Raven Black

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.

'It's very nice,' Sandra said. 'Yes, very nice.'

Fran could tell that Euan's mind wasn't really on the encounter. He was still thinking about the receipt 'from Safeway's, the unread notebook. Perhaps that was his way of feeling close to the daughter he had lost. It was as if he thought Catherine was still trying to communicate with him. But to the visitors he must have appeared aloof, rather arrogant. Fran found herself playing the part of host, offering coffee, taking coats. There was a woman with them, a police officer in plain clothes. Perhaps they'd known her when they lived in Shetland, because they called her by her first name, Morag.

'Why don't you just look around by yourselves,'

Fran said at last. 'That will be all right, Euan, won't it?'

He looked up, startled. 'Yes, yes, of course.'

The son, Brian, had followed his parents in and had answered Fran's questions about coffee or a soft drink in monosyllables. He was a tall, ungainly boy who seemed embarrassed his size, the uncertain pitch of his voice.

Now, when they went off to look upstairs, he stayed where he was, sitting by the fire, cradling his can of Coke his huge hands, looking at his feet. Euan, standing by the big window and staring down to Raven Head, seemed not to realize that he was still there. Fran couldn't bear-the silence.

'I don't suppose you remember much of this: she said. 'You must have been quite young when you left!

He looked up at her. His chin was spattered with acne.

'I remember some of it very well: he said. 'The day Cat went missing. I remember that!

She waited for him to continue but he tipped back his head and took a swig from the can.

'It's the small details you remember, isn't it?' she said. 'Like, what you had for tea and what you were wearing!

He smiled and she saw that one day he might be good-looking. 'I was wearing a Celtic shirt. I don't know why, but I always supported Celtic!

'It was the summer holidays, wasn't it? No school! 'I hated school!

'Did you?' She would have liked to ask why, but didn't want to frighten him back into silence.

'Maybe that was down to Cat. She really hated it, put me off before I started!

'Why did she have such a bad time there?'

He shrugged. 'Mrs Henry didn't take to her. That's what my parents said. You know they talk about stuff and they think you're not listening or you're too young to understand. My Dad wanted to move her to a different school.

He said she'd never get on at Ravenswick, with Mrs Henry on her back all the time.

Mum said it would be awkward. How would they explain it to her?' He looked up at Fran. 'They weren't like friends, not really. But neighbours, you know, calling in on each other. You can see it would have been difficult, moving Cat. Like saying, We think you're a crap teacher. After, when Cat ran off, Mum blamed herself. She thought if she'd found a different school Cat would still be here. Dad said that was daft. It was the holidays. The last thing she'd be thinking of would be school!

'Why didn't Mrs Henry take to her?' And what happens if she takes against Cassie?

'Dunno. Cat was always kind of fidgety. Like she'd never sit still or do as she was told. She always wanted people to look at her!

'That must have been a bit difficult for you!

'Not really. I didn't want anyone looking at me! He paused. 'Mrs Henry thought she should see someone.

I dunno. A psychologist. Someone like that. Dad was furious. He said there was nothing wrong with Cat. She just got bored easily. Mrs Henry couldn't handle a bright child! He smiled again. 'That was something else I wasn't supposed to hear!

The Bruces had moved upstairs. Fran could hear their footsteps on the ceiling, faint voices. They must be in Euan's bedroom now, the bedroom where they had slept, had conceived their children. She thought Brian had finished speaking, but despite all the changes, the house must have triggered memories for him. 'That day she went missing she was getting under Mum's feet. It was a sunny, blowy kind of day and Mum was washing curtains. I remember her in here standing on a chair, taking the curtains down. The window was smaller then, but it was still an awkward job.

Cat was running around and knocked into the chair. Mum fell and the fabric ripped. Mum screamed at us both to go outside and play! He paused. 'She'd already put one load of washing on the line. Towels and pillow cases.

