The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (21 page)

‘
I love you.
’

She mumbled something back. I co
uld hear the warmth in the bed and w
ished I could crawl through the phone cable to join her. Her voice triggered her s
mell and a
ll my senses simulated her presence. I felt her.

‘
Sorry.
’

‘
Mmmmmm.
’

I wasn’t sure if I was sorry for waking her up, for not being with her or for not telling her what was
happening
. P
robably all three
.

41

I didn’t know what to expect from a ‘national’ museum on a Finnish island that wanted to be Swedish.
The museum was
housed in a stunning and
seemingly modest
-
sized building on the waterfront.
On that night
,
the moon
light accentuated the
art deco
-
inspired
wood
architecture. The
entrance
was discreet
,
but the interior
much larger
,
with a
gigantic
hall expanding into the rock as far as I could
see
through the closed glass doors.

This was
o
utside regular opening hours.
I couldn’t imagine a museum in the middle of the
Baltic Sea
bristling
with alarms
,
but
w
hy was I even considering a break
-
in?
I reminded myself that
I had to do this,
b
ecause t
he police wouldn’t listen to me and b
ecause I had to know. I
simply
couldn’t accept
murdering a man for
no good reason
.
I
could
have slept on it and
come back the next morning
to
ask Boeck face to face
.
That’s what I should have done
,
but
this was too urgent
.

I used one of the recycling bins standing
outside the museum to break
a small window behind the r
eception desk.
I stopp
ed to listen for any reaction
,
but there wasn’t the faintest of
squeak
s in the night. I
cleared out all the glass before opening the window and climbing in. I put the curtain back neatly in the hope that the
break woul
dn’t be noticed at first
sight, but with temperatures around
-
20
°C
the draft was likely to make
itself felt.

When I turned, I had the biggest fri
ght in my life. There was a man, n
o,
a giant, standing in the dark next to reception. I
immediately scrambled back out, but he didn’t follow
.
There was something wrong, a
n eerie silence
, and I peered in
again
.
He
was still standing in the same position. He hadn’t
even
moved an inch and
still
w
asn’t budging.

‘
Hello?
’

No reply.

‘
Who are you?
’

There was still no sign of life, so
I
climbed back in and w
alked up to him
, expecting
him to lash out any second. W
hen I came up to him
,
I discovered
that he w
as
just a concrete statue
–
a
h
uge
one
, at least two meters tall and solid
-
looking
at that
. Being faceless, his o
nly distinguishing trait was a beard.
Even if he
was only a statue
,
he gave me the shivers.

The museum
was a fusion
of art, design, folklore and history. Wax figures o
f ABBA
, Hep Stars and Björn Borg mingled with a real JAS Gripen fighter plane, a Husqvarna speedway motorbike
with two
-
inch spike
s to race on ice
, a Swedish Air Force helicopter
, a tracked army SUSV (small
unit
support vehicle)
and a Bofors canon. Karl XII
beating Peter the Great at The Battle
of Narva cohabited with SAAB cars and Volvo
trucks, Carl Larsson paintings, a screening room showing Bergman clips, Pippi Longstocking’s fairy
-
tale kitchen
, Nils Holgersson on his goose…

Concrete statues identical to the one I’d seen by the reception were scattered throughout the museum. Some
right in front of exhibited
works, as
if contemplating
them, o
thers
huddled together, c
onspiring. This was
a museum with built
-
in visitors and
t
hey seemed to be
a way of encouraging people
to reflect on their viewing. They were a
nonymous co
-
visitors onto whic
h they
could pr
oject their feelings,
emotional amplifiers
as it were
.

