Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (5 page)

Pharaoh closes her eyes. Shakes her head and wonders just how much her daughter hates her right now. She isn’t even cross any more. She did worse when she was young. As she considers this she wonders if, in fact, it is true. Was she a bad girl? She was a big sister herself. Spent her teenage years making packed lunches and cooking teas and walking her younger siblings to and from school. She did her homework, most of the time, and always cleaned up if she threw up in her bedroom. She had been entitled to the odd grope behind the Spar in Mexborough, hadn’t she? Did that make her a tart? She didn’t think so at the time; isn’t sure now. She’s been told she dresses like a whore but she’s been called most names at one time or another and has never been one to give much of a shit. But Sophia? What the hell is she rebelling against? Is she still a virgin? Oh God, please let her still be a virgin.

Pharaoh remembers her own first time. Andy, he was called. Curly hair and breath that smelled of smoky bacon crisps. He pawed at the fastenings of her bra as if he were wearing oven-gloves. He’d done her from behind in an abandoned council house three streets from the police station where she would one day work. Didn’t even take his trainers off. It hadn’t lasted long but he’d said she was good at it. Told his friends too, and they told everybody else. She didn’t mind too much. It was nice to have a talent, and anybody who used the word ‘slag’ within earshot quickly discovered that she was even better with her fists than she was at moving her hips. She never gave it away cheaply. Soon learned that having a large chest and pretty eyes and a vaguely exotic look were damn good assets when coupled with a brain as sharp as piano wire. And reputation didn’t really matter. She’d never had to lie to her parents because there was nobody to tell her off for the truth. Her mum was too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads. Her granddad seemed to go straight from bright-as-a-button to full-on demented the moment he took early retirement. Life was bloody hard. She’d been bright enough to go to whichever university she chose, but Pharaoh turned down the offers. Hadn’t had the money or the inclination. She became a copper, like her granddad, who spent twenty-three years as a community policeman in the days when an ASBO came in the form of a clip around the ear or a good hiding behind the bins. Police Constable Patricia Pharaoh; good in the sack and hard as nails. That seemed enough, once. It hasn’t been in a long time.

Pharaoh tries to put a grin on her face. Spots the gap in her smile and feels her stomach heave. Christ, she forgot to put her tooth in. She’s been screaming at teenagers with her hair wild and a hole in her smile. Fuck! She left it in the glass of water by her bed. The permanent implant simply won’t stay in. She’s okay with the falsie but does have a tendency to click it with her tongue when she’s thinking. The three younger kids think it’s kind of cool. They can tell their friends that their top-cop mum had her tooth knocked out by a gangster in a gunfight at Flamborough Head. They’re proud of their mum, even now. They like that their male friends go coy around her and won’t trust themselves to wear jogging pants if she’s wearing a top that offers a view of her cleavage. She needs her girls right now. Needs the people who matter to tell her that she’s ace, and pretty, and not the incompetent tart that the newspapers are labelling her as, as they revel in Humberside Police’s biggest fuck-up for years.

Not so long ago, Pharaoh was their blue-eyed girl. Her department’s clean-up rate was being lauded at Association of Chief Police Officers get-togethers and the techniques they used to bring down a criminal gang were being exhibited as examples of best practice to other police forces. The
Grimsby Telegraph
even ran a profile on her and she was approached by a documentary team keen on profiling strong women in male-orientated environments. Pharaoh told them to piss off. She had no desire to be a poster girl for feminism. She’s never seen herself as that kind of woman, never seen herself as much more than a copper really. She’s experienced misogyny, but she’s never met a sexist bastard who couldn’t be made to change their opinions when you have one hand on their bollocks and the other around their throat. Pharaoh got where she is by catching villains. Got her team to respect her by scaring the pants off some and putting her motherly arms around others. One of the newspapers said that if she were the England football manager, the country would have a couple more World Cups under its belt and Gazza would never have turned to drink. She liked that. Didn’t agree, but liked it nevertheless.

