Her Shetland film was mentioned nowhere. Only an obscure visual reference showed that she was thinking about it all the time. In the margin of a set of notes and an essay plan there was the same recurring doodle. The first time Fran had dismissed it as an attractive pattern with no representational significance. When it was repeated she looked more closely. The design was so similar to the first that it looked like a logo. It showed an eight-sided crystal superimposed on a tongue of flame. Fire and Ice.
She showed it to Euan. He scrabbled back through his own pile of papers and came up with three more examples of the same design. 'I'd missed them altogether,' he said. 'I don't have your visual imagination, obviously. I was concentrating on the words.'
'Did you find anything?'
'No: he said slowly, reluctant to admit defeat. 'Nothing.'
'Wouldn't anything she was working on recently be in her bag? In the notebook which had the title or one of the envelope files! She was starting to lose patience with him. Why didn't he just look in the more obvious places? Was he waiting for her to go, so he could look at them by himself?
'Perhaps,' he said. He looked up from the table. 'Or perhaps I'm deluding myself and we'll never find out why she died!
She stretched out and scooped up the scraps of paper which had been crumpled in the bottom of the bag. The first was a ferry ticket. She gave it to him. 'She took the roll-on roll-off to Whalsay just before Christmas. Did she have a friend there?'
'I think I remember that. There was a party. Some lad from school, she said. I can't see that it has any significance!
'Then there's this. A supermarket till receipt! She stretched it out on the table, stroked it with her thumb to flatten it.
'Safeway's in Lerwick. Dated the day before her body was found. Did she do any shopping that day?'
'Not for me! He took it from her, frowning. 'None of those items turned up in the house. She wouldn't have bought sausages or the pie. She was practically a vegetarian and certainly never ate processed meat!
He turned the paper over. Fran saw writing on the back, but from where she was sitting couldn't make out what it said. He slid it along the table to her. 'Look what's scribbled on the back. It's Catherine's writing!
Fran read: Catriona Bruce. Desire or hate? 'What does it mean?'
'It's a reference to the same poem! He picked up the anthology again and read out loud, his voice shaking as if he'd suddenly aged,
'From what I've tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire./But if it had to perish twice,!1 think I know enough of hate/'To say that for destruction ice/Is also great. . !
'What is Catherine saying then?' Fran had forgotten her irritation with him. She was hooked by the puzzle.
Suddenly this had little to do with the reality of two dead girls. 'That Catriona was killed because someone desired her or hated her? Those emotions must lie at the root of most violence. And what does it have to do with the film?'
'Surely there's a more fundamental question! He sat upright in his chair. His voice was clipped, almost academic. 'Why was she interested in Catriona Bruce at all? I'd never heard of the girl until Catherine died. I think I knew that a family called Bruce lived here once, but not that the daughter had gone missing. Had Catherine discovered something about the girl's disappearance? If so, that might provide a powerful motive for her murder!
Fran sat looking at him, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was saying. It seemed absurd to read so much from a scribbled note, but he was right.
'Can we look at the rest of the notebook now? The other files from her bag?' She realized, too late, that she must sound very eager. He mustn't think she was treating his daughter's death as a game. She turned to Euan, hoping she hadn't offended him, but a noise outside had caught his attention.
'A car,' he said. 'It must be the Bruce family. I Wasn't expecting them just yet! He slipped the receipt into the notebook, pushed them both into the green leather bag and went to open the door. She put Catherine's books and essays back into the plastic box and stuck it under the table.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kenneth and Sandra Bruce had expected the house to be the same as they remembered it and it was so different that they seemed lost. They wandered into the big room, looking around them like unsophisticated visitors to an art gallery, not sure exactly what response was expected of them.
'It's very nice,' Sandra said. 'Yes, very nice.'
Fran could tell that Euan's mind wasn't really on the encounter. He was still thinking about the receipt 'from Safeway's, the unread notebook. Perhaps that was his way of feeling close to the daughter he had lost. It was as if he thought Catherine was still trying to communicate with him. But to the visitors he must have appeared aloof, rather arrogant. Fran found herself playing the part of host, offering coffee, taking coats. There was a woman with them, a police officer in plain clothes. Perhaps they'd known her when they lived in Shetland, because they called her by her first name, Morag.
'Why don't you just look around by yourselves,'
Fran said at last. 'That will be all right, Euan, won't it?'
He looked up, startled. 'Yes, yes, of course.'
The son, Brian, had followed his parents in and had answered Fran's questions about coffee or a soft drink in monosyllables. He was a tall, ungainly boy who seemed embarrassed his size, the uncertain pitch of his voice.
Now, when they went off to look upstairs, he stayed where he was, sitting by the fire, cradling his can of Coke his huge hands, looking at his feet. Euan, standing by the big window and staring down to Raven Head, seemed not to realize that he was still there. Fran couldn't bear-the silence.
'I don't suppose you remember much of this: she said. 'You must have been quite young when you left!
He looked up at her. His chin was spattered with acne.
'I remember some of it very welclass="underline" he said. 'The day Cat went missing. I remember that!
She waited for him to continue but he tipped back his head and took a swig from the can.
'It's the small details you remember, isn't it?' she said. 'Like, what you had for tea and what you were wearing!
He smiled and she saw that one day he might be good-looking. 'I was wearing a Celtic shirt. I don't know why, but I always supported Celtic!
'It was the summer holidays, wasn't it? No school! 'I hated school!
'Did you?' She would have liked to ask why, but didn't want to frighten him back into silence.
'Maybe that was down to Cat. She really hated it, put me off before I started!
'Why did she have such a bad time there?'
He shrugged. 'Mrs Henry didn't take to her. That's what my parents said. You know they talk about stuff and they think you're not listening or you're too young to understand. My Dad wanted to move her to a different school.
He said she'd never get on at Ravenswick, with Mrs Henry on her back all the time.
Mum said it would be awkward. How would they explain it to her?' He looked up at Fran. 'They weren't like friends, not really. But neighbours, you know, calling in on each other. You can see it would have been difficult, moving Cat. Like saying, We think you're a crap teacher. After, when Cat ran off, Mum blamed herself. She thought if she'd found a different school Cat would still be here. Dad said that was daft. It was the holidays. The last thing she'd be thinking of would be school!