Raven Black

by Ann Cleeves

  Fran wouldn't-have minded an early night with a large glass of whisky - she had a lot to think about but Sally didn't seem eager to go.

  'Cassie was fine: she said. 'Not a peep. I stuck my head round the door once just to check she was OK. She's a lovely girl. You must be very proud!

  . And just because of that, Fran found herself opening another bottle of wine and offering a glass to Sally and settling down to chat. Catherine had never said anything flattering about Cassie.

  'Did you have a good evening?' Sally asked.

  Her eyes were very bright as she looked over the rim of her glass, and Fran remembered suddenly and quite vividly what it had been like to be sixteen. The irrational mood swings between elation and despair, the sense that no one older could possibly understand the intensity, the passion, the terror. She realized that Sally was staring at her, waiting for an answer.

  'Very good, thank you.' And then, because obviously more was required, 'Because I went to art school, they thought I'd be able to fill in for the teacher. It was OK. Some of the students were very good.'

  'Oh yeah, right. Well, anytime. . .'

  'Next week, same day.' Now Fran had had enough.

  She fumbled in her purse for a ten-pound note. 'Will you be OK walking down the hill by yourself? I'd drive you back, but I can't leave Cassie. I'll lend you a torch and watch you down from here. Make sure you get in safely.

  Or you can phone your dad for a lift if you like, 'if you think he'll still be awake.'

  'I'll walk,' Sally said. 'I'm not sure about Dad. He had a late meeting in Scalloway, but that should have finished hours ago. And don't worry about me. We're all safe, aren't we, now they've got Magnus locked up?'

  But Fran stood in the porch and watched her down the hill. She had never worried about Catherine and wondered why she was bothering now. As Sally had said, Magnus was locked up. She told herself that she had a right to be nervous. She'd discovered two bodies. Here, in Shetland, where she'd believed nothing bad could happen.

  Anyone would be nervous.

  It was a clear night and although the moon was thin, she could see Sally's silhouette until it was lost behind Hillhead. Then she followed the spark of the torch all the way down the bank, saw it swinging around the bend in the road in front of Euan's house and disappear into the school. She saw a light go on in the schoolhouse kitchen window and at last she turned to go back inside.

  Cassie was standing in the doorway to her room.

  She was white and shaking, still half asleep. Fran put her arm around her and led her back to bed. 'It's all right,' she said, over and over. 'Just a nightmare. It's all right.' She lay beside her daughter on the bed and waited until her breathing was easy and regular again.

  The next morning Cassie showed no sign that the nightmare had upset her. When Fran mentioned it casually she seemed not to know what she was talking about. But some clue to its cause came on the way to school when they passed Hillhead.

  'That's where the monster lived,' Cassie said. 'What do you mean?'

  'The monster who likes to kill little girls.'

  'Who told you about that?'

  'Everyone. Everyone's talking about it at school.'

  'Magnus lived there. You remember Magnus. He gave you sweeties (sometimes. The police think he killed Catherine. And a little girl called Catriona. He's an old man who's done terrible things. But he isn't a monster.'

  Cassie seemed slightly confused. 'The police think Magnus killed Catherine?'

  'Yes.'

  'But Catherine wasn't a little girl.'

  Fran was starting to feel out of her depth. 'You mustn't think about it.'

  'But-'

  'Really, you shouldn't worry about it. Magnus has been locked up. He can't hurt anyone any more!

  In the schoolyard Fran wondered if she should have a word with Mrs Henry, explain about the nightmare, the stories which were being passed around. But she suspected that the teacher already had her down as an over-anxious and neurotic parent. It was probably best not to make a fuss, she thought. She'd be able to help Cassie deal with it herself. Besides, she was looking forward to a day of uninterrupted work. The image of the ravens in the snow was still potent, perhaps because of the tragedy with which it was now linked in her head. The fire of the rising sun, the brilliant white snow and the black ravens, had haunted her since she'd first seen it. The picture contained the elements of traditional fairy story and primitive sacrifice. She hoped she'd make it as strong on canvas as it was in her imagination.

  As she turned to walk back up the hill, she saw Euan through the big glass window at the front of his house. He was standing, looking out. He was wearing his spectacles, and had a dishevelled look which gave him the air of an absent-minded professor from a children's book. She thought he was too preoccupied to notice her, but she must have penetrated his thoughts, because suddenly he waved wildly at her. She climbed the path to his door.

  'Come in: he said. 'I was just taking a break. You'll have some coffee with me! His depression seemed to have lifted. Now he seemed overtaken by a sort of manic need for activity. Close to she saw his face was drawn and his eyes were red. He hadn't shaved. Perhaps he hadn't slept all night.

  'Taking a break? Are you working?'

  'I'm going through Catherine's things! 'Oh Euan, do you need to do that now?'

  'Absolutely,' he said. 'It's vital. I've only stopped because I felt I was losing concentration. Besides, I promised Inspector Perez that I would. Come along. I'll pour you some coffee, then we'll go upstairs!

