Raven Black (15 page)

Then, when Cassie was approaching school age, Fran had experienced some sort of crisis of her own. There'd been a bruising end to a relationship. The usual thing. Nothing noble or uplifting. She'd just felt the need to run away and hide. Pride again. She hated the thought of having to relive the humiliation in conversation with her friends.

Shetland was as far as she could go, and it wasn't fair on Cassie, after all, to deprive her of her father's company. He might be a screwed-up little shit but he loved his daughter. She'd never known her father. He'd separated from her mother when she was a baby, started a new life and a new family and had wanted nothing to do with her. It still hurt.

She wanted better than that for Cassie.

She was rerunning all this in her mind as she drove very slowly over the icy roads north across the huge bare expanse of the peat moor. As always it came down to this - what was it that Duncan saw in Celia? She might have a sort of quirky attractiveness but she had a grown-up son. Her hair would have been grey if she didn't dye it. Surely Fran should have been able to compete with that? The question, which still provoked a sense of anger and insecurity, took her mind off Catherine Ross's death and the mad old man at Hillhead.

Usually when she collected Cassie she didn't spend any time with her ex-husband. She said enough to be polite, to present a united front for the little girl. Today she was inclined to linger. She didn't want to go back to the house in Ravenswick immediately. Even with the police and the coastguard on the hill she didn't feel safe there. In London there had been muggings and rapes in her neighbourhood, a shooting once in her street. Y
et
she'd never felt this exposed.

Duncan's house was built on low ground close to a wide sandy bay. It was huge, a four-storey, granite and slate Gothic heap, a house from a fairy tale with a turret at one corner. It was built into the slope of the hill and sheltered from the prevailing winds. There was a walled woodland on one side of the house, mostly scrubby sycamores growing in the shelter of the valley, but the only trees for twenty miles. She remembered when she'd first seen the house. Duncan had made her keep her eyes shut until they came to this point, then she'd opened them and it was all part of the fairy tale. She'd imagined herself living there when she was old and surrounded by grandchildren.

Here, in the shelter of the hill, the road was clear of snow. The sun was coming out. Driving towards the house, Fran saw that Duncan was on the beach with Cassie. They were collecting driftwood, pulling it above the tide-line.

Duncan always lit a big bonfire for Up Helly Aa. She realized that the festival was almost upon them. It was held in Lerwick on the last Tuesday of January every year. For some people in the south that was all they knew of Shetland

- the pageant of men dressed as Vikings and the longboat paraded through the streets before it was burned.

Postcard images promoted by the tourist board to boost the number of winter visitors. The main event was in town but other communities held their own celebrations over the winter too. As she drove through the big stone gateposts she lost sight of her husband and child on the beach. She parked by the front door.

Celia seemed to spend as much time at the Haa as she did in the house on the edge of Lerwick which she shared with her husband. It seemed she didn't object to Duncan's many flings. She indulged him as she did her grown-up child. Fran still found it hard to be civil and, to avoid her, walked around the house to the beach. The garden was held back from the sand by a whitewashed stone wall. Beyond the wall someone had collected a pile of seaweed to rot down for compost.

They had given up the search for wood. Duncan was skimming stones over the shallow water. Cassie was drawing with a stick in the sand, frowning in concentration. She heard the sound of Fran's boots on the shingle and turned round with a squeal of joy. Fran looked at the picture in the sand, already blurring at the edges where the water was seeping underneath.

'Who is it?' It was the drawing of a person, a stick figure with enormous fingers, carefully counted, and spiky hair. She hoped Cassie would say it was her. She knew there should be no competition for their daughter's affection, but it always crept in. The old insecurity. She couldn't bear it if Cassie had been drawing Celia.

'It's Catherine. She's dead.' The girl squinted down at it. 'Can't you tell?'

