Killing the Pretty Ones: A DCI Ben Nevis Scottish Detective Thriller by Duncan Wallace

Author:Duncan Wallace [Wallace, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I had driven around the town centre throughout the years and often wondered what my life would have been like if I had chosen a different path. I enjoyed reimagining my life as I drove around everything that was familiar to me as it calmed my mind when I was restless.

After all the years of driving, though, I always settled on the fact that I had chosen the perfect path for me. Still, it was fun sometimes to consider what would have happened if, for instance, I had decided to continue with the band I had played in, and if we would have been rock stars by the time I turned fifty. Or if I had stayed with my ex-wife, and if it would have actually worked out between us.

I drove past the reinvented coffee shops that had gone from small diners for the working men to speciality shops for the modern student. I had watched the town thrive and decline throughout the years, and although the buildings changed and governments came and went, the folk remained the same. Despite the odd sicko here and there, they were the kindest and most genuine people I had ever known.

It wasn’t a long drive to Ophelia’s flat, and I could see right away what Duffy had meant when she described the area as rundown. As usually happened around town centres, the immediate housing left a lot to be desired. The place was ramshackle at best, and some of the buildings looked as if they had been destroyed by a small bomb.

I quickly mounted the first clear spot along the curb and turned the key in the ignition. We sat in the car for a few moments and simply took in the sight.

“Told you it was rough,” Duffy commented as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Shocking that she makes so much money and didn’t move out,” I replied.

“Not in this market, it’s not,” Duffy said.

“True,” I agreed. “She’d have been spending all her money on rent if she had.”

We stepped out of the Beast at the same time and looked around. I noticed that some of the homes and buildings were as bleak-looking as I’d first thought, but the sunshine also illuminated the fun that I remembered from early years on a council estate. I noticed the random cars and motorbikes on stacks of bricks that had been stripped of their parts as a scantily dressed man worked on them. There were the sofas plonked into the front gardens of homes or on the small greens outside of the flats where overweight women sipped at cans of lager they had retrieved from the freezer. Above it all were the incoherent shouts from parents that were so deeply drenched in Scottish slang that even I considered it a foreign language.

It felt like I had returned home, and it was brilliant. It brightened my entire day as I watched the dogs who practically walked their owners, and the orange tomcat that ruled over them all from his spot on a windowsill.

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