The space wa
s so vast that it must have been
a military installation
originally
.
And when I say vast I mean
it
–
a
Viking ship was moored in a giant b
oathouse built into the museum;
n
ext to it a Swedish stealth cruiser
and a Russian submarine with its name
in Cyrillic letters.
A
n accompanying
video explained
how Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic
had been terrorised by
Russian subs and mini
-
subs
in the 1980s, but
Sweden
had fiercely resisted the
intrusions.
It surp
rised me
,
I thought that,
apart from
the Russian Whiskey
-
class U137 stranded on Swedish rocks
,
the intruders had been
unmasked
a
s a
NATO PSYOP operation
designed
to undermine
the alleged pro
-
Moscow policy of
Palme’s
social
-
democratic government.
It had been
automatically assumed that the subs were Russian, especia
lly as NATO denied any presence.
Y
ears later and
f
aced with the suspicion,
the
U.S.
Defenc
e S
ecretary
had
admitted
to
intrusions
by US subs
, but
said they’
d
only
been
test
ing Swedish defences,
supposedly
in collusion with
Palme’s
government.
More embarrassingly for
Sweden
, a scientific study had shown that sounds made by seals and otters had
also
been mistaken for Russian submari
nes.
T
he
nationality of these
aquatic
intruders
was
yet to be determined
.

I passed half a dozen
mini
-
subs
,
ranging from SAS, Navy Seals and Spetsnaz models to
a deep
-
sea cabin and
lightweight underwater scooter
s.
The latter were basically
handheld fan
s that
looked more like
scuba
-
diving equipment
than military gear, but easy to conceal in a bag.

A large metal cage was hanging above the
Russian sub
.
A
t
first I thought I s
aw a statue standing inside it
, but it was a diving suit with bottles
hanging from the top of the cage
. I
wasn’t quite
sure what it was doing there
–
a
shark cage in the
Baltic Sea
? Were there really that many aggressive sharks in these waters? The cage was connected to a
ceiling
rail
covering the entire museum hall. I
t was probably
a
transportation
device
for
carry
ing
o
bjects from ships deli
vering items for the exhibitions
.
Although the different sections
of the museum hall
were separated by panels and exhibited obj
ects, the cage could access
all
areas
from above.

The exhibition
also
included photos of world leaders and foreign celebrities visiting
Sweden
–
sign
s
of int
ernational recognition. Photos
of Swedish world class athletes
boasted
17th cen
tury gilt
frames
,
putting the athletes
on a par with the classical paintings included in the exhibition.
There were huge speake
r
s on the walls and I could imagine the museum soundtrack combining
jet engines, crowds cheering Carolina Klüft, Ingemar Stenmark, Stefan Edberg or the Swedish ice hockey team, with Abba, Björn ‘Hooked on a feeling’ Skifs and The Cranberries. All this was set against the backdrop of Swedish nature in paintings, photos and films. The museum was a blatant advertisement for
Sweden
.
It surprised me in
a ‘national’
institution located in
Finland
.
A
dmittedly, there was a Finnish wing to the exhibition
–
offering
a
more
balance
d
view of
an archipe
lago torn between two countries
–
but this part was low key
and backwards
,
not
to say
boring, compared to the Swedish fir
eworks. It can’t have been a coincidence that t
he few statues
that had made it to
the Finnish part all had their ba
cks turned to the art displays.

It was unfair and
irr
itated me, because
Finland
i
s exciting.
Unlike Swedes,
Finns don’t take themselves so bloody seriously.
Swedes are conventional whereas Finns are passionate, e
xtr
eme and
o
ut of control, full
of
guts and pathos
. Th
ey’re the Latinos of the North
–
t
hey tango. They
have s
isu, a word that defines what
Finland
is about, a
spirit that keeps Finns fighting when most people quit.
Finns have
the
persistence to stand up time after time
,
n
ot for
glory
,
but out of inner drive
and sense of pride
. They have a
moral urge not to give up.
It’s a
nat
ional mindset.
G
ive me
Jari Litmanen
in his
Ajax
years
over
any Swedish
football
player
–
no doubt where the genius
is.
Swedes are cushy, spoilt and excruciatingly
reasonable.
In one word: boring.
Being the son of a Swedish Finn
who’d moved to Åland
, I was hoping I’d inherited some of that sisu. I could certainly use
it
.
Swedes
were in no position to
claim the high grou
nd on anybody
, certainly not on their
eastern
neighbours.