Raven Black

reason for him to feel sympathy.

Another knock on the office door broke into his thoughts. It opened and a slender boy with an anorak bundled under one arm came in. Another English voice. 'Excuse me Sir. They said you wanted to see me. I gave Catherine a lift back to Ravenswick on New Year's Eve. My name's Jonathan Gale.'

As he took the chair, Perez saw how upset he was. His eyes were red. Another man who had fallen for Catherine. It seemed she had made fools of them all.

Chapter Seventeen

Fran waited until mid-afternoon before going to fetch Cassie from Duncan's house. When she woke up the

, police were still in the field where the body had been. Men in waterproofs were walking across the moor behind her house in a straggling line. She didn't want her daughter asking questions about what they were doing. She wasn't ready yet to explain. She phoned Margaret Henry to tell her that Cassie wouldn't be at school.

She stayed at her father's last night. I thought it would be best..!

'Of course,' Margaret said. 'It must be a worry for you living so close to Hillhead. We'll all be glad when it's over, when the man's behind bars! As if there was no question about the identity of the culprit.

Duncan was the nearest thing there was to a crown prince of Shetland, Fran thought. She hadn't realized that when she married him, hadn't realized it would be like a commoner marrying into royalty. His family had lived in the islands for generations. They owned land and boats and farms. He lived in a big stone house which was almost a castle. A ruined castle until the oil had come and the family had leased access land for the pipelines to the oil companies at prices which meant that Duncan would never have to work again. He did work, though Fran had never been sure exactly what at. He called himself a consultant.

Never mind the oil, he'd said soon after they met. The islands' future would depend on tourism, ecotourism. He set himself up to represent Shetland all over the world, advising local businesses, encouraging indigenous arts and crafts. He had an office in Lerwick and he went out to meetings with important people in Glasgow, London and Aberdeen. He seemed to have power and that was part of the attraction. There was a sexual charge in the speed of his driving and the international calls on the mobile phone. She'd been seduced by all that.

She'd met him when she'd been sent to Shetland to take photographs for an article on a young designer from Yell who was selling her exciting knitwear to exclusive shops in New York and Tokyo. Not to London. London wouldn't take them, though soon after the article appeared the designer started to receive begging letters from a number of British fashion houses too.

Duncan had pitched the original idea of the story in his role as consultant, Fran presumed – and had been there to meet her at the airport. She'd been charmed by him. It had been mid-summer. He'd bought her a meal in town then driven her west. They'd walked along the cliffs and seen the Foula lighthouse in the distance. They'd made love in a 10ft bed in a converted boathouse in Scalloway, the windows open to let in the sound of the water and the perpetual light. She had thought that he lived there, hadn't realized then it was only one of the buildings he owned and let out to tourists, only part of his empire..

She'd thought that was it, had never believed she'd see him again. She'd flown home the next morning exhausted and a bit ashamed. It had been her first one-night stand. Then he'd turned up at her office in London with champagne and one of the beautiful sweaters made by the young designer, which she knew would have cost her almost a month's salary. You1l need something warm to wear when you come to live with me. But that doesn't mean you can't be glamorous. ..

And eventually she had gone back to live with him, because she'd been as much a sucker for the grand gesture as the next woman, and anyway she'd loved the islands even on that first visit. Had it been Duncan she'd fallen for, or the place? Would champagne and a jumper have persuaded her to move to Birmingham?

They hadn't married until Cassie was on the way. Cassie hadn't been planned exactly and Fran had been surprised by Duncan's ambivalent attitude. She'd expected him to be as thrilled as she was. Pregnancy was a drama, wasn't it, and he did so like dramas. 'I suppose we should marry then,' he'd said tentatively, almost as if he was hoping she'd suggest another option. 'Why?' she'd cried. She was an independent woman after all. 'We don't have to get married. We can stay as we are. Only there'll be a child! 'No,' he'd said. 'If there's a child then we should marry!

It was a proposal of sorts. She had dreamed of his proposing to her but had imagined something wonderful.

Paris, at least.

Then, when Cassie was six months old, Fran had caught him in bed with another woman, an older woman, another Shetland aristocrat who could trace her family back to Norwegian rule. She too was married. It seemed the relationship had being going on for years, certainly before Fran had arrived to take her photographs. Most of their friends had known about it, taken it for granted. Fran had known the woman, Celia, well, had considered her a friend. Celia was the sort of woman Fran would have liked as a mother strong, independent, unconventional. She had a style which was unusual among the island women – she wore a lot of black and bright red lipstick, long earrings made of silver or seashells or amber. She'd married against her family's wishes.

Fran had collected together the baby's things and taken the first flight south. She refused to listen to Duncan's explanations. She thought he was pathetic. What was it with the Oedipus complex? She could see that he would never give up Celia. Fran would make her own life again in London. She told herself she was more hurt by the betrayal of a woman whom she'd admired than by her husband.

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