’d disappeared and noticed that my father’s Black Pearl was gone too. Failing to find me on the ice, he’d searched Henrik’s backup photos again overnight with Sven, trying to make sense of my father’s last footsteps – the ones I’d followed.
Thor had gone to the church bay to discover the kiln and the ice cage. He’d found the concrete moulds and ended up breaking one of the statues to find a body inside – Anna. By now, he knew something was wrong – seriously wrong – and that I may have been right suspecting Boeck. In Mariehamn the police were too busy with the festival opening to listen to his mad allegations. He arrived too late at the museum – all the metal shutters had gone down, but while the police were calling Helsinki and Stockholm for backup, Thor had borrowed a fire engine and driven through the metal shutters and into the museum hall. He couldn’t have anticipated the carnage and it was a horrific sight, but he kept his focus. On hearing what Boeck had done, Thor had made his way to the submarine to track him down. He must have missed me by seconds, because he’d found Ernst on the floor and twisted what was left of his nose until he cracked.
Once Ernst had told him where I’d gone, Thor grabbed one of the portable mini-subs and went after me. He didn’t expect to find me alive and risked his life by going after me without a diving suit, but Thor was the type of man who did what he had to, no questions asked. He had few friends, but the ones he had were as dear to him as his own flesh and blood – he’d do anything for them. Physical pain was the last of his worries when their life was at stake. I’d made a friend, a real one.
The King survived. Because of the dark and thanks to the general panic, his wounds had looked fatal, especially as he’d been hit in the head, but the injury turned out to be superficial. He’d been paralysed by fear and fainted because of the shock. He was probably saved by his immobility, as Boeck saw him go down, lying there lifeless on the floor covered by the blanket. The museum director must have thought he’d done it – curtains for the King.
I wished I’d hit Boeck harder. I wished I could say he’d died underwater, but he survived the cold, the lack of oxygen. Evil never dies. I did inflict some permanent damage though – the blows to Boeck’s head caused paralysis down the left side of his body and I was the main witness as he was sentenced to life. He swore to take revenge – this was personal now. Unfortunately for me, Finland didn’t have the death penalty. Boeck was in for a cushy life sentence and with the softness of the system, he would probably be released early for good behaviour – not something I was looking forward to.
The only known survivors among Boeck’s henchmen were Ernst and the guard I’d half-blinded with my father’s skate. They were sentenced to 25 years each. I was convinced Boeck had support from someone more powerful and resourceful, but the police investigation never uncovered his network or where he’d recruited his Eastern European mercenaries. As for my own killings, no charges were brought against me. I was deemed to have acted in self-defence and in the interest of the Finnish and Swedish nations.
The Swedish King even went so far as to award me H.M. the King’s Medal for services to the nation. I didn’t deserve it. Yes, I’d contributed to saving him by alerting his security detail, but I’d failed to pre-empt Boeck’s massacre.
Thor told me that foxes were the only animals that killed for pleasure. That would make Boeck a human fox. When he’d killed all those innocent Ålanders, he’d been like a fox in a henhouse. And considering the glint in his eyes when he’d watched Anna drown and the film of my father dying, he must have been ecstatic during the shooting. Just thinking about it made me sick. For all his talk about greatness, it had only been an excuse to kill. It was the worst moment in Nordic history since the assassinations of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.
The massacre triggered a public debate in Sweden about monarchy and democracy and the Royal family even put their position on the line in a referendum, where 90% of the population rallied behind the King. There was sympathy for the Bernadottes, none for the devil.
Boeck’s statues were all taken apart. Half a dozen of them contained bodies. The authorities did their best to contact the families. 45 people died in the museum and nine were critically injured. A State funeral was held in Mariehamn for the victims with families and dignitaries from around the world.
103
When I finally resurfaced after the showdown with Boeck, I felt gutted, raw, and missed the polluted London air. I was desperate to get back to Carrie and our baby –girl, boy? I’d come as close to understanding my father as I could. I’d gone all the way and my heart had even stopped beating when Thor had dragged me out of the water. I too had been in the metabolic ice box. I was on extra time. I was an atheist, but thank God. And Thor.
It took me days to recover and I can barely remember my father’s funeral. I was still too weak, but Thor and Sven were there to support me along with Father Fredriksson. After what had happened at the museum, no one felt inclined to speak. It was a totally silent ceremony and the Mariehamn air had never been so heavy. In hindsight, I realised that my father had been one of the first victims of the massacre. His death had brought us closer and changed my life forever. I turned a page.
It was difficult coming back to London after those horrific days fighting for survival, but fortunately our baby daughter Maria sucked up most of my time, leaving little space for thinking. The greatest relief was to hear that Eva hadn’t died. She hadn’t regained consciousness since I’d abandoned her at the hospital chased by Andri, but she wasn’t dead either. She was in a coma. All her main organs except the brain had kicked in again once she’d reached normal core temperature. So there was still hope. It was important for me, as she was the person I’d shared most of the suffering with. Part of me would die if she died.
I think Eva’s coma contributed to our decision to move to Mariehamn. I didn’t tell Carrie with so many words, but felt I needed to be near Eva. It was the least I could do after what she’d done for me. It was as if I felt owed her something, and sometimes I wondered where it would take me, us. But it wasn’t just Eva, I’d made a deep connection with Åland and it was the ideal place for Maria to grow up.
The nightmare experience had given me the urge to do something more meaningful. I quit my BBC accountanc
y job to begin something completely different. Writing this story was a step in that direction. It confirmed the confrontation with Boeck as a turning point in my life. It also brought me closer to my father and I learned to look differently at people and nature. I learned to appreciate life.
But I soon realised the stupidity of giving up something I was good at, something that could support my family. So I became a freelance accountant, working remotely for British clients while learning the local tax system. It meant that I could still spend lots of quality time with Carrie and Maria.
I promised Carrie not to get involved in any more life-threatening investigations, but I never told her in detail about the crossing with Eva. It was too painful. I felt guilty about the closeness. I kept having nightmares and should have told Carrie. Not telling only made it worse. She would have understood and it had to come out at some point, but I just didn’t know how to put it. I thought telling Carrie would destroy something we had. I was wrong. By not speaking I started the erosion. This was something I would come to regret. I felt close to Eva, I cared for her, whereas Carrie didn’t feel anything for her, especially as I wouldn’t tell her why I cared. I didn’t share my feelings and as a consequence Carrie thought I wasted too much time visiting Eva. She said that instead of sitting there in the hospital an hour a day staring at a vegetable, I should spend more time with Maria. Even if she was still in a coma, Eva was already starting to drive a wedge between us.
The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) Page 20