The bottle of gin was half-empty, and Alicia was squinting through the ice crystals on one of the kitchen windows. Outside, darkness was falling and Gröna gatan was deserted. Her neighbors didn’t seem to dare venture out into the cold, and Alicia could understand why. If she had been at peace with herself, she too would have spent her Sunday in front of the TV.
The night before had been a struggle against the bottle. Following Linda’s visit, she had sworn blind she wouldn’t have any more to drink. The liquor made her stupid. A sober Alicia would never have driven past Palermo and let the cretin see her in the Volvo.
At midnight, she had gone upstairs to make another attempt to reconquer her bedroom. This time, she had got no further than the closed door. The thought of Birger Falk’s dead body in there had made her rush down to the living room sofa. She had fetched a blanket and spare pillow from the cupboard and made a deal with herself. If she stayed in the house and didn’t flee to Stella’s apartment, she could have three sleeping tablets.
Alicia had slept for almost fourteen hours, but instead of waking up rested, her brain had been going at top speed and she found herself longing for more anesthetic. She hadn’t been able to help herself and had drunk her first gin of the day on the toilet seat with her panties around her ankles.
That goddamn car, she thought to herself as she continued staring out of the kitchen window.
She ought to have sunk it in a lake. Or set it alight. Now the rust bucket was abandoned among a bunch of spruce trees, fully visible to every Tom, Dick, and Harry passing through the area.
Alicia sank to the floor with her back to the radiator. Clutching the liquor bottle, she scrolled through the Aftonbladet newspaper’s website looking for the latest articles on Stella’s murder. Her thumb stopped when she saw the haggard-looking picture onscreen. Those were the same eyes that had stared at her from the bedroom floor barely two days earlier.
The picture of Birger Falk was identical to the one that the cop had shown her. Under the photograph was the name and age of the wanted man. Alicia searched on in the flurry of news and didn’t get far before the floor began to rock beneath her.
The car.
The goddamn car was there too.
In the caption, the police appealed to the public to get in touch if they had seen the vehicle.
Perhaps Linda had already called the police and told them she’d seen Alicia driving the Volvo on Friday evening. That thought made her heart pound so hard it felt like it was trying to burst out of her body.
At the same time, Alicia realized that it didn’t matter whether the cretin squealed or not. Because sooner or later the cops would find the car with Stella’s murderer in the trunk and then she’d be a suspect anyway—they’d assume she had avenged her sister’s death.
The rust bucket was crawling with her DNA and there might be fingerprints in it too. Alicia couldn’t remember whether she had even been wearing gloves when she’d handled the body.
The bedroom upstairs was probably just as bad. The linoleum had cracks where the man’s blood could have collected and which she hadn’t been able to clean with the mop. An experienced forensics team wouldn’t take long to place Birger Falk in her home.
All attempts at arguing it had been self-defense would be shot down by the prosecutor at the inevitable trial. Instead of working with the police, she tried to hide both the body and the car.
Alicia put down her phone and took another swig of gin. Her intoxication was at its zenith—the brief period when her head was sufficiently numbed to stifle the anxiety, but her brain was still capable of thinking logically.
It all came back to the car.
It had to be got rid of before someone found it and called the police. It was her only chance if she was going to avoid seeing the inside of a women’s prison.
Alicia got up and staggered into the hall. She couldn’t find her winter boots, so she stuck her feet into a pair of rubber boots. Hanging on the hooks was a coat that Stella had got sick of a couple of years ago. While it might be too long, it had big enough pockets to accommodate a large duty-free liquor bottle.
Outside, the temperature had fallen further and the air bit into her cheeks. It wasn’t unpleasant—in fact it felt good. She needed the fresh air. But after a couple of minutes her feet hurt. Standing under a streetlight, Alicia tugged her left foot out of its boot. She wasn’t wearing socks and her heel was already red with chafing.
She considered turning back to change footwear, but instead she drank more gin. The gas station was only a few hundred meters ahead at the end of Norra Allén.
When she stepped inside, the young gas station attendant behind the counter stared at her. He had a downy moustache on his upper lip and his cheeks were covered in acne. And they say I’m ugly, Alicia thought to herself.
She asked for a fuel can and the man disappeared out back. He returned with one made from green plastic.
“Is ten liters enough?”
Alicia shrugged. “Maybe,” she said.
She had no idea how much gasoline it took to set fire to an old Volvo.
“I’m afraid this is the only one we have.”
“Then I’ll take it,” she said, handing over her card. “I’ll pay for the fuel too.”
The man ran the card and before long Alicia was standing by one of the pumps. She inhaled the beautiful fumes through her nostrils as the can filled. When gasoline began to brim over the top, she screwed the cap on and left.
“Hey, you need to hang it up when you’re done!”
Alicia turned around and saw that the man had run out of the store. He bent down and picked up the black hose with its nozzle from the ground where she had abandoned it. She waved an apology and went on her way. The gasoline was heavy and Alicia kept shifting it from hand to hand in order to carry it. After a few meters she would change again, and eventually she carried the can in her arms.
