The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (11 page)

19

I returned to the yacht
club
,
as it
seemed to have been the centre of my father’s life. This was where he’d spent most of his time, whereas his house
felt
more like a relic from a previous life
,
a place he only passed through to eat and sleep.
T
he room
he shared with Thor a
t the club was my father’s den, the centre of his life
.

His d
esk at the club was covered in
papers, but nothing revealing at first sight. His computer was full of photos, only nature
pics
as far
as I could see. There were
some other documents,
including a few ice yacht drawings
and tr
aining programmes. Now that I’
d decided to retrace his last few days,
I needed
something tangible.
I’d start at the end.
He’d died on a Tuesday night
.
I
had to find out
what he
usually
did on Tuesdays
.

I
’d
hoped he would have
a calendar, but
when
Thor
found me digging around in my father’s desk and I asked him about it, he
told me Henrik kept everything in his head. He made appointments with people and stuck to them. He didn’t like the flexi
-
culture brought by mobile phones, mainly because he thought a lot of time was wasted delaying decisions and commitments.
According to Thor,
Henrik believed that only when a deadline is fixed, do you truly start the mental preparation. In his eyes, contemporary culture was more about deciding w
hen
to do th
ings than
actually
doing them
.
T
he technology
turned procrastination into a life style
.
I could see what my father
meant
–
how
we become consumed by our tools,
how
they cease
to be tools for us to beco
me their slaves, forgetting why we wanted them in t
he first place
. This take on new technology
was apparent
on his computer, which functioned more as
a visual aid than as a communication hub
. It was great hearing
from Thor
about my
father, but all this didn’t bring
me any closer to finding him.

What had he been up to?
Seeing the yachts on the ice, I remembered Thor mentioning GPS logging and kids competing in longitudes and latitudes.
Did Henrik keep a log of where he went
? According to Thor he did
, but I couldn’t find any log book, nor could I see any
relevant
documents
on his PC, and
neither
could
Thor.

‘
How do you determine your position?
’

‘
Henrik had a GPS camera that tagged all
his
photos.
’

We found an old
35mm
Olympus OM
-
1 camera, but nothing digital and the photos on his PC didn’t cover
the last month.
It looked like
he h
adn’t had time to upload them,
as the
other
photos on the computer covered every
single
month
and went back a good four or five
years.
I found the photo of Anna in the previous month’s upload.

When I asked Thor how well he knew Anna, his answer was hesitant, as if he was hiding something
.
I
often
had that feeling with Scandinavians
though
, imagining
the
ir reticence was
a sign of inner depth. It wasn’t necessarily the case. In fact, Viking sayings advised the
stupid
to shut up
.
Or m
aybe Thor simply wasn’t interested in Anna’s
story, but
how come
he didn’t know her
if she’d been a regular
at the club?
Thor finally admitted
he’d been the last one to speak to her.

‘You?’

‘
I should have told you.
’

‘
Why didn’t you?
’

‘
I
…
fucked up
.
We had a few drinks and
I got a bit frisky
. She
slapped me before running
out, upset
.
I didn’t tell Henrik at first, b
ecause I felt bad about it and
assumed
she’d
gone to her boyfriend
–
Bengt
. Henrik was furious when I
told him. I didn’t know,
but it had been over with the boyfriend for ages.
Henrik had let her crash in the back of the club without telling me.
It’s against o
ur rules, so w
e had an argument and he went home. That’s the last
I
saw
of
him alive.
’

Was he telling the truth or was it a cover up? I needed to find out where Anna went and what Henrik had done about her disappearance. Thor didn’t think my father had filed a missing person’s report
,
but
I wa
nted
to
check
anyway
.
It wouldn’t be his first lie
.
I also need
ed to talk to Anna’s boyfriend. If she hadn’t been able to return to the
club, she might have gone to Bengt’s
place.

2
0

The police station was as
silent as a library,
the heavy breathing of the
man behind the desk
the only sign of life. He looked like a pregnant walrus with his bushy moustache and ballooning belly. Where was everyone? Was hibernation the secret to surviving the Scandina
via
n winter? I showed the policeman Anna’s photo. He
looked at it for a good 30 seconds without blinking. I thought he’d
gone
into a coma and was about to prompt him out of his torpor, when he finally emerged.