I can see them in my head, the wind sort of tugging at them. Weird isn't it how pictures stick in your head?'

'Like a film: Fran said, thinking of Catherine. 'Aye. Just like a film!

'Is that when Cat ran off?'

'No we played for a bit. Some game. Cat would have been in charge. She always was. Then she started picking flowers from the garden. There were a few growing in the shelter of the house. Mum's pride and joy. I told her she'd get into trouble. She said they were for Mary and Mum wouldn't mind. She'd told her to be kind to Mary!

'Mary was Magnus's mother? Lived at Hillhead?'

'She was really old: he said. 'I thought she must be like a hundred years old, because Magnus was old and she was his mother. But I guess he was about sixty and she would have been in her eighties. Then Cat tied one of her ribbons in a bow round the flowers and ran up the hill with them. I went down to the beach. There were some other kids there. Mum must have thought Cat was with me, because she came down to call us up for our tea! He paused.

'The rest of it is all a blur. That's all I remember clearly!

They heard Sandra and Kenneth Bruce come downstairs, their feet loud on the bare wooden steps.

"They hovered in the doorway, Morag standing behind them. Sandra was holding a handkerchief to her eyes.

'Come on, son: Kenneth said. 'We're away now!

Brian stood up, nodded to Fran and to Euan who had turned back to face the room, and followed them out. Euan didn't see them to the door. Fran walked with the family to the car and felt she had to apologize for his rudeness.

'It's been a terrible shock for Mr Ross: she said. 'I'm sure you can understand!

When she returned to the house Euan was already sitting at the kitchen table. He'd placed the green bag in front of him and had taken out the notebook. It lay, unopened on the table. He was staring at it. He waited until she'd joined him then reached out to open it. His hand was trembling. She was sitting very close to him, so she could read at the same time. Under the smell of coffee, his breath was slightly sour.

The first page they'd already seen. FIRE AND ICE, not written as much as drawn, very big, designed as if the letters had been formed from icicles. On the next page it was written again, but this time each word was linked to other words and phrases, a sort of brainstorming chart. From Fire came passion, desire, madness, midnight sun, Up Helly Aa, sacrifice. Ice was linked to hate, repression, fear, dark, cold, winter, prejudice. The lines joining the words were thick and strong.

'Her themes for the film, I suppose: Euan said. 'Perhaps she hoped to link visual images with some sort of exploration of those emotions: Fran said. 'Something to do with the extremes of landscape and light? An ambitious project!

Euan looked up from the paper, sensitive to any implied criticism. 'She was sixteen. You're allowed to be ambitious when you're sixteen!

He turned the next sheet of paper. There was nothing there. He flicked through the remaining pages. They too were empty. He threw the book away from him and smashed his hand palm down on to the table. The violence of the response scared her. 'That doesn't give us enough: he said. 'I need to know what happened to her!

Fran didn't know what to do. This was a grown man in the middle of a temper tantrum and she could hardly tell him to snap out of it and pull himself together. 'We haven't finished: she said. 'There are the envelope files from the bag. Why don't we look at those?'

He stood up and she thought he was going to walk out and leave her there alone. She'd heard the patronizing tone in her own voice and wouldn't have blamed him. Instead, he went to the sink, ran the tap, cupped cold water in his hands and threw it on to his face. Still wiping his hands on a towel, he returned to the table. 'You're right,' he said. 'Of course, you're right! He was quite calm. The outburst had shocked her, but now it was hard to believe it had happened. 'Let's look in the files!

There were three of them. One was labelled history, one psychology and one English. Fran let Euan make the choice. He flicked through the first two and discarded them quickly. They were recent lesson notes, handwritten.

The English file was very thin. She was worried that it would be empty. Then she saw on the outside of the cardboard a series of the FIRE AND ICE doodles. He opened the envelope file and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

It was A3 size, folded into two so it fitted in the file. He spread it out and stood beside her, so they could look at it together.

