The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (15 page)

I spent the wh
ole day checking
out locations, but they
didn’
t reveal anything that wa
sn’t on the photos. They showed
trees, rocks and ice and that’s what I found. There were no off
-
screen sur
prises or enlightening visions and
I didn’t see what role these
places
could have played in my father’s death or Anna’s disappearance.
Considering these were his last, t
he photos seemed so
pointless
, unless it was me,
my inability to
see what
he’d seen when he took them
.

Only at the end of the afternoon did I find something I could get a grip on and take further. It was at the location of one of the last two photos, which I must have missed at first, because my intent
ion had been to start with
the last and I hadn’t seen these
. I’d probably pressed the wrong button on the camera, but hopefully
I hadn’t lost any other photos.

The first of the two had been taken in the vicinity of a house.
Again, I struggled to track down the location and when I arrived
, it took me a while to work out the angles
,
as the photo
had been taken from a concealed position. It was as if
my father
had been spying on the house. If the
inhabitants were home they must have
heard the snowmobile, so I decided to be blunt and tell them why I was
there.
I had nothing to lose, but when
I knocked on
the
door there was no one home.
I peeped through the window
wi
thout seeing anything out of the ordinary
. It was when I jumped bac
k on the snowmobile
that I noticed the post box.
It was
one of those long
metallic
American ones
, but w
hat caught my eye was the
hammer. It
was decorated with a Troll
-
like figure holding a giant hammer. I got off the snowmobil
e,
looked inside
the box
and pulled out a couple of envelopes
addressed to a Thor
Torstensson
. I didn’t know Thor’s last name
,
but one of the letters was from the Finnish Ice
Yachting
Socie
ty. I
t must be my Thor.

The second photo was
different. It showed a
window and according to the
GPS on the camera
it had been taken in downtown
Mariehamn
. I had the GPS location and thanks to the architectu
re I
recognised
the street. When I went there to look for the window, it was impossible to find
. T
he
photo was too blurred
. I stood right outside a café and I went in for a coffee. As soon as I sat down,
my eyes fell on Sven’s
ca
mera shop diagonally across the street. I hadn’t looked at the shop fronts, only at the
first floor windows,
because
the photo was
of a room window
and not a shop
. Then I saw the curtain’s being drawn in Sven’s first floor window. That was it. The curtains
were closed on the photo too and t
hey were the same colour. Had my father been spying on Sven
too
?

Apparently
my father had been watching two of his friends.
Maybe it had nothing to do with Ann
a and m
aybe he was just a peeping Tom who liked to spy
o
n his mates
, but it did seem strange
.
I went
in
to the
shop to ask Sven
about the photo. This time he’d had his siesta and was in a better mood. I tried resisting his aquavit but inevitably
ended up having
a glass. He had no idea why Henrik
would ha
ve taken the photo. B
esides
,
it looked accidental
–
h
e didn’t do blurred photos
. Henrik wasn’t
the
arty farty
type
. He documented reality as it
was
. H
is
reality was never out of focus.

‘
Did he use to come to the café?
’

I eyed the café across the street.

‘
We’d usually have our coffee in the shop, but maybe he went on his own.
’

‘
Do you know Thor Torstensson
?

‘
I know who he is.
’

‘
Henrik took a photo of his house too.
’

‘
Thor is a bit of an odd fish.
’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He keeps to himself.’

Didn’t they all in Mariehamn? As for being odd, both Thor and Sven had lied to me about Anna’s disappearance.
I wasn’t sure who was the least trustworthy of the two.

When Sven got the photos up on the PC, h
e confirmed
that
they didn’t look like Henrik’s usual work.
Although they’
d been taken with his camera, t
he low angle and use of long lens
in
the photo of Thor’s house were
atypical. Henrik preferred a standard lens and
never tried
to dramatise
the composition of his photos
,
which the suggestion of concealment did. And night photography wasn’t his thing either. He was up at the crack of dawn with the bulk of his work done before lunch time. In the afternoon he’d go to the yacht club and then fiddle with the photo files back home at night, except
when
he stayed on at the yacht club for a pizza and a game of chess. He had a routine and that
last
just
night didn’t fit
into it.

Sven was adamant
he hadn’t seen my father on the
day he died
. I already thoug
ht the swimming at night was peculiar
and n
ow Sven
claimed
my father was a morning pe
rson, not a night photographer.