‘
She’s beautiful.
’

Yes, she was, but that wasn’t my question.

‘
Have you seen her before?
’

He looked up and stared at me in silence, still stuck in his 30
-
second mode.

‘
Why do you want to know?
’

‘
Henrik Sandberg is my father and he…
’

Without a word he came round the desk, walked up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. Had I said something wrong? Was he arresting me? He looked me in the eyes, shook his head and gave me a very long hug. It was probably just another of his 30 seconds
,
but it felt longer, much longer, l
ong enough for his smell to
start impregnating
me
. This was a man full of
flavours and he was sharing them profusely
. My nose was twitching right and left, not knowing where to t
urn, desperately trying to source
some fresh air. I really didn’t know how to react when b
eing hugged by a police officer, let alone
a smelly specimen.
He eventually let
go,
took a step back and
–
with both hands still firmly
anchored
on my shoulders
–
pushed out a deep sigh of relief.

‘
That’s better... How do you feel?
’

The Englishman in me was aghast with embarrassment and unable to re
spond. The adequate response to this
man’s behaviour simply
didn’t feature in
my cultural heritage, nor was it what I’d come for. As for the Scandinavian in me, he wasn’t exactly in his comfort zone either. He was 10 years old and didn’t want to be embrac
ed by anyone, especially not by men in uniform
. I had no choice but to resort to my emergency tool box.

‘
Thanks for that. I really appreciate it.
’

Had I overdone it? For a moment it looked like he was going fo
r a repeat embrace and I thought
I’d never get any sensible information out of him, but I had to keep up the momentum. Given the opportunity, he seemed prepared to distribute
free hugs all day, except
I
didn’t want them
.

‘
I’m in a bit of a rush.
’

‘
Oh. That’s not good.
’

He looked deeply
concerned
,
but I ignored that.

‘
Does the photo ring any bells?
’

The serial hugger
adjusted his jumper over his stomach
and went back behind the desk, where he picked up the photo and went silent for another 30 seconds. What was wrong with him?

‘
Yes.
’

‘
Yes?
’

‘
Yes.
’

‘
Yes what?
’

I was starting to reali
se that I had to be blunt if I wanted to get
anything out of him.

‘
He
nrik
Sandberg came in with this photo.
’

‘
What happened?
’

‘
He showed it to me.
’

Extracting the information was painstaking
ly painful
. H
e eventually revealed that the photo had been circulated in the o
ffice. No one had recognised the girl
, but
as far as I could see, the walrus was the only per
son working there,
so circulation
might be an overstatement.

‘
How many people work here?
’

He turned to a photo hanging behind him on the wall. There we
re four people on the photo, although
with the time he took to count them it could have been a battalion.

‘
Well, there’s Eva and… Ernst. And the chief, but he’s away. And me, but I’m not a policeman. I run the office.
’

Ernst was big and bald,
while
the chief looked like a slick businessman and Eva was
…
Eva.

‘
The force is tenfold in the
summer.
’

With such as small police force it wasn’t surprising no one had recognised Anna, but at least I knew m
y father hadn’t filed a missing person’s repo
rt. There was no record of anyone fitting her description
in the computer system
either
, but I’d managed to trace one of my father’s last mo
ves. He’d gone to the police, which confirmed that he’d been seriously worried about her.

21

Her cheekbones reminded him of Marja from secondary school in
Helsinki
. They’d been
in the same swimming club. She
’d been
one of the few people who didn’t ignore him. He saw it as
a sign that she might like him.

It had happened in the last year. They’d been occupying t
he
school to protest against
relocation out
of
the town centre
. Marja had been among the leaders and he’d joined to be close to her. She must have noticed that he couldn’t stop staring at her
during the two days and nights
spent camping in the school gymnasium. He couldn’t wait any longer. He’d been building up to it for months and he’d finally dared to ask. After stopping her in the
alleyway
between the school yard and
the street, he’d blurted it out. Would she go to the movies with him?