Pharaoh flattens her hair down. Tries to act like everything’s okay. It is, really. She still has her job. The shitstorm will blow over eventually. The Chief Constable is defending her in public, even if she’s in no doubt that he’s calling her a silly cow behind her back. She’s still in charge of the Serious and Organised team and has managed to get rid of the two bad apples who threatened to scupper the unit before it got off the ground. Shaz Archer is head of the Drugs Squad now. And Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray is probably drinking himself to death under a bridge. It’s months since he last sent Shaz a postcard from his beach house in Turkey, containing badly spelt instructions that she pass on his best regards to half a dozen of the good old boys, and to tell Pharaoh and McAvoy to go fuck themselves. Her unit is doing its job well. She can’t beat organised crime but since the apparent demise of the Headhunters organisation and its boss, she has at least managed to contain it. She can’t think of the crime outfit without wrinkling her nose. They were utterly merciless; a group of professionals who moved in on existing crime families and demanded payment in exchange for access to their skills. They left bodies everywhere. Turned her stomach with their creativity. But Pharaoh and her team brought them down. There have been no nailgun attacks in nearly two years and the drugs trade seems to be back in the hands of morons and muscle. Does the Reuben Hollow case matter? Is it worth getting in a state over? She needs to drink less. Smoke less. To start taking care of herself and her girls . . .

There is a shout from inside the house and the thud of a slamming door. Pharaoh realises that Sophia has taken her frustrations out on one of her younger sisters. Olivia, probably. Her youngest is a tenacious little sod who isn’t remotely scared of her big sister’s hormones and temper tantrums. They spend half their lives pulling one another’s hair out while the middle two eat crisps and drink pop and place bets on the outcome. She knows she should go in and break it up. Wonders if the riot squad owe her any favours.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when she and the four girls lived in a big house on the outskirts of Grimsby. Her husband made good money and he doted on his daughters. He was a charmer. The love of her life. Handy with his fists but a decent dad and damn good at giving her goosepimples whenever he sniffed her neck or slapped her rump as she bent to load the dishwasher. He liked that she was a strong woman, and that she hit him back. He took her to balls and posh restaurants, gallery openings and his private box at the dog track. She didn’t know he was financing his business with dodgy loans and that he owed the taxman more money than their house was worth. Didn’t find out until he suffered a colossal aneurysm that left him unable to speak or move much below the waist. Trish had got them this place. Trish took care of the court cases and the bankruptcy action and managed to drag herself and the girls through all the unpleasantness without it taking their spirit away. Trish got the garage converted into a bedroom for her husband, where he spends most of his time lying on his crisp sheets, staring at the flickering TV screen and looking like a giant sausage roll. He doesn’t even try to speak now. Just turns his head away when the girls come in. Only seems to get excited when his nurse visits. Silly bastard probably still thinks he’s a catch, probably has fantasies about them running off together, though his motorised wheelchair only has a top speed of 12 mph and he would need to recharge the batteries before they got anywhere near their love nest.

Pharaoh used to chide herself for thinking harshly of her husband. She knew what he was when she married him and he ran up his debts while trying to give her the life he thought she wanted. It wasn’t his fault his brain burst under the pressure. She just wishes the bastard would either get better or die. It’s a horrible thought but it’s one that she and the girls have almost constantly. She’s not a widow. The girls aren’t orphans. But she doesn’t have a husband and they don’t have a father. They have a salami, hooked up to drips and colostomy bags, dribbling into his pyjamas and grunting chat-up lines to the woman who changes the dressings on his bed sores. Each of the epileptic fits that he has suffered since the aneurysm could be his last. But the bastard’s hanging on. And he can’t do a damn thing to help Trish pay off the one creditor who really isn’t troubled by the fact that the courts have written off the family’s debts. Her husband borrowed money from somebody who wants it back. The letters have been civil and straightforward, sent to her solicitor from a law firm in London. They speak of a client who loaned her husband a considerable sum some years before. They mention the bankruptcy and the debtor’s limited means, and ask that Trish, as his representative, make a sensible offer of restitution. Trish has made an offer but it was not accepted. The creditor was not interested in either a Mars bar or the opportunity to go fuck themselves.

