Page 27 of Wanting Daisy Dead

Dan

It was all so stressful; Lauren must have heard everything. Georgie was saying that Lauren had a motive to kill Daisy. She said that by revealing Lauren’s motive publicly it would take the heat off us, especially me!

I keep going over it in my head. Lauren isn’t stupid, and I saw the look on her face – she was hurt and angry at the same time. Women do hurt and angry well.

I do wonder about Georgie. The way she was pointing the finger at Lauren while pointing it at me. Is Georgie trying to throw me under the bus too?

If she is, she’d better be ready for when I push back with my intel on her .

We’re all back in the dining room now, and I’m sitting opposite Lauren, who won’t even make eye contact with me.

She’s no doubt angry because she assumes I’m on board with Georgie’s crazy idea that she had a motive to kill Daisy.

I still don’t know what the motive is, because when we saw Lauren, Georgie shut up.

I’m done with it all – the whispers, the tension, the constant testing of each other.

Tonight I’d just like to run away with the cute waitress and tell everyone else to go to hell.

‘You need to try and keep stuff to yourself, Georgie,’ I say as quietly as my anger will allow. ‘You’re dropping everyone in it, including me. I thought the whole point of coming here this weekend was to keep what happened under the radar, not recorded for two million people to hear.’

‘Well, it’s going to come out sometime, isn’t it?’ she hisses.

Suddenly there’s a ping, and I feel a jolt in my chest. Is it my heart?

‘Voice note,’ Alex says, putting his phone in the middle of the table and turning up the volume so we can hear what Tammy has to say next. For him this all seems to be a novelty, a little weekend break, but for us every voice note is another layer of agony.

‘Hope you guys are having a great time! So, while the rest of your dinner is served, I’d just like to give you a little background info.

Here at The Killer Question , wrongful convictions are something very close to our hearts.

So far, we’ve worked on twenty-two miscarriages of justice in four years just in the UK, and next year we’re hoping to expand and cover some US cases too.

So, the odds are on our side this weekend, and we’re determined to find out who wanted Daisy dead most . ’

Given that she’s talking about us, I find her enthusiasm vaguely threatening.

I catch Alex’s eye. ‘This is difficult, isn’t it, mate?’

He nods, and gives a slight eye-roll.

‘Not nice that one of us might be accused of a murder that happened twenty years ago – that someone else did and was actually convicted of,’ I add, trying not to sound too bitter or defensive. And failing.

He shrugs. ‘He never confessed. What can you do?’

Classic Alex – cool as a cucumber.

I lift my glass at him resignedly, then lean in to Georgie. ‘I’m sorry, but Alex is too bloody relaxed – he’s either innocent, or on the Xanax tonight.’

She ignores me – something my wife excels at.

Right now, though, I’m more concerned about Alex, as his non-committal shrug might be a sign that he’s going to drop me in it.

Mind you, this weekend is an exercise in paranoia; every word, every look, every bloody nuance between us is loaded.

I had hoped, as the only other bloke here, he might be an ally, but I didn’t consider his closeness with Daisy, and now I’m worried that she may have told him something and that’s why he’s being a bit off with me. Shit!

I’d better try again to be friendly with him, figure out the lay of the land. Is he friend or foe?

I lean across the table to Alex. ‘Tammy keeps hinting at stuff, and I think they know more than us.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘Once the sad armchair detectives get involved, a dossier will be winging its way to the police,’ I add. But now he’s turned back to Maddie and they’re talking. He’s deliberately avoiding me.

And Daisy’s mum is giving me the creeps, the way she keeps looking over. This weekend is making me really paranoid.

‘Did you enjoy your starter, Teresa?’ Georgie asks.

‘No, I didn’t,’ she replies bluntly. ‘I just want to know once and for all who took her, and get this over with.’ Her voice cracks with emotion.

I look up, about to offer some solace, but the expression on her face is fury, and it’s directed right at me.

I don’t look at her, but lean in to Georgie. ‘She seems hell-bent on finding someone guilty, but she isn’t qualified to make that call – she’s the victim’s mother .’

‘Shush, you’re being loud. They’re recording, remember?’ she says, without looking at me.

But I can’t stop talking. I want the recording to pick this up, for the listeners to question what’s happening here.

I hesitate, then lean in again: ‘Is she just going to point the finger at whoever she doesn’t like the look of tonight?

And then on Monday the mother hath spoken, and the trolls and their mates online gather the “evidence” and make something out of nothing? ’

‘Dan, you’re drawing attention to yourself, and you really don’t want to do that.’ Georgie speaks through her teeth while smiling vaguely in Teresa’s direction.

I give Teresa one of my most boyish smiles, but she looks away.

I notice Georgie’s hands shaking as she lifts her drink, and as the waiting staff lay down bowls of vegetables, platters of meat and our plates, her arm catches the waiter’s and she almost knocks it from his hand.

‘ Shit !’ she declares loudly, and everyone stops talking.

‘Calm down,’ I’m saying under my breath, as calmly as I can, my voice betraying my own fear.

