Raven Black

clear she wasn't worth bothering with. Maybe it turned into a sort of paranoia. Wherever she went at school she thought people were whispering about her!

'But Catherine bothered with her!

'Catherine didn't care what the other kids thought.

She had her own agenda. Sally was jealous of that! 'How do you know all this?'

'Sally told us. She wants us to know everything. It's as if she's enjoying the attention!

Fran was sitting next to the fire, with her back against the hearth. 'Did they both fancy him? Is that what they fought over? I don't really see him as Catherine's type!

He couldn't help smiling. 'He wasn't. No, not that. Sally was besotted with him. You can see that she might be, can't you? Big, handsome, in charge of that monster of a boat. A reputation which her parents would hate. And her first boyfriend. Catherine's interest was more..! He paused. '… more academic!

'What do you mean?'

'She had this project at school. A film! 'Of course,' Fran said. 'Fire and Ice!

'As I understand it, it was a sort of anthropological study of the islands. Almost a critique. But she didn't just record what she saw. She was a director. She made things happen. A teacher at school, who invited her into his home and came on to her. She pretended to be shocked but it was what she wanted. She filmed him in secret.

A young lad at Quendale who poured out his heart to her. She set him up for rejection, for humiliation and caught that on film too. He was the boy who drove the girls home on New Year's Eve. Sally claimed not to recognize him, but of course she must have done. She just wanted to create more of a mystery around Catherine! He paused again, drank the coffee, which was very good. After all, there was no hurry now, and he could think of nowhere he'd rather be than in this small warm house with this woman. 'Catherine knew Robert's father was Guizer Jarl, knew Robert was desperate to take a leading role in Up Helly Aa.

Knew he was sensitive about his father's reputation. Robert was always one for the young girls. probably felt safer with them. He'd never really grown up. I'm not saying she set him up. Not quite. But she gave him the opportunity to behave badly, and he jumped at it! He felt suddenly embarrassed. He didn't want to talk about Catherine provoking Robert, his reaction when she laughed at him. He didn't want to imply that Catherine had asked for the violence. How would that sound? Fran was a liberated young woman from the south. What would she think of him? But in fact Catherine had got just what she'd wanted.

She'd been triumphant about it. He felt himself stumbling over the words. 'Catherine captured Robert on film. It showed him in a bad light. She was going to show it in school. You know how things get around here. By that evening everyone would be talking about it. He might even have been charged and taken to court. His father had been through enough embarrassment over Celia's affair. Imagine the publicity of a court case!

'Robert had a motive for killing Catherine,' Fran said. 'But Sally didn't. Did she? Am I missing something?'

She frowned, but in a way which was curious, not anxious. He felt a rush of relief that it had ended well for her. He knew the response was completely selfish. He wouldn't have been able to face her if Cassie had been harmed.

'I told you that Sally was besotted with Robert. I don't think he had any plans at that stage for a permanent relationship. He'd been drunk at the market cross on New Year's Eve and they'd ended up together. That was all. But Sally was full of romantic notions. To hear her talk you'd think she'd been designing her wedding dress. Almost.

That afternoon, the day she died, Catherine spent some time with Magnus Tait. He;1 talked to her about Catriona Bruce. He didn't give away his mother's secret. Not quite. But he talked about the girl and Catherine filmed him. Later that evening she met up with Sally!

He set down his mug and tried to picture.,.the scene in his head. 'They were in Catherine's house. Her father was out. Catherine knew he'd be going out for a meal with colleagues after the meeting at school. Sally's mother thought she was in her room finishing homework. Margaret didn't like her out in the evening, even when it was only to go up the road to Catherine's and it wouldn't be the first time Sally'd slipped out without her realizing. Catherine was full of her film, of the great material she'd got. Robert Isbister behaving like an animal and Magnus Tait talking about the disappearance of a young girl and about how the whole community had shunned him for years. Not the sort of picture the Shetland tourist board would want to portray. She showed the film to Sally. They'd been drinking. Not a lot – they'd shared a bottle of wine. But it would be enough for them to talk more freely. Catherine would say what she really thought of Robert. You can imagine the taunting. How can you bear to go out with someone like that? I couldn't stand to have him touch me. It would be like the bullying all over again.

'Somehow they ended up outside. A notion of Catherine's probably. She liked the dramatic. Another scene for her film. It hadn't started to snow again yet. There was a full moon. Everything very icy. Cassie woke up and looked down the hill from her bedroom window. She saw the girls together, silhouetted against the white field. Catherine couldn't let the matter of Robert Isbister go. Perhaps she had Sally's best interests at heart and knew he'd only hurt her later. More likely, I think, that she hoped to provoke another outburst to catch on the camcorder.

She certainly did that. Sally lost it. When we took a statement this morning, she said she just wanted to stop Catherine's taunting. She pulled her scarf tight around her neck. At last there was silence. She left her there in the snow. Cassie saw her walk alone back to the Ross house. She was half asleep, didn't realize then the importance of what she'd seen. It was only when Sally came to babysit for you, turned up wearing the same coat she'd been wearing that night, that it triggered a memory. Cassie still wouldn't have thought it significant, but it troubled her.

She must have said something to Sally!

'I left her alone with Cassie in the house,' Fran said. 'Twrice! She thought of the drawing Cassie had made on the beach at the Haa. She'd known then that Catherine was dead. 'I should have realized'.

'You couldn't have known. None of us had any idea then! He wanted to reach out and stroke the nape of her neck, where some hair had become unfastened from its clip, to tell her that everything was all right, but knew this time he couldn't let emotion run away with him.

He twisted his fingers together to trap them and make it easier to resist the temptation. 'Magnus saw it too.

Some of it. The girls going down the track together. Only one of them coming back. The next morning he went out early and found Catherine was dead. He swept the snow off her face!

'Why didn't he say something?'

Perez paused. 'He'd had a bad experience with the police when the other girl disappeared. He didn't think anyone would believe him. He told me in time to get Cassie back safely. I asked Taylor to search the school house.

He found Catherine's keys in Sally's room.

She'd been in Euan's house to get the film!

'So Sally killed Catherine to protect a man who didn't even care about her!

'It seems she was quite calm afterwards,' Perez said. He thought Fran had a right to the whole story. 'She took the camcorder with her. She was wearing gloves, of course, had put them on before going out because of the cold.

She went into Catherine's room, found the script and the disk and deleted Fire and Ice from the computer. Then she went home. Her parents were asleep by then and heard nothing. They never knew she'd been out. She even made herself a cup of tea before she went to bed!

There was a moment of silence. He knew he should go. There was all the work which followed an arrest and he couldn't trust Sandy to get it right. At last, reluctantly, he got to his feet. She stood up too.

'Thank you,' she said.

He was going to say it was nothing, he was only doing his job, but before he could speak, she came up to him and kissed him on the cheek. A light dry kiss. Of gratitude.

'Thank you,' she said again as she shut the door behind him.

He drove back to Lerwick. Before going to his office he called at his house and phoned his mother.

Ann Cleeves