She pushes open the front door and proceeds through to the lounge. It’s not a bad house. The walls could do with a lick of paint and there is an assortment of stains on the pink carpet but the furniture came with them from their old house and is worth a damn sight more than Pharaoh put down on the forms when she listed the family’s assets. She certainly didn’t mention the fact that the painting of the tall man in the bowler hat, which hangs above the fireplace, is an original by the Beverley artist Fred Elwell, and worth more than she earns in a year. The rest of the wall space is taken up with family photos and various certificates of achievement. Olivia’s diploma from last summer’s drama school almost covers the huge red spray on the wall by the door, wine flung by Pharaoh at her disappearing daughter as the stroppy cow stormed out of the house a few weeks before.

The middle two girls are on the sofa, staring wide-eyed at the laptop, mesmerised by a succession of teenagers falling off trampolines or bouncing over hedges. ‘All good?’ Pharaoh asks them, warily. ‘I’m not going to find any intestines in the bread bin, am I? And please tell me that Olivia isn’t trying to make a mace again. I’ve told you before, a tin of beans in a sock is dangerous. And besides, chopped tomatoes are cheaper.’

Pharaoh gets the grin she hoped for, and a grunt about everything being fine now. Olivia is making herself a drink in the kitchen and there is no sign of Sophia, or blood, so Pharaoh treats herself to a sigh of relief and plonks herself down in the armchair. Picks up the remote control and switches on something mindless.

Oh fuck.

Him
.

He’s sitting on the comfy chair that the BBC wheels out whenever somebody famous or particularly interesting agrees to appear on
Look North
.

His name is Reuben Hollow, and he’s the reason why Trish Pharaoh’s life has recently turned to shit.

Pharaoh has to admit he looks good. Prison must agree with him. He was never exactly portly but during his time inside he has slimmed down even further and now he has the sort of cheekbones that most teenage girls would sell their parents for. He’s still got the stubble that he kept running his hand through during their interview sessions. Still got the gold earring too, though he’s taken off the flat cap that Pharaoh had presumed was stapled to his head. He’s wearing a collarless shirt and tweedy waistcoat and there is a pendant of some kind peeking through his dark chest hair. His eyes haven’t lost their fire. They’re still an almost unnatural blue; glinting like Arctic water as it captures the sun. Christ, he’s a handsome bastard, thinks Pharaoh.

And then to herself,
don’t you bloody dare
.

The interviewer is doing his best to keep the camera focused on himself but he’s fighting a losing battle. Reuben Hollow is more than photogenic. Pharaoh can almost hear the drool oozing from the interviewer’s earpiece as the directors order the camera to stay fixed on the man who was freed last Thursday when his murder conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

‘You must be feeling very relieved,’ says the interviewer, as the camera pans back to let him have his moment. He’s a weaselly-looking thing. Skinny, with a head too big for his body and hair that looks like it was stuck on at a factory.

Reuben half smiles. Nods. Closes his eyes, as though thinking of the lyrics to a song.

‘It’s been difficult,’ he says softly, in that gentle northern accent that had almost put Pharaoh to sleep in the interview room.

He pauses for breath before continuing his whispered confession.

‘I’d never spent more than a night away from my daughter and the next moment I was looking at a whole life in prison. I expected to be punished, but murder was simply the wrong charge. Thankfully, the Court of Appeal has vindicated that. I just want to get back to spending time with my girl and trying to live our lives. We never asked for any of this. I don’t like the limelight – I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t like the noise and the chaos of London; even Hull’s too loud for me. I like the sound of the birds and my daughter playing her piano. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just didn’t have a choice.’