Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) Read Online Free PDF

she’s purple, or go and gorge herself on medicinal red wine and Maltesers.
    Pharaoh sniffs. Sucks at her cheeks for a moment. Flips down the rear-view mirror and winces.
    Fat bitch, fat bitch, fat bitch  . . .
    She’s forty-six. Dark-haired and curvy. 5 foot 4 inches when she takes her biker boots off. The darkness under her eyes looks like bruising and there is a fine spray of burst capillaries across her cheeks. She’s tried to tie her hair back but wispy strands have escaped from the ponytail and are curling up like tiny snakes around a forehead that looks like it has been grooved using a pizza-cutter. There is red in the cracks in her lips. Her eyebrows need plucking. She smells of tobacco and roll-on deodorant, of the clothes she slept in and which she has no intention of taking off today.
    Pharaoh hates her reflection so intensely that she’s tempted to rip the mirror off and smash it. She resists. Can’t afford to have it repaired.
    Slowly, she steps out of the vehicle and into the warm spring evening. There’s a twinge in the back of her left leg and the base of her spine. She turns to look at the car as she closes the door and sees herself staring back in the darkened glass. Sees the full effect. She wishes she’d put a bra on, that she were wearing something slimming, instead of the jogging pants and man’s shirt that she woke up in. Wishes she’d brushed her teeth or eaten a mint before she turned up at the big house near the airport and grabbed her eldest daughter by the hair. Trish could have played the thing a little more deftly. Could have been the cool mum she used to be, giving her little girl a wink as she waited for her to pack her things and disentangle herself from the sleeping bags and beer cans and pizza boxes. Could have told her she’d known all along that she wasn’t staying at her friend’s house and had in fact gone to a party with older boys. But she didn’t. She went in all guns blazing, stinking of last night’s booze, demanding to know if any of the slumbering lads had put their hands on her child. She might even have flashed her warrant card. She made damn sure she stepped on the bare thigh of some tattooed halfwit who dared to look up from the floor and tell her to chill. More than anything, she could have waited until she got into the car before screaming at Sophia that she was a dirty little scrubber who was going to be Aids tested as soon as the surgery opened in the morning.
    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