Unspoken

to take care of their banking at lunchtime. Two windows were open, with a female and a male teller behind the glass. On chairs near the window facing the street sat four people: an elderly man with a cane, a girl with long blond hair, a fat middle-aged woman, and a young man wearing a suit.
    Knutas thought to himself that right now he might be looking at the very person who had murdered Henry Dahlström.
    The door opened and two more people came into the bank. They didn’t seem to be together. First a man who appeared to be in his fifties. He was wearing a gray jacket and checked cap with dark slacks and shoes. He walked forward without hesitation and took a number.
    Behind him came another man, very tall and of slight build. He stooped a bit. He apparently already had a number, and he went to stand in front of the teller’s window, as if he were next in line.
    When he turned and glanced around the bank, Knutas saw that he had a camera hanging around his neck.
    They recognized him at once. The man was Henry Dahlström.
    “Damn it,” groaned Knutas. “He deposited the money himself.”
    “There goes that possibility. How typical. It was too easy.”
    Jacobsson turned on the ceiling light.
    “He got the money and then put it in the bank himself,” she said. “Impossible to trace, in other words.”
    “Damned rotten luck. But why didn’t the person just transfer the money directly into Dahlström’s account? If he was so afraid of being discovered, it must have been an even bigger risk for him to meet Dahlström to give him the money than if he had transferred the sum directly.”
    “It certainly seems strange,” Jacobsson agreed. “I wonder what the money was for. I’m convinced the story about the racetrack is true. Dahlström gambled regularly, and the track has always attracted a shady clientele. Something underhanded could have been going on there, maybe a dispute between two criminal elements. Maybe Dahlström was hired to spy for someone and take pictures, so that the person could keep tabs on his rivals.”
    “You’ve been watching too many movies,” said Knutas.
    “Shit,” cried Jacobsson as she glanced at her watch. “Speaking of movies, I’ve got to get going.”
    “What are you going to see?”
    “We’re going to the Roxy to see a Turkish black comedy. It’s a special showing.”
    “Who are you going with?”
    “You’d really like to know, wouldn’t you?”
    She gave Knutas an annoying wink and disappeared into the hallway.
    “Why are you always so secretive?” he shouted after her.
    Several Months Earlier
    Fanny had come home from school to an empty apartment.
    Her feeling of relief was mixed with a dose of guilt. The less she saw of her mother lately, the better she felt. At the same time, she didn’t think it was right to feel this way. You were supposed to like your mother. And besides, she was Fanny’s only parent.
    She opened the refrigerator and her mood sank. Her mother hadn’t gone grocery shopping today, either.
    Never mind. Right now she was going to do her homework. She was worried about Thursday’s math test; math had never been her strong suit. She had just taken out her books and sharpened her pencils when the phone rang. The sound gave her a start. The phone hardly ever rang in their apartment.
    To her astonishment it was him, and he wanted to invite her to dinner. She was both surprised and uncertain. She didn’t know what to say.
    “Hello, are you still there?” His smooth voice in the receiver.
    “Yes,” she managed to say, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
    “Can you? Do you want to?”
    “I’ve got homework to do. We’re having a test.”
    “But you still have to eat, don’t you?”
    “Sure, of course I do,” she said hesitantly.
    “Is your mother home?”
    “No, I’m here alone.”
    He sounded even more determined.
    “Well then, it should be fine. If you study for the test now like a good girl, I can pick you up around seven. Then we’ll have dinner together and I’ll drive you straight home afterward. Surely there can’t be any harm in that. And you’ll have time to study, too.”
    He sounded so anxious that she felt compelled to say yes. But what were they going to talk about? At the same time, the invitation to go out to a restaurant was tempting. She could count on one hand the number of times she had gone out to eat. The last time was during a disastrous vacation the previous summer. Her mother had rented a car for a week and