Raven Black

Chapter Thirty -Seven

Magnus sat in the police cell. There would be one more court appearance before he was transferred to the prison on the Scottish mainland, though he hadn't quite grasped that. He knew sometime he would be moved and every time an officer approached, the keys rattling on his belt, boots firm on the tiled floor, Magnus thought the time had come for him to leave Shetland. Sometimes he thought the future was like an enormous black wave waiting to drown him. But it was worse than that. A wave he could understand.

He couldn't swim so he would never survive, but he could understand it. This was unknowable, blank. He was so terrified about moving that when the door opened for his food to arrive, or for his lawyer to visit, he began to shake. No one could get any sense out of him and they'd given up talking to him.

Outside it was raining. He could hear the rain on the window, but it was too high for him to see outside. In his head, it was summer, and he was cutting hay, using a scythe in the old way, because they had so little land that it wasn't worth the fuss of asking a neighbour with a machine for help. He stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. There was a stiff westerly, blowing the waves beyond Raven's Head into white peaks, but the effort of bending and cutting had made him hot. He could see a small child dancing up the hill.

She was carrying flowers tied with a ribbon, which streamed out behind her. He leaned the scythe carefully against the wall. He'd been working since breakfast. He'd thought he'd get the field done before he stopped, but now he decided he'd take a short break, have a cup of tea and one of those griddle scones his mother had baked the day before.

Outside in the passage there were shouts. He couldn't make out the words – he'd been lost in his daydream. Two constables calling to each other. He held his breath, grew dizzy with panic, but it must just have been a bit of fun.

There was a sudden burst of laughter and he heard them move away into the office. He began to breathe again.

He'd talked to Catherine about Catriona, that last time she'd come to visit, the day he'd gone to Safeway's and he'd seen her on the bus. He hadn't meant to. He'd just asked her in for tea. She'd wanted tea. Not a dram, it had been too early for that, she'd said. But she was dying for a cup of tea.

She'd taken his picture. First outside, with him standing by the house and looking down towards the school.

Then in the house, swinging the camera all around and stopping for a while next to the raven, pointing it very close to the bars of the cage. Since they'd locked him up, Magnus had thought every now and then about the raven and about how maybe it would have been better to kill it as soon as he'd found it injured. Maybe that would have been kinder than keeping it shut in.

Catherine had shown him the pictures she'd taken, pointing to them on a little screen. 'Look Magnus, you're on television: But his eyesight hadn't been good lately and he hadn't been able to make out the images.

They seemed to be jumping up and down in front of him, and how could photos do that? He pretended he could see, though, because he didn't want to hurt her. He'd thought she would go then, but she sat down in his mother's chair, lying back as if she was exhausted. She'd taken off her coat and thrown it on the floor beside her. She was wearing trousers, black trousers, very wide at the bottom. His mother had never worn trousers in her life, but in the warm there as the light started to go outside, it was almost like talking to his mother.

Why had he started talking about Catriona? Because the girl had been in his mind a lot since New Year when Sally and Catherine had tumbled into his house. They were older than Catriona, more like women than girls with their shiny lips and the black lines around their eyes, but they made him feel the same. It was the giggling and the fast way of talking and the way they played with their hair. Catherine's tiny feet and skinny wrists, Sally's soft plump arms, their bangles and beads.

But now Catherine sat in his mother's chair, with her legs crossed and her stockinged feet stretched towards the fire and she didn't giggle. She asked gentle questions and listened to his answers. He forgot his mother's words Tell them nothing and he described what happened that day after Catriona came to call.

Later, of course, he regretted it. Later, he knew he'd done wrong.