‘
Then why has
n’t anyone reacted to the night swimming?
’

‘
Maybe the cold dip was his way of thinking. If h
e was using
his camera to record his search
for Anna
,
it could explain t
he difference in style
.
It was an unusual situation.
’

Sven could be right
about my father being
driven by concern, something slight
ly outside
his usual mindset
. Even if the photo of Sven’s window had been accidental, it meant that my father had been standing across the street with his camera. What was there to do here at night? Maybe he’d been
forced to take a furtive photo. U
nless someone else
took it
.

‘
Did he know anyone
in the neighbourhood
? Was
there a
pub
or restaurant he used to go to?
’

‘
Henke only went to the yacht club.
’

Was Sven
telling the truth?
I didn’t know what to think.
I’d showed him the photo of Anna during our first encounter and he’d
said he’d
never seen her. He’d
also
said he didn’t like sports and never went to the yacht
club, but
I was
sure I’d seen him
somewhere before
.
My father t
aking
photos of both his mates
’ places on his last night
was too much of a coincidence. There must be something to it.

I was going to do another day of location checking and then I’d give up if I didn’t find anything
. I
couldn’t leave Carrie
alone any longer.
I’d already kept her waiting too long.
I still had to ask Thor about the photo of his house. He hadn’t mentioned anything about my father visiting him o
n his
last day
.
Or should I
have
go
ne
to the police
? What would have been the point of telling them that my father had taken a photo of his friend’s house? I still had no idea w
hat was going on. I was fumbling in
a blizzard.

29

Thor was out when I arrived at the yacht club. I
phoned him, telling
him I needed to speak to him,
but he wanted to talk over the phone.
When
I
insis
ted on meeting face to face,
he
said
he’d be at least another hour.

While waiting, I looked
through my father’s desk.
Above it hung a
photo of Thor and my father
squeezed in together
on an ice yacht.
It looked
like they’d been great friends,
but I couldn’t resist snooping in
Thor’s desk.
Although father had taken a photo of his house, Thor hadn’t mentioned anything about my father visiting.
H
e
even
claimed he
hadn’t seen much of my father during his last days. Had
it been a secret visit? D
id my father suspect Thor of anything?
And w
hy had Sven called him an odd fish? The
top drawer was a morass
of
ice yachting photos. Th
e second one was an equal mess but c
rammed with stationery. I’d almost shut it
, when somet
hing at the back caught my eye.

A passport, a Ukrainian passport in
Anna’s
name
. What was it doing in Thor’s des
k?
If her passport was here, she definit
ely hadn’t left the archipelago and Thor had known
all along. It wasn’t the first time he’d lied to me.
He hadn’t told me about upsetting Anna
or
the
ensuing
argument with my father, and n
ow
it turned out he had her passport all along.
I spent two ho
urs waiting at the yacht club
without any sign of Thor.
When I rang him again
,
he said he
couldn’t
make it. He was getting
a part for his broken boiler and
then he
had
to go
home to
fit it.
He suggested
meeting
at the club the following morning.

It was late
but I couldn’t wait
.
I needed to speak to Thor now and i
n person.
I didn’t tell him I
decided to dr
ive out to his place
. I could squeeze
in two location checks on t
he way to his
place
. O
ne
of them was a detour, but it would give Thor the time to get home. I wanted to see if there really
was a problem with his boiler.

Even with the GPS tag, the first
location
was
almost
impossible to find. It was hidden
be
tween islands and peninsulas.
I c
ouldn’t make sense of the map and ended up driving
into several coves to
find a
passage. Anna’
s passport being on my mind did nothing to improve my orientation
. I had to control myself not
to
go straight to Thor’s.

Eventually, I pinned down the GPS location.
It was a
n isolated
bay with a timber church built on the waterfront.
Further down the bay was a boathouse sticking out over the ice and behind the church
was what
must
have been the vicarage.
A
man
with a video camera was
filming an old craftsman sitting
on the church steps
carving a
wooden figure.
I went up to them. The craftsman nodded at me before getting on with the carving
–
no
t the type to waste time on superfluous
chit
-
chat
.
I could see he was born and bre
d in the area and quite different from t
he cameraman
, who
was
tall,
wearing
a smart cashmere co
at and
minimalist rectangular glasses
. His
long grey hair
was swaying in the wind and t
he wildness of the beard contrasted with his immaculate clothes and hair.
His clothes and ZZ Top tribute seemed to belong to two different people
, but the overall impression was of elegance.
How did an
yone manage to remain so smart
in these harsh conditions? He took off his glove and gave me a hand.