The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (45 page)

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
an
d put on the aqualung. The fan he’d dropped on the floor
was one of the
portable underwater propeller
s 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 col
d water was
just as mu
ch 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 se
e 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 man
aged
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
. I
t was omnipresent
.
I
kept looking around
,
but
still
couldn’t see Boeck
.
It didn’t help that t
he water w
as 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 s
top him before he got out of the water and jumped i
nto a car or onto a snowmobile, but e
ven with the diving suit
, t
he 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
.

W
hen 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
pull
e
d
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 on
ce he realised it was me
, h
e pulled a
div
ing
knife and tried to stab me
.

He
missed m
y 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 b
anged 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 nev
er reach his head, because
underwater
all the
movements were so slow, so slow that
although
Bo
eck saw the rock coming
,
he
was unable to avoid it
.

By
now
,
he was reaching desperately for his aqualung.
It was as if eve
rything happened in slow
-
motion
–
the rock crushing
his mask
, him struggling to
pull it off
,
me
hit
ting
him until he
stopped moving.
B
ut t
he rock hadn’t finished him off.
He
suddenly leaped and hung onto my aqualung, yanking it and opening
the
valve on my bottle, letting the air out
. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. B
y 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 de
finitely 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 t
o the museum, but my arms and legs wouldn’
t respond any more
. It was as if a
ll my join
ts were locked
,
paralysed by the arctic waters.
They say that when you die,
you
see your life in flashback.
I d
idn’t.
All
I saw
was what
I hadn’t done, w
hat 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, a
lthough after what had happened,
with
all the pain and grief,
I wasn’t sure lucky was the right word. But I surviv
ed, I lived to tell the tale
. I
t
had to be remembered. As a warning, to remind people that we need to keep our feet firmly on the ground. Atroc
ities
keep
happen
ing,
but we never learn
–
they reocc
ur, 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 conf
irmed that everything was fine
–
Boeck was
a pillar of the community and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Nor was it
t
he police brought in for the festival. Yes, t
h
ey helped rescue me in the end,
but i
t 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, h
e’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 breakin
g one of the statues to find
a
body inside
–
Anna.
By now, h
e 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 t
o his mad allegations. He
arrived too late
at the museum
–
all the metal s
hutters 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.
H
e 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
.

On
ce
Ernst had told him w
here 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 whe
n their life was at stake.
I’d made a friend, a real
one.

T
he 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 immobili
ty, as Boeck saw him go down,
lying there
lifeless
on the floor
covered by the bl
anket. The museum director must have thought he’d done it
–
curtains for the King.