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studies the vomitus more closely. I find this very embarrassing, as though he’s seen me naked.
    â€˜What do you eat anyway?’ he says.
    Almost nothing — that’s part of the problem with the Serax come-downs. My appetite disappears completely, and I’m constantly weak, with quivering hands.
    â€˜What everyone else eats,’ I say. ‘Can we go now?’
    â€˜You really should change your eating habits.’
    We’ve turned off the wide Sveavagen, and we’re now outside Vanadisvägen 5. It’s just before two. It is now the thirteenth of December.
    â€˜Are you going to St Göran’s now, on Lucia?’ he asks.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜But you’re going at Christmas?’
    â€˜Just for a short visit, maybe. Nothing more.’
    â€˜How often do you go? How often do you see him?’
    â€˜As often as I need to.’
    â€˜Here.’ He holds out a packet of Stimorol. ‘For my sake,’ he adds.
    I take a piece of chewing gum. Birck puts his gloves on, and takes the key from the plastic bag and slides it into the lock of the main entrance. The door is lighter than you’d think, and if it does creak or scrape, the sound is drowned out by the noise of the city.
    â€˜Fifth floor.’ Birck reads the list of residents. ‘Second from the top. No, you can keep it,’ he says when he spots the chewing-gum packet in my hand. ‘You need it more than I do.’
    Outside the door — light brown with HEBER above the letterbox — I take my boots off, and Birck steps carefully out of his black shoes. The lock looks untouched; there’s no sign of anyone having tried to force their way in.
    â€˜Shall we ring the bell?’ I ask.
    â€˜What for? He’s dead, you know.’
    â€˜There might be someone else in there. A friend or a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.’
    â€˜Didn’t you see his shoes? A man who wears shoes like that is definitely not gay.’
    â€˜You know what I mean.’
    Birck looks for a doorbell, finds it, and then pushes it. There’s no sound from inside. I place my knuckles against the door instead, and knock three times, hard. When nothing happens, Birck puts the key in and opens the door.

The place where Thomas Heber lived the last few years of his life is a little one-bedroom flat with high ceilings. It’s sparsely furnished, with three fully laden bookshelves along one wall of the first room, next to some kind of reading chair whose only companion in the flat is a floor lamp peering over its shoulder. Otherwise, the room is empty, apart from a pile of packing boxes against the opposite wall, the traces of a man who lived his real life outside his home.
    â€˜How long had he lived here?’ Birck asked.
    â€˜According to Markström’s background check, two years.’
    â€˜Looks more like two weeks. I would’ve had a nervous breakdown if my home looked like this after two years.’
    â€˜Will you do the bedroom?’
    Birck walks off without saying anything. I walk over to the bookcase and tilt my head to one side, reading the titles of well-thumbed books about sociology and philosophy. In one corner of the bookcase there’s a collection of books that really stick out, like The Activists Handbook, Manual for Militant Political Siege , and The Occupy Movement: an instruction for practice. I pull one out. It’s been read in great detail — the pages are marked and annotated with the illegible handwriting of an academic. In another corner of the bookcase are several copies of the same book, his own PhD thesis in sociology, Studies in the Sociology of Social Movements: stigma, status, and society.
    I take a couple of steps back. Nothing grabs my attention. That’s annoying. I head for the kitchen instead. It’s narrow, with units along both sides, and then opens up into a small square space with a smaller but equally square wooden table and four chairs.