  He led Fran along a corridor at the top of the house to the room where Catherine must have slept. It was square, unnaturally tidy, except for files arranged in heaps on the bed. One of the drawers of a small filing cabinet was open and empty. A plain white blind covered the window and he was working in the light of an anglepoise desk lamp. Fran felt uncomfortable there. It made her think of a room in a private hospital. A mental hospital perhaps, where the doors would be locked.

  'Do you mind?' She pulled up the blind and let in the cold morning light. There was a view down to the school and beyond to the bay. She could make out Mrs Henry through the schoolroom window, but the children were out of her line of sight.

  She'd expected that he'd be going through the girl's clothes. This systematic search of her papers made no sense.

  What did her school work matter now?

  'What are you looking for?'

  'The script to Catherine's film. At least, that was what I started looking for. It soon became clear that was missing too. She would have kept it with the disk, I think. She was a very organized young woman. Perhaps that was something I was able to teach her. The need for order. So anyone stealing the film would have taken the script too.

  But there might have been notes, the scrap of an idea or a theme. Something which would point us in the right direction:

  'I'm sorry,' Fran said. 'I don't quite understand: 'Catherine was making a film, a sort of project for school, a documentary:

  'And you've lost the film?'

  'No. Not lost. Definitely not that. The film has gone missing certainly. But it has been stolen. Not mislaid: 'How can you be sure?'

  He looked up. 'I explained. She was an organized young woman. She never lost things. Certainly nothing as important to her as this. And the film has been wiped from her computer:

  'Is it important?'

  'Of course it's important. It provides a motive for her murder. It gives some sense to her death:

  'You think Magnus Tait stole it?'

  'Ah,' he said. 'Now you realize how important this is. It seems unlikely doesn't it? Possible perhaps that he stole the hard copy and the script. But I really can't see a man of his age and education wiping the material from her PC: Already his eyes had strayed back to the mound of paper arranged on the bed. She could tell that he was itching to get back to it. She thought if he was left here to go through it alone, he would lose all sense of perspective. And if she abandoned him, she would t
hink about him all morning. It would be impossible to concentrate on the painting.

  'Would you like me to help?'

  'Would you?' He put his mug on the window sill and looked down at the bed. 'The police have just rung. The Bruces would like to visit. I suppose they’ll hope to catch some sense of their daughter here.

  Especially if they've looked at her body, they'll need to be reminded of the girl she really was. I can understand that. But I don't want to be still working on this when they arrive.

  You do understand? They think they know what happened to their child. Perhaps they're right. At least it must give them some peace. I'm planning to work through the files one drawer at a time.

  I'm fairly sure the script isn't here. I looked for that last night. But I thought there might be something. Her original notes perhaps, something which might give us some sort of clue!

  .

  'Didn't she talk to you about it?'

  'Not really in any detail. Not that I remember. I don't think I was a very good listener. Not after Liz died!

  There was a silence broken by gulls calling outside. 'I think I'll sort the files out here,' he said, suddenly brisk and matter of fact. 'The project was only set in the second half of last term. Any work written earlier than that won't be relevant. The rest we can take downstairs and work on in more detail. Does that seem sensible?'

  'Yes, very!

  So they sat together on the narrow bed and went through the essays and the lesson notes, returning the early ones to the filing cabinet. It helped that Catherine had been meticulous. Every piece of work was dated. The rest they piled into a yellow plastic box, which Euan brought from a spare room and which might once have held her toys.

  They were about to take it downstairs when the bell went in the school. Fran stood at the window for a moment and watched the children run out into the yard. She could see Cassie in her pink anorak. She seemed to stand alone, looking around her, then chased up to a pair of girls who were holding hands, and began to join in their game.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The yellow box stood in the centre of the kitchen table. Euan was filling the kettle, waiting for her to join him before he began the search. She thought it would be a complete waste of time, but didn't know how to tell him. In the brief glimpse she'd seen of the essays upstairs there'd been nothing relating to a film.

  'Did Catherine have a school bag?' The thought had come to her suddenly. 'I mean, kids don't have satchels any more, but there must have been some thing she'd carry all her books in. Wouldn't the stuff she'd been working on most recently be in there?'

  'It must be somewhere. Just a moment. I'll look:

  He disappeared. He was gone for so long that Fran wondered if she should go to find him. At last he returned with a leather bag which looked very like an old-fashioned child's satchel, but which had been painted green, with a huge yellow flower stencilled on the flap. 'I'm sorry about that. I couldn't find it. In the end I phoned Mrs Jamieson.

  She'd tidied it away in one of the cloakroom cupboards: He sat for a moment looking at it. 'I remember when Catherine bought it. Before we moved. It was from one of the little secondhand shops in the Corn Exchange in Leeds. I thought it was a bit of tatty nonsense, but she spent nearly a day painting it up.'

  He unbuckled the flap and began taking out the contents an item at a time. There was a plastic Simpsons pencil case, three envelope files, a shorthand pad, a box of tampons and a few scraps of paper. His breathing was very laboured. Fran looked at him, was about to ask if he was feeling ill, but she could tell from his face that he probably wouldn't even hear her. He opened the pencil case. He tipped out a fountain pen, a couple of biros and some coloured pencils. A fine pen for drawing. Then he lay the shorthand pad in front of him and lifted the cardboard front cover.

