Ann Cleeves - Raven Black

'Oh! She looked very pale.

'Shall we wait inside?' 'Are you OK?'

'What do you think? I've just found a body. The second in a week! He was surprised by the sharpness in her voice and wasn't sure what to say.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It just seems weird. I mean, why me? Again!

'Where's Cassie?' The coincidence of the first name struck him and he was astonished that he hadn't realized it before. Another girl whose name started with C.

'At a party. Otherwise she'd have been with me! She turned to him, to make him understand what a nightmare that would have been.

He wondered if he should say something, warn her never to let the girl out of her sight, but then Taylor turned up, driving the car so hard that they could hear it long before it came into view. Perez found himself disappointed by the arrival. He liked the inside of Fran's house. He wouldn't have minded waiting there with her, by the fire in the warm.

Taylor’s first concern when he jumped from the car was for Fran. He bounded towards her, very solicitous in an eager, clumsy way, which was patently sincere. He took one of her hands in two of his. 'How dreadful,' he said.

'What a terrible shock all over again! There was no trace of suspicion. Nothing to indicate he thought finding two bodies in less than a week was more than an unfortunate coincidence.

Perez realized that he was looking at his boss almost as a rival. Perez wanted Fran to like him best, to think him most considerate. Did Taylor have a partner? He had never mentioned a wife or a regular girlfriend. But perhaps there was someone. He had been talking on the phone for a long time while Perez was trying to get through to him.

Perez thought his own response to Fran must have seemed mean and uncaring in contrast and tried now to put that right.

'Mrs Hunter has offered to show us the place on the hill,' he said. 'I don't think that's necessary, do you? We'll pull in some other. men, cover the hill ourselves!

By now it was completely dark, but the sky had cleared and there was a moon. Taylor seemed to consider the matter very seriously. He turned to Fran. 'If you really don't mind,' he said. 'It would be a tremendous help!

Even in the dark, Perez could tell she was smiling. A child was lying dead on the hill and Roy Taylor could make her feel good about herself.

'Actually, I don't mind at all. It's much better than sitting on my own and waiting!

The expedition across the hill was an experience at once bizarre and strangely companionable. Later, he would remember it as a series of scenes. Fran led the way and the men followed one after the other. He was at the rear. At one point he looked up and saw that all three of them must be silhouetted against the moonlit sky. From the road they would look like characters from a children's cartoon. Something strange produced in Eastern Europe when he was a boy, he thought. Three eccentrics in search of hidden gold. Those films always had a quest at the heart of them.

The next moment to stick in Perez's memory was when Taylor stood in the Gillie Burn. He must have seen it, milky in the moonlight, but there was no way round. He wasn't wearing wellingtons and the cold water seeped almost immediately over the top of his boots, oozing through the thick woollen socks to the skin. He didn't swear, though of course he would have done if Fran hadn't been there. Perez took a delight in his discomfort, then thought that was childish. He was no better than the boys from Foula.

Then, just as they reached the landslip which had exposed the girl's body, the moon went behind a cloud, and the hill was suddenly dark. Perez shone his torch and that was how they first saw Catriona Bruce, caught in the torchlight. Very theatrical. The star, centre stage, lit by one spot. Her clothes were in tatters, but she was perfectly preserved. Perez thought of the fairy story Sleeping Beauty. That had ice and blood in it too. If I kiss her, he thought, she'll wake up. She'll turn into a princess.

Magnus Tait knew that they would come for him as soon as he saw the cars on the Lerwick road and the pinpricks of light moving over the hill. He wouldn't have known the police were there if he hadn't gone outside. He hadn't heard any unusual noise. He'd woken suddenly from one of his nightmares, panting and sweating, and had climbed out of bed because he couldn't bear the thought of going back to sleep and living the dream again.

Then he thought there would be nobody outside his door, not at two o'clock in the morning. He could see the time on his mother's clock. The journalists would be in their beds now, surely. It would be a chance to go outside.

He needed to remember what it looked like out there. He was going mad locked up in the house. It was making him upset and the nightmares were always worse when he was upset.

He went back to the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Then he went out. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spent so long indoors. Even when he was ill with the sore throat and cough which came sometimes, he still liked to be in the open air. Then he thought it was probably the day after Catriona went missing. That was the last time. He'd been shut in all day then too. People had gathered outside the house and they'd all been angry, more angry than the folks there yesterday, because Catriona belonged, didn't she?

Kenneth was a Ravenswick man. His family had always been in the valley. It wasn't like Ross who'd only moved in six months before. That day they'd been crowded around the windows, banging on the panes, until his mother had gone out and shouted at them to leave him alone.

He's a good man.

That was what she'd said. She'd shouted it very loud and even cowering in the bedroom, he'd heard the words.

He wondered if she'd say the same thing now.

He opened the door slowly, just a crack at first, so if there were people there, he'd be able to shut it very quickly and put the bolt across. There was a car parked on the track below his house but he took no notice of that at first. He filled a tin bucket with peats and thought how clever he was to remember that. If the people came back at daylight he'd still have fuel. He put the bucket into the porch, then stood outside, just enjoying the air, thinking how mild it was. He didn't even have a jacket on and he hardly felt the cold:

That was when he saw there was a man in the car. He was in the driver's seat. Magnus could see the shadow of his head. He must be watching me. He's been sat there all night just watching me. And despite himself that made him feel important, that a man had been kept up all night to look out for him. Were they scared of what he might do?

Were they frightened of him? Were they?

He walked a little way down towards the track. Not so far that he couldn't run back into the house if he needed to. Perhaps halfway to the car where the watcher was sitting. He thought of him as the watcher, though he couldn't tell what he was up to. He walked there to see what the man would do and to stretch his legs.

Then something made him turn round. He looked up to the hill beyond the Lerwick road and saw the cars outside the Hunter wife's house, which had lights on in all the windows. And he saw the big van, which had been parked outside his house when they found Catherine, and the sparks of light from torches moving across the hill.

And he knew then that they'd found Catriona. And soon they'd be coming to get him.

When they came he was ready for them. He had a suit, which was hanging up in the painted cupboard in the bedroom. He'd worn it to chapel when he'd gone every Sunday with his mother. The last time he'd been, the last time he'd worn the suit, was the day of her funeral. Laying it out on the bed he remembered the service. That smell of damp was there and the smell of polish they used on the seats. He'd sat on his own at the front. All the relatives were dead. His uncle and his cousins. The place was full though. There were neighbours, people she'd grown up with.