Fran looked furiously over Cassie's head towards Duncan. He looked exhausted. His eyes were red and his face was drawn.
He's getting too old for the lifestyle,
she thought. He shrugged. 'I didn't say anything. We were in the shop in Brae this morning and people were talking. You know what it's like.'

Cassie chased away, arms outstretched zigzagging back towards the house. They followed her more slowly.

'What were they saying?'

He shrugged again. She could have hit him.

'Everyone's very shocked. It's like when Catriona disappeared. The whole community holding its breath, waiting for the nastiness to go away, so they can get back to real life.'

'Catriona was never found,' she said.

'People forget. Life goes on.'

'They won't forget this. Not two girls.'

'Why don't you come and stay here for a bit?' he said suddenly. 'Both of you. I'd be happier. We could still get Cassie to school in the morning and pick her up. It's not so far. Just until it's over.'

'What would Celia make of that?'

'She's not here just now,' he said. He paused.

'There's some domestic drama with the boy. She's gone home.' Something about his voice made her wonder if there was more to it than that.

'Feeling lonely, are you?' she said spitefully. 'Need a bit of company in the evening?'

'I can get company whenever I like,' he said. 'You know that. This house has had more parties than anywhere else in Shetland. I worry about you. I want you to be safe.'

She didn't answer.

They caught up with Cassie by the kitchen door.

She was trying to pull off her wellingtons, balancing on one leg. Duncan took the girl into his arms and threw her into the air, catching her again at the last minute. Fran stopped herself shouting at him for his recklessness. Cassie was giggling.

He made her tea. Cassie disappeared for illicit television. Duncan let her get away with anything.

'Does it feel odd?' he asked. "To be a stranger in your own house?'

'It's not my house. Not any more.' She looked around the kitchen. She wondered how long Celia had been gone.

The room had a cold, uncared-for air. There were dirty plates waiting to go into the dishwasher and spills on the worktops. Celia was tidier than her.

'It could be.'

'Don't be silly, Duncan. Do you expect Celia and me to take turns to make supper?'

'She's not coming back.' He had his back to her, but she could feel his pain, found herself feeling a moment of pity before the satisfaction. He could still get to her.

'What was it? One bright young thing too many? I suppose Celia's too old for partying! Though she couldn't really believe it. Duncan and Celia had fallen out before. She'd always come back.

'I wish I knew. Something like that I suppose! He opened a blue cake tin which stood on the workbench and seemed surprised to find it empty.

'Sorry,' she said. 'You'll have to find yourself another live-in housekeeper!

'Come on Fran, you know it's not like that.' 'That's just how it seems!

He was standing with his back to the window. She could see the bay beyond him, was briefly intensely tempted.

All this could be yours. The house. The beach. The view.

'I'd met the girl,' he said suddenly.

She was distracted by her desire for the place, confused. 'Which girl?'

'Catherine. The girl who was murdered!

'How did you know her?'

'She came here!

'What was Catherine Ross doing here?' She thought of Catherine as a schoolgirl. Not the sort of person Duncan would usually mix with. But then, in Shetland, Duncan knew everyone, even the kids.

'She came to a party,' he said slowly. 'It wasn't long ago. A couple of days after new year!

'Was she here with her father?'

'Nothing so respectable. She turned up one night. . . I thought Celia knew her, so I let her in. You know what it's like. Open house. Not that I'd have turned her away. At one point I was talking to her. About film. That was her ambition, she said. To be the first major female British film director. In ten years everyone would have heard of Catherine Ross. That was how I remembered the name. They have such confidence at that age, don't they?'

'She must have come with someone!
He fancied her
she thought.
Only sixteen but that didn't matter to him.

Fifty or fifteen, he didn't care.

'Perhaps. I really don't remember, or didn't notice. It was the end of the evening by the time we had that conversation. I'd had a lot to drink. Celia had just told me she was going and wouldn't come back!

'Did Catherine spend the night here?'

'Probably. Most of the guests did! He looked up at her sharply. 'But not with me, if that's what you're thinking.

