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entrance to Ingemarsgatan’s bakery, from where it reflects against the façade on the other side of the street. In a few hours it’ll be time for me to go to work.
    I go around the big oak desk that faces the hall. The green Oriental rug absorbs the sound of my steps. My wide trouser legs swish against one another. I pass the full-length mirror and hit the light switch next to the kitchen door. The electric chandelier has six tasselled yellow lampshades. Most of them have singed patches. Only four of the bulbs are working.
    I cough drily and go and sit in the armchair by the desk. I take a puff and put the cigar in an ashtray decorated on the base with a hula-dancing figure. Smoke is already hanging heavy in the flat. My very own Battle of Lützen. Grey wreaths are sweeping across the brown wallpaper, trying to brush off the dust on top of the swine leather sandbag that dangles in a corner, and thenseeking the hall, where the ceramic wood burner reaches up to the ceiling. The smoke attaches itself to the arms of the chandelier like ash-coloured streamers in a Christmas tree, and caresses the bindings of the books in the little bookcase to my left, where Strindberg rubs shoulders with Dahlin – a working-class author – and Piraten. I’ve read them all, and more still, at the city library a few blocks to the south. Not only tramps spend time at the library.
    I turn on the green-shaded desk lamp and the flat now shows itself off to much better effect. The place is cluttered with souvenirs from my years at sea. Ships in bottles, a short-bladed paper knife of ivory from Kaolack, and a porcelain mermaid sitting on a flat rock from Kirkwall. The walls are bare. Above the wardrobe next to the sleeping alcove is a crooked nail. Behind the wardrobe is a photograph of Branting, which fell down years ago.
    The one-room flat with a separate kitchen has both gas-and wood-burning stoves. On the landing is a room with a toilet, which I share with the neighbours. As far as I know, Lundin is also arranging to put a bathtub in the cellar for general use. I can’t complain. Usually, husband, wife and a pile of children share the same space. Whole families live in what are little more than huts around Stadshagen or Vita Bergen; if you turned over one of the boats pulled up around Årstaviken, there would be a decent chance of running into the man of the house, telling you to close the door as there was a draught.
    The number 6 tram rattles by. I open the top drawer of the desk and, as usual, it gets stuck halfway. I rummage among letters, old newspaper cuttings from Boxing Monthly! , a green scrap of fabric and a lot of other crap that I ought to clear out. I roll out a half-litre bottle of Kron and fill the schnapps glass, which is always ready on the desk.
    ‘Good evening to you, Kvisten!’
    The room-temperature schnapps sends a shudder down my spine as I open my notebook to plan out the route of my jobs. I almost always have plenty to get on with. People are desperate and impoverished and more or less at that point is when I turn up with my ugly mug and nail them. I’ve had a fruitful working arrangement with Wernersson’s Velocipedes on Odengatan for a number of years. When people stop making their monthly payments, I turn up to reclaim the bicycles, and Wernersson pays me off with their deposits. This yields between ten and thirty-five kronor per object.
    This evening’s jobs include three bicycles: a black Monark lady’s, a Pilen gentleman’s and an Adler three-wheeler with a back-loading flatbed. All the addresses are conveniently located in Vasastan. From there I can easily pedal them to Wernersson before I go back to Kungsgatan to pick up the dough from Zetterberg, as agreed. I wonder if he’s swept up the glass from the shattered mirror since last night.
    Outside, the tram rattles past on its way back. I make a note in my book of the bicycle models, the registration numbers and the addresses, put the cigar down in the