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