‘Don’t tell me to fucking calm down,’ she says while aggressively spooning vegetables on to her plate. Her hands are shaking so much the peas are going everywhere, bright-green beacons on the pure white cloth, a warning as to her state of mind.

She’s so tightly wound right now that there’s no reaching her. Since she received this invite her anxiety has been off the charts, and she’s been cleaning and washing her hands over and over again. I don’t understand why she’s like this; she says it’s my fault, but what the hell have I done?

She seems determined to find something, anything , on Lauren. I wonder what she knows? Or is Lauren just an easy target for Georgie to put in the spotlight while flying under the radar herself? There’s so much going through my mind, my head feels fuzzy.

Suddenly our phones ping. ‘God, that made me jump,’ I groan.

‘You’d think we’d be used to it by now. But as most of the pinging happens around food, I reckon I’ll develop a Pavlovian response after this weekend.

Every time I get a WhatsApp in future I’ll start to dribble!

’ They all laugh at this, and even old Teresa breaks a little smile.

‘They don’t have WhatsApp in prison, mate,’ Alex ‘jokes’.

What the fuck? I’m shocked at the implication, but manage to laugh along. ‘Well, you’ve been there, you should know,’ I reply with a fake chuckle. He’s really pissed me off, saying that. Does he suspect me? Is he going to try and drop me in it?

I need to keep it up – the idea that I’m innocent and therefore not scared ... I’m not scared. I’m innocent. Not scared.

Alex is now pressing play on his phone, like he’s in charge, and that’s also winding me up.

‘As we always say, The Killer Question is about crime, but it’s also about the impact of that crime. We don’t just report the lurid details in a sensational way ...’

‘You could have fooled me,’ I murmur, rolling my eyes.

It’s the most sensationalised rubbish I’ve ever heard, but I don’t say any more. Georgie’s elbowing my ribs and Teresa is homing in on me like an Exocet missile.

‘We also speak with those affected by crime. And we specialise in murder, the victim’s story, their family and friends – anyone whose life has been impacted by, in our view, the worst possible crime: taking someone else’s life.

‘Through our listeners, our podcast has more time, more manpower, and more detective skills than the whole of the British police force. Families and prisoners come to us with suspected wrongful convictions, and we fight for those we believe in. We aren’t exclusive or judgemental, and we talk to the alleged perpetrator’s family, digging into their past to find out what makes them tick.

But this case is different, because one half of the whole – Professor David Montgomery – isn’t with us anymore.

He took his own life, and denied he committed the murder until his last breath.

‘Shortly, we’ll be chatting with Louisa Montgomery, the professor’s widow. She’s going to talk about something that, in the police investigation, was considered to be the catalyst for the lead-up to Daisy’s death.’

I bite into my beef; it’s slow-cooked, savoury and bloody. The voice note ends, and I pour myself a large glass of red in an attempt to imagine I’m at a normal dinner party. I’m telling myself that we aren’t all potential killers, just old friends enjoying a weekend reunion. But who am I kidding?

My stomach clenches, threatening to eject the fleshy beef.

I imagine it landing on the white tablecloth, messy with blood and wine, dotted with the bright-green peas my wife spilled earlier with her shaky hands.

I continue to eat my beef and try not to think of the post-mortem, Daisy’s body on the slab, the knife slicing into that perfect young flesh.

‘I haven’t slept for twenty years ...’ Teresa’s saying, dragging me from my waking nightmare.

‘And this is torture. All I want is for them to find the guilty person who’s sat back all these years and watched a man rot in jail until he couldn’t anymore.

I’m her mother, I need closure – I can’t move on or even die until I know the right person is locked up. ’

‘I agree, I completely agree,’ Lauren gushes.

‘Whoever killed Daisy targeted her. When I did the research for my first book, A Day in the Life and Death , about the rites of passage of a young, working-class woman in a world that didn’t hear her, I obviously didn’t base it on Daisy’s story, it was a work of fiction, but—’

‘Yeah, any resemblance to actual persons, even those based on real people living or dead, is purely coincidental,’ Georgie chuckles. No one responds, except Lauren who shoots her a look that could kill, before continuing her weird schmoozing of Daisy’s mother.

‘Sorry I was interrupted, but what I was saying, Teresa, was ... As I wrote the book, which may have been inspired by Daisy’s love of life, her sense of humour, her—’

‘What are you trying to say?’ Teresa asks.

‘Well – while I was researching, I realised that Daisy’s murder was a crime of passion, and I believe that Professor Montgomery was the killer. Perhaps it wasn’t an act of hatred, but an act of love – and he loved Daisy too much?’

Georgie starts to slow-clap, and my stomach dips. ‘Bravo! Nice little book plug there, Lauren, and you got your innocent plea in that speech too – cos, let’s face it, no one could accuse you of loving Daisy too much.’

And we’re off!

Georgie’s smirking, while Lauren glares at her with the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen.

‘I think there are some crimes that begin with a small thing, then move into darker territories, like sex crimes and murder,’ Teresa suddenly announces.

We all take notice, out of respect, but also because she seems to have something to say.

‘These perverts get a taste for it and have to go back, and once you’ve done something like that you could do anything. ’ She turns to me. ‘Don’t you agree?’