Ann Cleeves - Raven Black

Cat was running around and knocked into the chair. Mum fell and the fabric ripped. Mum screamed at us both to go outside and play! He paused. 'She'd already put one load of washing on the line. Towels and pillow cases.

I can see them in my head, the wind sort of tugging at them. Weird isn't it how pictures stick in your head?'

'Like a film: Fran said, thinking of Catherine. 'Aye. Just like a film!

'Is that when Cat ran off?'

'No we played for a bit. Some game. Cat would have been in charge. She always was. Then she started picking flowers from the garden. There were a few growing in the shelter of the house. Mum's pride and joy. I told her she'd get into trouble. She said they were for Mary and Mum wouldn't mind. She'd told her to be kind to Mary!

'Mary was Magnus's mother? Lived at Hillhead?'

'She was really old: he said. 'I thought she must be like a hundred years old, because Magnus was old and she was his mother. But I guess he was about sixty and she would have been in her eighties. Then Cat tied one of her ribbons in a bow round the flowers and ran up the hill with them. I went down to the beach. There were some other kids there. Mum must have thought Cat was with me, because she came down to call us up for our tea! He paused.

'The rest of it is all a blur. That's all I remember clearly!

They heard Sandra and Kenneth Bruce come downstairs, their feet loud on the bare wooden steps.

"They hovered in the doorway, Morag standing behind them. Sandra was holding a handkerchief to her eyes.

'Come on, son: Kenneth said. 'We're away now!

Brian stood up, nodded to Fran and to Euan who had turned back to face the room, and followed them out. Euan didn't see them to the door. Fran walked with the family to the car and felt she had to apologize for his rudeness.

'It's been a terrible shock for Mr Ross: she said. 'I'm sure you can understand!

When she returned to the house Euan was already sitting at the kitchen table. He'd placed the green bag in front of him and had taken out the notebook. It lay, unopened on the table. He was staring at it. He waited until she'd joined him then reached out to open it. His hand was trembling. She was sitting very close to him, so she could read at the same time. Under the smell of coffee, his breath was slightly sour.

The first page they'd already seen. FIRE AND ICE, not written as much as drawn, very big, designed as if the letters had been formed from icicles. On the next page it was written again, but this time each word was linked to other words and phrases, a sort of brainstorming chart. From Fire came passion, desire, madness, midnight sun, Up Helly Aa, sacrifice. Ice was linked to hate, repression, fear, dark, cold, winter, prejudice. The lines joining the words were thick and strong.

'Her themes for the film, I suppose: Euan said. 'Perhaps she hoped to link visual images with some sort of exploration of those emotions: Fran said. 'Something to do with the extremes of landscape and light? An ambitious project!

Euan looked up from the paper, sensitive to any implied criticism. 'She was sixteen. You're allowed to be ambitious when you're sixteen!

He turned the next sheet of paper. There was nothing there. He flicked through the remaining pages. They too were empty. He threw the book away from him and smashed his hand palm down on to the table. The violence of the response scared her. 'That doesn't give us enough: he said. 'I need to know what happened to her!

Fran didn't know what to do. This was a grown man in the middle of a temper tantrum and she could hardly tell him to snap out of it and pull himself together. 'We haven't finished: she said. 'There are the envelope files from the bag. Why don't we look at those?'

He stood up and she thought he was going to walk out and leave her there alone. She'd heard the patronizing tone in her own voice and wouldn't have blamed him. Instead, he went to the sink, ran the tap, cupped cold water in his hands and threw it on to his face. Still wiping his hands on a towel, he returned to the table. 'You're right,' he said. 'Of course, you're right! He was quite calm. The outburst had shocked her, but now it was hard to believe it had happened. 'Let's look in the files!

There were three of them. One was labelled history, one psychology and one English. Fran let Euan make the choice. He flicked through the first two and discarded them quickly. They were recent lesson notes, handwritten.

The English file was very thin. She was worried that it would be empty. Then she saw on the outside of the cardboard a series of the FIRE AND ICE doodles. He opened the envelope file and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

It was A3 size, folded into two so it fitted in the file. He spread it out and stood beside her, so they could look at it together.

At first Fran could make nothing of it. She thought this must just have been a first attempt to capture random thoughts and ideas on paper. The sheet was divided up into small boxes. Each rectangle had a series of sketches in black ink. There were scribbled words. It seemed unlike Catherine's usual, organized way of working. The writing was cramped and almost unintelligible.

'What do you think?' Euan said. Then, becoming more desperate. 'This is all there is. This is all we have to work on!

'It could be a storyboard,' she said. 'Each scene drawn out visually. Not exactly that, because sometimes she uses words instead, but a plan for how she'd like the film to turn out!

'A master plan. So she'd know what scenes she needed to shoot!

'Perhaps!

She focused on one square at a time, blocking out the others around it with her hands and a blank sheet of paper torn from the back of the pad. 'How does it start? This is a sketch of the ravens. Really they're very good. So the film would start here, at home. At least I guess that's it! She moved on to the next one. 'Does this mean anything to you?'

'It says "house room". That's what they call the sixth-form common room at school. A scene there, I Suppose!

'And this?'

He shook his head. 'A couple of stick figures which could have been drawn by a child. It obviously meant something to her. A sort of shorthand perhaps. It doesn't say anything to me. But this plan gives us something to go on. It should be possible to work out what she intended.'

Fran thought it unlikely they'd ever be certain what Catherine had in mind, but didn't say so. She was pleased that Euan's mood seemed to have lifted. She moved slowly on. In one square they made out representations of sheep, in another seals. Perhaps those images were to provide a background for her voiceover. She couldn't see how they fitted with her themes of ice and fire.

There were initials scattered throughout the grid. Most meant nothing to her. Then she came across RI. She didn't expect Euan to pick up on it, but he did. 'Robert Isbister,' he said. 'That could be Robert Isbister.' 'It could be lots of other people too.'

'But Inspector Perez asked me about him. He asked if I knew him. He'd seen his van out here one night. But that was after Catherine died so I suppose it's hardly relevant.'

Unless he'd come here to steal the film and the script, Fran thought. That could have happened after the murder.

Euan didn't start looking for the film until several days after that. But she kept her thoughts to herself. She didn't want to explain how she knew Robert. What would she say? He's the grown-up son of my husband's middle-aged lover? In the same box as the initials something else had been scribbled.

'What do you think this is?' In the storyboard, Catherine's writing was much less clear. It was as if she'd wanted to get down her ideas very quickly, before she lost track of them.