She was only a child!

'I saw her the next day, getting off the bus. And the morning after that I found her body. You'll have to tell the police. They're trying to trace her movements!

'No,' he said. 'What would be the point? What could I tell them?'

He didn't ask her to stay again and when she rounded up Cassie to collect her things, he made no protest.

Sally Henry saw Inspector Perez leave the building. She was just coming out from a classroom on her way to get the bus and he was there, standing just inside the main door. He seemed lost in thought. She'd seen some of the sixth year queuing up earlier in the day to speak to him. She'd have liked to ask him if it had been useful, sitting in the head's office, listening to stories about Catherine. But she didn't have the nerve, and anyway he was hardly likely to tell her.

He must have realized eventually that he was in the way, just standing there, blocking the flow of the kids who were on their way out, and he walked off. He had a padded jacket over his suit and most of them seemed not to recognize him. She wondered if she should follow him to his car. He was more likely to talk to her when there was no one else listening in. She was Catherine's friend. She had a right to know what they'd discovered.

Her phone rang and there was the usual scramble to get it out of her bag, so she didn't see which way he went.

She didn't get a chance to look at the display before she answered so it was a surprise, a delight to hear Robert's voice. She'd only seen him once since new year, a brief fumbled meeting one afternoon when she was supposed to be in town shopping. She'd plucked up the courage to phone him and suggested they get together. She hadn't been sure he'd known who it was at first. 'Sally,' she'd said 'Sally. You do remember New Year's Eve?' He'd been in the pub at the time, so perhaps that explained why he'd seemed so muddled. Since that meeting she'd texted him a couple of times, but there'd been no reply. That didn't mean anything though. If he was out in the boat, he could be out of range and there were places in Shetland where reception was crap. Most of the smaller islands were impossible.

'Hi,' she said. She knew better than to ask why he hadn't been in touch. She'd read the magazines. There was nothing more likely to put off a man than a nagging woman. She tried to keep her voice low and husky. She turned away from the crowded lobby into a corridor which was empty, except for a cleaner with a bucket and mop right at the other' end. She shut her eyes to block out the boring details of school life, pictured him.

'Any chance of meeting up?' He kept his voice light but he really wanted to see her. She could tell that.

'When ?'

'I'm in town,' he said. 'Ten minutes?'

'I don't know. . ! How could she explain about the school bus and her mum calling out the police if she wasn't on it, because she'd always been paranoid but after Catherine's death she'd turned seriously weird? How could she explain all that without sounding like a six-year-old? 'It might be awkward!

'Please, babe. It's important! And then he seemed to guess the sort of problem she might have, which proved to Sally just how sensitive he was, how he wasn't at all the boorish lout everyone made him out to be. 'Just one drink and then I'll give you a lift home. You'll still be back ahead of the bus! And that was probably true, because the bus zigzagged all over the place to drop kids off and Archie, the driver, was
about
a hundred and four and drove so slowly sometimes she thought it'd be quicker to walk.

'OK: she said. 'Why not? One drink.'

They met in the back bar of one of the town centre hotels, not in the bar near the docks where he usually drank.

Upstairs in the dining room there was a funeral tea. Through the open door she saw a trestle table covered with a white cloth and plates of sandwiches curling at the edges, elderly people dressed in black. The voices were becoming loud and a little desperate. One of the women was weeping.

Robert was waiting. She was pleased. Her only visits to pubs had been with Catherine on occasional illicit visits to town. She wouldn't have had the nerve to go in by herself. Before setting out, she'd stopped to put on some slap, just a bit of powder to hide the
spot
which might be starting by the side of her nose, and some mascara. But all the same you must be able to tell that she'd come straight from school. She had her bag with all her books and files in.

She looked into the room. It was narrow as a corridor, wood-panelled, four grubby tables, a variety of unmatched chairs. You could smell lunchtime's fry-ups and cigarette smoke. He stood up as
soon
as he saw her.