She'd expected that he'd be going through the girl's clothes. This systematic search of her papers made no sense.
What did her school work matter now?
'What are you looking for?'
'The script to Catherine's film. At least, that was what I started looking for. It soon became clear that was missing too. She would have kept it with the disk, I think. She was a very organized young woman. Perhaps that was something I was able to teach her. The need for order. So anyone stealing the film would have taken the script too.
But there might have been notes, the scrap of an idea or a theme. Something which would point us in the right direction:
'I'm sorry,' Fran said. 'I don't quite understand: 'Catherine was making a film, a sort of project for school, a documentary:
'And you've lost the film?'
'No. Not lost. Definitely not that. The film has gone missing certainly. But it has been stolen. Not mislaid: 'How can you be sure?'
He looked up. 'I explained. She was an organized young woman. She never lost things. Certainly nothing as important to her as this. And the film has been wiped from her computer:
'Is it important?'
'Of course it's important. It provides a motive for her murder. It gives some sense to her death:
'You think Magnus Tait stole it?'
'Ah,' he said. 'Now you realize how important this is. It seems unlikely doesn't it? Possible perhaps that he stole the hard copy and the script. But I really can't see a man of his age and education wiping the material from her PC: Already his eyes had strayed back to the mound of paper arranged on the bed. She could tell that he was itching to get back to it. She thought if he was left here to go through it alone, he would lose all sense of perspective. And if she abandoned him, she would think about him all morning. It would be impossible to concentrate on the painting.
'Would you like me to help?'
'Would you?' He put his mug on the window sill and looked down at the bed. 'The police have just rung. The Bruces would like to visit. I suppose they’ll hope to catch some sense of their daughter here.
Especially if they've looked at her body, they'll need to be reminded of the girl she really was. I can understand that. But I don't want to be still working on this when they arrive.
You do understand? They think they know what happened to their child. Perhaps they're right. At least it must give them some peace. I'm planning to work through the files one drawer at a time.
I'm fairly sure the script isn't here. I looked for that last night. But I thought there might be something. Her original notes perhaps, something which might give us some sort of clue!
.
'Didn't she talk to you about it?'
'Not really in any detail. Not that I remember. I don't think I was a very good listener. Not after Liz died!
There was a silence broken by gulls calling outside. 'I think I'll sort the files out here,' he said, suddenly brisk and matter of fact. 'The project was only set in the second half of last term. Any work written earlier than that won't be relevant. The rest we can take downstairs and work on in more detail. Does that seem sensible?'
'Yes, very!
So they sat together on the narrow bed and went through the essays and the lesson notes, returning the early ones to the filing cabinet. It helped that Catherine had been meticulous. Every piece of work was dated. The rest they piled into a yellow plastic box, which Euan brought from a spare room and which might once have held her toys.
They were about to take it downstairs when the bell went in the school. Fran stood at the window for a moment and watched the children run out into the yard. She could see Cassie in her pink anorak. She seemed to stand alone, looking around her, then chased up to a pair of girls who were holding hands, and began to join in their game.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The yellow box stood in the centre of the kitchen table. Euan was filling the kettle, waiting for her to join him before he began the search. She thought it would be a complete waste of time, but didn't know how to tell him. In the brief glimpse she'd seen of the essays upstairs there'd been nothing relating to a film.
'Did Catherine have a school bag?' The thought had come to her suddenly. 'I mean, kids don't have satchels any more, but there must have been some thing she'd carry all her books in. Wouldn't the stuff she'd been working on most recently be in there?'
'It must be somewhere. Just a moment. I'll look:
He disappeared. He was gone for so long that Fran wondered if she should go to find him. At last he returned with a leather bag which looked very like an old-fashioned child's satchel, but which had been painted green, with a huge yellow flower stencilled on the flap. 'I'm sorry about that. I couldn't find it. In the end I phoned Mrs Jamieson.
She'd tidied it away in one of the cloakroom cupboards: He sat for a moment looking at it. 'I remember when Catherine bought it. Before we moved. It was from one of the little secondhand shops in the Corn Exchange in Leeds. I thought it was a bit of tatty nonsense, but she spent nearly a day painting it up.'
He unbuckled the flap and began taking out the contents an item at a time. There was a plastic Simpsons pencil case, three envelope files, a shorthand pad, a box of tampons and a few scraps of paper. His breathing was very laboured. Fran looked at him, was about to ask if he was feeling ill, but she could tell from his face that he probably wouldn't even hear her. He opened the pencil case. He tipped out a fountain pen, a couple of biros and some coloured pencils. A fine pen for drawing. Then he lay the shorthand pad in front of him and lifted the cardboard front cover.
At the top of the page was written in Catherine's fine hand English Assignment: Non-fiction/documentary.
Film? Check that would be OK.
Below, in spiky letters large enough to cover the rest of the page: FIRE AND ICE.
'That was what she was going to call it,' Euan said.
'Of course.'
'Isn't it a poem?'
'From Robert Frost. Just a minute.' He disappeared from the room but this time came back much more quickly. 'The book was on the table in her room downstairs. I'd seen it there.' He riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
'It's a good title,' Fran said. She thought it would be a brilliant title for a painting as well as a film, had in her head again the ravens in the snow, with the big red ball of the sun behind them. 'What else is there in it?'
She reached out to take the notebook from him, but he set it back on the table out of her reach. 'Perhaps we could go through it together later,' he said. 'The idea that there might be something important in there is an incentive.
A reward for going through the rest of her files. We can't afford to miss something. You do understand?'
She wasn't sure she did understand such control, but she nodded and lifted a pile of paper from the yellow box.
She could tell how hard he was finding it to hold himself together and didn't want to push him over the edge. She started with detailed notes and three essays on Macbeth. It would be, she supposed, a sort of education. An hour later she had read everything in front of her. Besides Macbeth, she had struggled through Catherine's history notes on the Counter Reformation and psychology essays about gender stereotyping and peer pressure.