  At the top of the page was written in Catherine's fine hand English Assignment: Non-fiction/documentary.

  Film? Check that would be OK.

  Below, in spiky letters large enough to cover the rest of the page: FIRE AND ICE.

  'That was what she was going to call it,' Euan said.

  'Of course.'

  'Isn't it a poem?'

  'From Robert Frost. Just a minute.' He disappeared from the room but this time came back much more quickly. 'The book was on the table in her room downstairs. I'd seen it there.' He riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

  'It's a good title,' Fran said. She thought it would be a brilliant title for a painting as well as a film, had in her head again the ravens in the snow, with the big red ball of the sun behind them. 'What else is there in it?'

  She reached out to take the notebook from him, but he set it back on the table out of her reach. 'Perhaps we could go through it together later,' he said. 'The idea that there might be something important in there is an incentive.

  A reward for going through the rest of her files. We can't afford to miss something. You do understand?'

  She wasn't sure she did understand such control, but she nodded and lifted a pile of paper from the yellow box.

  She could tell how hard he was finding it to hold himself together and didn't want to push him over the edge. She started with detailed notes and three essays on Macbeth. It would be, she supposed, a sort of education. An hour later she had read everything in front of her. Besides Macbeth, she had struggled through Catherine's history notes on the Counter Reformation and psychology essays about gender stereotyping and peer pressure.

  Her Shetland film was mentioned nowhere. Only an obscure visual reference showed that she was thinking about it all the time. In the margin of a set of notes and an essay plan there was the same recurring doodle. The first time Fran had dismissed it as an attractive pattern with no representational significance. When it was repeated she looked more closely. The design was so similar to the first that it looked like a logo. It showed an eight-sided crystal superimposed on a tongue of flame. Fire and Ice.

  She showed it to Euan. He scrabbled back through his own pile of papers and came up with three more examples of the same design. 'I'd missed them altogether,' he said. 'I don't have your visual imagination, obviously. I was concentrating on the words.'

  'Did you find anything?'

  'No: he said slowly, reluctant to admit defeat. 'Nothing.'

  'Wouldn't anything she was working on recently be in her bag? In the notebook which had the title or one of the envelope files! She was starting to lose patience with him. Why didn't he just look in the more obvious places? Was he waiting for her to go, so he could look at them by himself?

  'Perhaps,' he said. He looked up from the table. 'Or perhaps I'm deluding myself and we'll never find out why she died!

  She stretched out and scooped up the scraps of paper which had been crumpled in the bottom of the bag. The first was a ferry ticket. She gave it to him. 'She took the roll-on roll-off to Whalsay just before Christmas. Did she have a friend there?'

  'I think I remember that. There was a party. Some lad from school, she said. I can't see that it has any significance!

  'Then there's this. A supermarket till receipt! She stretched it out on the table, stroked it with her thumb to flatten it.

  'Safeway's in Lerwick. Dated the day before her body was found. Did she do any shopping that day?'

  'Not for me! He took it from her, frowning. 'None of those items turned up in the house. She wouldn't have bought sausages or the pie. She was practically a vegetarian and certainly never ate processed meat!

  He turned the paper over. Fran saw writing on the back, but from where she was sitting couldn't make out what it said. He slid it along the table to her. 'Look what's scribbled on the back. It's Catherine's writing!

  Fran read: Catriona Bruce. Desire or hate? 'What does it mean?'

  'It's a reference to the same poem! He picked up the anthology again and read out loud, his voice shaking as if he'd suddenly aged,

  'From what I've tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire./But
if it had to perish twice,!1 think I know enough of hate/'To say that for destruction ice/Is also great. . !

  'What is Catherine saying then?' Fran had forgotten her irritation with him. She was hooked by the puzzle.

  Suddenly this had little to do with the reality of two dead girls. 'That Catriona was killed because someone desired her or hated her? Those emotions must lie at the root of most violence. And what does it have to do with the film?'

  'Surely there's a more fundamental question! He sat upright in his chair. His voice was clipped, almost academic. 'Why was she interested in Catriona Bruce at all? I'd never heard of the girl until Catherine died. I think I knew that a family called Bruce lived here once, but not that the daughter had gone missing. Had Catherine discovered something about the girl's disappearance? If so, that might provide a powerful motive for her murder!

  Fran sat looking at him, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was saying. It seemed absurd to read so much from a scribbled note, but he was right.

  'Can we look at the rest of the notebook now? The other files from her bag?' She realized, too late, that she must sound very eager. He mustn't think she was treating his daughter's death as a game. She turned to Euan, hoping she hadn't offended him, but a noise outside had caught his attention.

  'A car,' he said. 'It must be the Bruce family. I Wasn't expecting them just yet! He slipped the receipt into the notebook, pushed them both into the green leather bag and went to open the door. She put Catherine's books and essays back into the plastic box and stuck it under the table.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Kenneth and Sandra Bruce had expected the house to be the same as they remembered it and it was so different that they seemed lost. They wandered into the big room, looking around them like unsophisticated visitors to an art gallery, not sure exactly what response was expected of them.