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

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