The Redeemed by M.R. Hall

Author:M.R. Hall [Hall, M.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-07-01T16:25:09+00:00

It was almost one o'clock, stomachs would be aching with hunger, but Jenny called the tattoo artist, Alan Turley, to give his evidence before the lunch break. With a shaved, tattooed head, and nose and ears peppered with rings and studs, he was a man Jenny would have crossed the street to avoid. But Turley, who practised his craft under the name Doc Scratch, was quietly spoken, and gave the impression that he was a gentle soul, devoted to his work.

Alison handed him a copy of the photograph of Eva's body. He looked at it briefly and lowered his head, visibly upset. Jenny took him carefully through the evidence he had given in a statement he had made to Alison the week before, making sure that he repeated every detail. He told the jury that Eva had booked the appointment by telephone several days in advance under the assumed name Louise Pearson. When she arrived for her appointment she wrote down the words she wanted tattooed and selected the font from a style book. It took no more than fifteen minutes to apply and she paid in cash: sixty pounds.

Jenny stole a glance at Kenneth Donaldson. What she saw in his face surprised her. In the back of her mind she had invented a story of abuse for Eva's tattoo: riddled with guilt at her years prostituting herself, it was to be an ironic testament to the true cause of her pain, a mirror image of the scars that disfigured her face. Marking her body in this way was a form of therapy: sex could never be had for the sheer hell of it again; it would always be married with the truth. But Donaldson's expression didn't fit with her neat version of history. In her many years in the family courts dealing with men who had done unspeakable things to their daughters, she had learnt to recognize the benign, detached, self-deluding smile the guilty ones adopted. There was nothing self-deluding about Kenneth Donaldson's reaction; no, he was in genuine pain.

'Mr Turley,' Jenny said, 'did Miss Donaldson talk to you at all while you were drawing the design?'

'Very little. She seemed sort of distant.'

'Did you ask what it meant to her?'

'No. It didn't seem right.'

'Why was that?'

Sullivan rolled his eyes. Ed Prince drummed his fingers impatiently. Jenny ignored them and urged Turley to answer.

'It was just a feeling,' he said. 'A lot of people want tattoos when they've just lost someone - it's like a memorial. The young lady felt like that. Sad. As if she'd just come to the end of something.'

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