Dead Pretty by David Mark

Author:David Mark [Mark, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

17

YVONNE TURPIN HAS THE DEVIL HORNS of a red-wine drinker emerging from her pale lips. She’s dressed for comfort in a cheap polo neck and jogging pants. Wears no rings and has bitten her nails so close that her fingers look like pink and painful tentacles.

On the threshold of the flat above the bookies on Nottingham’s West Bridgford estate, Helen Tremberg has to stop herself from glancing at her notes to make sure she has the right woman. The lady before her bears little similarity to the straight-backed, dark-haired woman who stood on the court steps and railed against the injustice of releasing the man who had killed her sister.

“Sorry about the mess,” she says as she leads Helen into a living room that she seems to have stopped redecorating halfway through. Some of the loud wallpaper has been painted over in cream and a large chunk of the dirty, paint-spattered wooden floor has been sanded clean. She seems to have simply given up on the project, content to live in a room that carries her own stamp as well as that of its previous owner.

“Tea?” she asks, sitting down on a chintz sofa and picking up a magazine and wineglass from the cluttered coffee table. “Or wine? You might have to drink the white stuff. It may be a bit vinegary but it’s okay.”

Helen considers the frail, mousy woman before her. She has rarely seen somebody in such desperate need of a good hug. She puts Helen in mind of a beaten dog, shaking and flinching at every loud noise and looking out at the world with eyes that have seen too much sorrow.

“Difficult journey?” asks Yvonne.

Helen puffs out a fed-up breath. “Fine until I got into the city. Then it was just bedlam.”

“I don’t go into the city center much,” says Yvonne, drawing a circle on her knee with her finger and then repeating the gesture in the opposite direction. “Shops around here are enough.”

“You’re a driver?”

“I can but I haven’t got a car. Taxis are too expensive. The bus is okay if you don’t get the nutters.”

“I can’t stand the bus. There are always people coughing on you.”

“I’ve noticed that. I don’t like to wear a coat with a hood in case people are putting their dirty tissues in it behind me.”

They stop. Look at each other. Helen spots the vinegary white wine and a clean-ish glass by the coffee table and pours herself a little measure.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” says Helen as she sips the wine and tries not to demonstrate that this particular Sauvignon Blanc is now only suitable for stripping the paint from armored cars. “As I said on the phone, it’s really good of you to talk to me. Your sister’s death must have been horrendous and the sentence her killer got is a joke. Feel free to shout and scream and bellow and I’ll listen to all of it.”

“I don’t really understand what it is you’re after,” says Yvonne, then looks down at her belly, as if appalled by her own rudeness.

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