Raven Black

puzzle without coming to any conclusion.

His mouth was open in concentration.

Then the need for movement came on him again and he set off up the hill.

He had a map in his head. Like the treasure map in a story they'd read to him at school, though he'd never drawn it or written down directions.

What would the directions say? Walk west from the loch until you reach the Gillie bum. Follow the bum up the hill to the gully where the land always slips after heavy rain.

And it was just as he pictured it. When the thaw came the burn would be full of peaty water. Now it was deep with soft snow. And he came to the peat bank and the mound of rocks which looked like a small landslide. It wasn't unusual for this to happen on the hill, especially after a dry summer followed by heavy rain.

The water seeped into the cracks in the dry earth and loosened it, sending rocks and soil and peat spilling down the bank. Even in the snow he recognized the place. At last he lost the urge to continue moving. He stood with his face to the sky and let the tears run down his cheeks.

He might have stayed there all night, but a distant explosion – a lifeboat maroon which seemed unusually loud in the still night – brought him to his senses. What would his mother say? Don't du be a baby Magnus. He made his way home because there was nothing else to do, crossing the steep peat banks crabwise, sure-footed despite the icy surface.

The constables were still standing guard over Catherine's body, but the other man was sitting in his car, waiting, his eyes closed. The plane from Aberdeen must have been delayed. The van which had brought the lights and the generator had gone. As Magnus watched, one of the constables unscrewed the top from a vacuum flask, poured out steaming liquid, handed it to his colleague. They'll be pals, Magnus thought. Working together like that, up all night, it would make you close. He felt a vague nostalgic longing which became almost unbearable. He wondered how it would be if he took his bottle of Grouse out to them and offered them a dram. They'd welcome that as it was so cold, and wouldn't they talk to him as they were drinking it, just to be polite?

If it hadn't been for the detective from Fair Isle, he might have gone out to them. But drinking on duty probably wasn't allowed. He thought the constables would turn him down with their boss watching. Then he remembered the police station and the room with the shiny walls. He'd probably be better drinking on his own. He'd find it hard not to tell them everything.

He was in the house, with a small glass of whisky in his hand, when a small convoy of cars turned up.

He didn't want to think what they might be doing to the girl with the hair the colour of a raven's wing. He took his drink with him to bed.

Chapter Thirteen

Sitting in the car with his eyes shut, Perez heard the silence. He was listening for the vehicles coming from the south, although he'd already confirmed that the plane from Aberdeen was running late. He didn't mind waiting.

He was glad of the time to think, to consider the events of the day. Usually he had to focus on procedure. Even in Shetland there were targets to meet and forms to complete. Now he had nothing to do but wait and think. He could allow his thoughts to follow a path of their own.

He wondered how it must have been for Catherine Ross, coming to Shetland as an outsider. He understood something of that, with his Spanish name and his Mediterranean features, but his family had lived on Fair Isle for generations, for centuries if you believed the myths. And he did believe the myths. After a few drinks at least.

Really, it hadn't been like Catherine's experience at all.

It had been hard for him to leave home to come to school in Lerwick. The town had seemed so big and full of noise and traffic. The street lights made it seem that it was never dark. For Catherine, living here after the Yorkshire city, it would be the quiet she'd notice the most.

Again his thoughts slid away from the murder investigation back to Fair Isle and the legend of his family name. The story was this. During the Spanish Armada a ship, El Gran Grifon, was blown off course, far off course from the English mainland which had been her destination. She had been wrecked off the island. And this at least was true. Divers had found her. There were records. Archaeologists had recovered artefacts. Some people claimed the wreck was the source of the famous Fair Isle knitting. It had nothing to do with the Scandinavians, they claimed.

The Norwegians knitted too, of course, but their patterns were regular and predictable, small square blocks, restrained and boring. Traditional Fair Isle knitting was brightly coloured and intricate. There were shapes like crosses. It was the sort of design a Catholic priest might wear splashed across his robes.

These patterns, people said, had arrived with El Gran Grifon. More specifically, they had arrived with a Spanish seaman, – a survivor of the wreck. By some miracle, Miguel Perez had managed to swim ashore. He had been found on the shingle of the South Harbour, scarcely alive, the tide still licking at his ankles. He had been taken in by the islanders. And of course there had been no escape. How could he get back to the heat and civilization of his native land? In those days it would have been an adventure to set off for the Shetland mainland. He had been stranded.

What had he missed most? Perez wondered some times. The wine? The food? The smell of oranges, olives and baked dust? The distilled sunlight bouncing off old stone?

Legend had it that he'd fallen in love with an island girl. There was no record of her name. Perez thought the sailor had just made the best of it. He'd been at sea for months. He'd be desperate for sex. He'd pretend to be in love if that was what it took, though surely love would have hardly come into it, even when it came to island couplings.

Women wanted strong men who could manage a boat. Men wanted housekeepers, brewers and bakers. Whatever the attraction between the two of them, they must have had a boy child. At least one. Because since that time there had been a Perez on Fair Isle, working the land, crewing the mail boat, finding the women to provide more male heirs.

Jimmy Perez shifted in his seat. The cold brought him back to the matter in hand. Catherine Ross hadn't been brought up in a small community of less than a hundred people, many of them related. It would be new to her, this sense of living in a goldfish bowl, everyone knowing her business, or thinking they did.'

Her mother had died after a long illness.

Her father, wrapped up in his grief, had been distant to the point of neglect. She must have been lonely, he thought suddenly. Especially here, surrounded by people who knew each other. Even with Sally Henry down the bank and some boyfriend they still had to trace, she must have felt terribly alone.

That led him to think about Magnus Tait, because mustn't the old man be lonely too? Everyone was convinced that Magnus had killed the girl. The only reason he wasn't in custody already was that, once in the station, they'd only have six hours to hold him. It wasn't like in England. And no one knew when the team from Inverness would arrive. What if there'd been a fault with the plane and it didn't turn up until the morning? They'd have to let Magnus go in the middle of the night.

At dusk, Sandy Wilson, one of his constables, had asked if they should have a man posted at Hillhead.

'Whatever for?' Perez had demanded. Sandy always provoked in him an unreasonable impatience.

Sandy had blushed, chastened at the sharpness of the tone, and Perez had pushed home his advantage.

'How's he going to get off Shetland at this time of night? Swim? His house is surrounded by open hillside. Where do you think he's going to hide?'

Perez didn't know if Magnus was a murderer or not. It was too early to say. But the easy assumption of his colleagues that Tait had killed the girl annoyed him. It was a challenge to his professionalism. It was the sloppy thinking, the laziness which irritated him most. So a young girl had disappeared before and Tait had been a prime suspect? As Perez saw it, the cases had very little in common.

If Catriona Bruce had been killed, her body had been hidden. Catherine's had been displayed, exhibited almost. Catriona had been a child. Perez had seen photographs still held on file. She'd looked younger than her age.

Catherine was a young woman, sexy and defiant. Perez hoped that the team from Inverness would come with open minds. He planned to get at them before they were infected by the Shetland gossip and the locals' distrust of an old man who'd become an outsider.