At first Fran could make nothing of it. She thought this must just have been a first attempt to capture random thoughts and ideas on paper. The sheet was divided up into small boxes. Each rectangle had a series of sketches in black ink. There were scribbled words. It seemed unlike Catherine's usual, organized way of working. The writing was cramped and almost unintelligible.

'What do you think?' Euan said. Then, becoming more desperate. 'This is all there is. This is all we have to work on!

'It could be a storyboard,' she said. 'Each scene drawn out visually. Not exactly that, because sometimes she uses words instead, but a plan for how she'd like the film to turn out!

'A master plan. So she'd know what scenes she needed to shoot!

'Perhaps!

She focused on one square at a time, blocking out the others around it with her hands and a blank sheet of paper torn from the back of the pad. 'How does it start? This is a sketch of the ravens. Really they're very good. So the film would start here, at home. At least I guess that's it! She moved on to the next one. 'Does this mean anything to you?'

'It says "house room". That's what they call the sixth-form common room at school. A scene there, I Suppose!

'And this?'

He shook his head. 'A couple of stick figures which could have been drawn by a child. It obviously meant something to her. A sort of shorthand perhaps. It doesn't say anything to me. But this plan gives us something to go on. It should be possible to work out what she intended.'

Fran thought it unlikely they'd ever be certain what Catherine had in mind, but didn't say so. She was pleased that Euan's mood seemed to have lifted. She moved slowly on. In one square they made out representations of sheep, in another seals. Perhaps those images were to provide a background for her voiceover. She couldn't see how they fitted with her themes of ice and fire.

There were initials scattered throughout the grid. Most meant nothing to her. Then she came across RI. She didn't expect Euan to pick up on it, but he did. 'Robert Isbister,' he said. 'That could be Robert Isbister.' 'It could be lots of other people too.'

'But Inspector Perez asked me about him. He asked if I knew him. He'd seen his van out here one night. But that was after Catherine died so I suppose it's hardly relevant.'

Unless he'd come here to steal the film and the script, Fran thought. That could have happened after the murder.

Euan didn't start looking for the film until several days after that. But she kept her thoughts to herself. She didn't want to explain how she knew Robert. What would she say? He's the grown-up son of my husband's middle-aged lover? In the same box as the initials something else had been scribbled.

'What do you think this is?' In the storyboard, Catherine's writing was much less clear. It was as if she'd wanted to get down her ideas very quickly, before she lost track of them.

Euan turned the page so he could see it more clearly. 'A date. January 3rd. It looks as if it's been added. Isn't it in different ink?' He straightened, stretched. 'We must be missing something. I can't see anything here which would lead someone to murder her.'

'Perhaps there is nothing.' It sounded brutal, but she didn't know how else to say it. 'Perhaps Magnus Tait was responsible all the time. Perhaps the film and the script aren't in the house, because she'd finished it. She took it into school at the end of last term and left it there. Perhaps we should have checked before putting you through all this.'

'No,' he said 'I can't accept that. If the film was edited and complete in the middle of December why the date, the third of January? Why the reference to Up Helly Aa in the notebook? That doesn't happen until the middle of January.' He picked up the receipt with its own message. 'Why the interest in Catriona Bruce?'

'This isn't for us to decide.' Fran thought he would go quite mad if he kept on with it, imagined him sitting up for another night, reading conspiracies and hidden messages into words which had been thrown down almost carelessly. 'You have to show this to Jimmy Perez. He'll know what to do with it.'

His reaction shocked her again. He stood up so suddenly that his chair tipped behind him. 'No: he said. 'This is my business. It has nothing to do with the police.' Then he must have realized that he'd frightened her. He picked up the chair, sat down and became again the courteous and controlled teacher. 'I'm sorry. Of course you're right. But I'll have to take a copy before I give it to them. It seems so intimate, this writing. I can't bear the thought of people going through it. It's another sort of violation!