The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) by Olivier Nilsson-Julien Page A
Authors: Olivier Nilsson-Julien
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excited. It gave him a sense of eup horia. It wasn’t his father ’s admiration ; it was something else , a more primitive sensation. In prehistoric times y oung hunters used to kill animals all the time for survival . Nowadays , we avoid talking about animals being slaughtered every day in abattoirs. We eat them in t otal denial of how they reach our plates. Only hunters, soldiers and murderers still experience the act of ending a life. His father was right when he said that you can only call yourself a man once you’ve taken a life. What his father forgot to add , was that to remain a man you need to keep killing.
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
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
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