Once she had been walking for a while, she put it down to rest, unsure whether she was going the right way. To get to the Volvo, she needed to cross the bridge to Hammarö—and wasn’t that the other way? Why was she lost? She lived in the area and surely could not have made it far from the gas station.
Alicia sat down on the nearest bench and checked the chafing on her heel again. Her foot felt like a lump of ice and the skin on her heel was already coming off. Exactly how had she been expecting this to go? When she had strolled home from the spruce trees on Friday night, she’d been wearing socks and proper boots on her feet and there’d been no need to lug a heavy can of fuel along.
Alicia jammed her foot back into the boot and tried taking a couple of steps. It now hurt so much that her eyes were filling with tears.
“Fucking hell,” she groaned.
She unscrewed the cap on the bottle of gin and threw it toward a storm drain. The piece of metal bounced a couple of times before disappearing between the ribs of the rusty metal grate. Her zenith had passed and the dusk of inebriation was descending on her.
A moped was approaching. Alicia’s vision was blurry and she had to blink several times to sharpen it. The moped pulled onto the sidewalk. It carried two teenage girls, who shouted something at her. Alicia couldn’t understand what they were saying. Why were their voices so strangely distorted?
The girl sitting at the back jumped off and came over to the bench. Alicia thought she should ask for a lift home. Or . . . to Stella’s . . . ? With a little luck her sister would be at home.
Alicia reached out her hand to be helped to her feet, but the girl slapped it out of the way. Before Alicia had time to react, the gin was gone and the moped was racing off. The thief raised the bottle in a victorious gesture while the driver revved the engine. Alicia stuck her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound.
When she tried to stand up under her own steam, she felt her feet hitting something on the ground under the bench. Alicia bent down to look and saw a green plastic container. She was almost certain that it belonged to her, but how it ended up there she had no idea. She sniffed her hands. They smelled of gasoline.
That was right.
She had filled the can at the gas station, but why? Alicia sighed. As soon as she managed to find the answer to a question, a new one took its place. Everything was such a mess, and she wasn’t feeling well. Not well at all, actually. She would ask Stella to call the clinic in Copenhagen. They’d travel there together tonight, and Alicia would be given the room at the far end of the corridor. The one facing the park with the brimstone butterfly wallpaper.
She scrolled to her sister’s name on her cell phone and called her. She listened to it ringing until it went through to voicemail. Alicia hung up and tried again. She wanted to leave a message, but she couldn’t find the words to do so and eventually she gave up.
She wrapped the coat—which was far too thin—tighter around her body. Stella’s recorded voice had awakened something in her. She managed to latch onto a thread in her head and was beginning to unravel it.
The can under the bench.
Now she knew why it was filled with gasoline. Somewhere, there was a car that she was going to set fire to.
But why did she need to do that?
This time the answer came quickly and inexorably: because there was a dead man in the trunk whom she had stabbed to death.
Why had she killed him?
Because she was afraid of him.
Why was she afraid of him?
Because he had . . . killed Stella.
Alicia bellowed into the darkness. She shouted until her vocal cords gave up and all that could be heard was a prolonged hiss. Then she bent down, unscrewed the cap on the container, and poured the gasoline over herself.
Alicia was so lost in her own anguish that she didn’t notice the people passing by. Not until a dog came over and wanted to sniff her leg. That brought her to, and she looked at the man holding the leash. He looked horrified and dragged the animal away to avoid getting too close to this psychotic woman who stank of gasoline.
Alicia kicked the boots off and folded her legs underneath her. She rocked back and forth on the bench. Her feet burned with pain in the cold, and her wet clothes were plastered against her skin.
That she was able to recognize the car that pulled around the corner while she was in that state surprised her. Perhaps it was because she had cracked so many jokes about Ratko’s penis extension that he had threatened to bar her from Palermo if she didn’t stop. Alicia both wanted and didn’t want him to see her sitting there on the bench. She was so incredibly ashamed, but she also realized that she needed help. Otherwise, she would end up in the emergency room again with that inflatable blanket over her.
Alicia thought at first that he had missed her. Ratko was driving way too fast as usual. But just before the next intersection his car came to a halt, he reversed and jumped out of the driver’s seat. Around a meter from the bench, he stopped and sniffed with his nose the same way the dog had.
“What’s happened to you? How are you doing, Alicia?”
She tried to conceal the gasoline container with her legs, but she saw that he had already spotted it.
“I don’t know,” she said, beginning to cry.
Ratko crouched in front of her.
“Come with me.”
He proffered an arm that she could support herself on and together they walked to the car. Ratko helped her put her seat belt on and then he started the engine. The horsepower under the hood was belied by how carefully he drove.
“Where are you going?” Alicia snuffled.
She wanted to hold back the tears, but she couldn’t.
“To the hospital,” he said.
“No, I want to go home. Not to the hospital. Please just drive me home.”
Ratko fidgeted awkwardly.
“Alicia, I can’t take that responsibility.”
She stared at the road and didn’t reply.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” he said. “You’re so cold you’re shaking.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I want to go home. I can have a hot shower and get changed. Then I’ll come with you to the hospital—no fuss. Okay?”
The exit for the highway was approaching and Ratko still didn’t seem convinced.
“You promise?” he said finally.
“Yes, I promise.”
“Good, because I don’t know anything about how this stuff works.”
Alicia leaned her head against the window and thought to herself that that was probably for the best. Otherwise, he would have driven her straight to the psych ward and demanded they put her on suicide watch for at least twenty-four hours. Which meant that she would never be left unsupervised—not even when visiting the bathroom.
Ratko pulled a U-turn at the red lights and headed for Gröna gatan. He gave her a pack of tissues from the compartment between the front seats. She accepted it and wiped away the tears that kept running down her cheeks.
Ratko was sitting in the living room waiting for her after her shower.
“Drink,” he said, pushing a cup of tea across the table. “I added some honey too. I hope that’s okay.”
Alicia collapsed onto the sofa next to him and put her hands around the warm porcelain. Her gasoline-soaked clothes were spinning in the washer and she was wearing a new pair of jeans and a knitted sweater that was a few sizes too big for her.
Now that her cognitive capabilities had returned, Alicia noticed quite how intoxicated she still was. The girls on the moped had done her a favor stealing the gin bottle before she’d managed to down any more of it.
Ratko leaned back and looked at her with the kind of serious expression he had deployed the day after her misstep with the President.
“Want to talk about it?” he said.
Talk about what? Alicia thought to herself. The man she’d stabbed? The Volvo that was still visible between the spruce trees and would put her away for murder?
“I’m too tired to talk,” she said, lying down on the sofa with the armrest as her pillow.
Couldn’t he just go away and leave her in peace? God, she missed Stella. Her sister would have fixed everything. She would have got rid of the body and ensured the car was never found.
“I should have called you,” he said ashamedly. “I know how close you were.”
Alicia snorted to herself. Ratko had no clue what he was talking about.
“I can’t cope without Stella,” she said, pulling her legs to her chest.
“Do you want a blanket?”
“No.”
Her voice was harsher than she had intended. But she didn’t want a fucking blanket. Nothing would be improved by that.
Ratko put a hand on her calf. She wanted to kick it away, but at the same time she liked feeling its weight. It calmed her.
“That’s not true,” he said in a low voice.
“What?”
“That you can’t cope without your sister.”
“Is that so? Just because you and I used to fuck doesn’t mean you know me.”
“No, but I’ve heard you talk about Stella at Palermo. You seem to have had a complicated relationship.”
Alicia sat up hastily and looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”
Ratko seemed to think about it before answering. “Nothing more than what I said: the relationship was complicated. Like it is between many siblings. Do you want me to pack a bag for you? I mean, to take to the hospital?”
“No, I want you to explain what the hell you mean,” said Alicia.
Ratko sighed and looked out the window.
“This isn’t the right time.”
“Does everything with you have to be a guessing game?”
She crossed her arms and waited him out.
“Okay,” he said, turning to her. “If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t think Stella was good for you. Well, actually, I know she wasn’t. At Palermo, you’d keep on saying how she’d boss you around and that you wanted a different life. Later, when I’d ask why you didn’t just quit, you’d say that you couldn’t. Like you were her slave. I’ve never understood it.”
“You know she’s dead, right?” said Alicia.
“Yes, I know that. And I’m very sorry for your loss. But it was you who insisted I answer.”
Ratko slumped back onto the sofa and ran his hand through his mane, making the waxed hair stand on end.
“Sorry, Alicia. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Stella for some time and it just went so wrong. Worst possible timing. I told you I’m useless at this kind of stuff.”
“This kind of stuff? You mean batshit chicks who pour gasoline over themselves?”
Ratko nodded slowly; his gaze fixed to the ceiling.
“Well, we’re an acquired taste.”
“You promised to come with me to the hospital.”
He looked at her with that grave expression again.
“I know, and that’s another problem for you that comes with us batshit chicks. We lie.”
“But you need help. Were you really going to set fire to yourself?”
Alicia didn’t answer. Instead, she put her hand on Ratko’s shoulder.
“Have you ever been to an emergency psych ward? All the quacks do is shoot up their patients with benzos and send them home again. I can get better care elsewhere. Stella was usually the one who sorted it out.”
“Where?” he said. “Can I help you to get there?”
“Tomorrow . . . you can help me tomorrow.”
Alicia lay down on her back on the sofa and stretched her legs across his lap. She shut her eyes and fell asleep in that position, the alcohol still raging through her bloodstream and the warmth of Ratko’s hands cradling her frozen feet.