Chapter 69

Daisy

The two of us yank the garage door down. It was a two-man job. You were right to follow me outside, Bella. I'm not ungrateful. I'm just not used to anyone helping me. I take a step back and look up at the garage. The painters did a good job. I like green. Reminds me of Ireland. It's always been my favourite colour.

‘Best get someone in to look at that door, Daisy. We don't want any accidents. I'll be inside. It's fucking freezing out here.'

You rub your arms and make a brrr sound. I smile, tell you I'll be in in a moment. Locking the door, I give it one final tug. I'm about to turn away when a shivery feeling courses through me. The last time I looked up at this garage was to make sure there were no security cameras installed. Frank didn't have a hope in hell after what Zelda and I did to him.

My mind drifts back to that Saturday barbeque at yours. Frank and Zelda are at the kitchen table. I'm sorting drinks out for everyone. Behind me, I hear them having a bit of a domestic, shuffling and murmurs. I spin round and catch him holding her by the wrist. I fight the urge to lunge forward and stab him in the eye with the teaspoon in my hand. Then they're back to normal and he's complaining of a headache. Zelda is concerned, offers him ibuprofen.

Of course, you know all this, Bella, because I told you, but what I failed to mention is the reason Zelda didn't come out to ask you for ibuprofen was because Frank reminded her of his allergy, asked if she was trying to kill him. Oh, the irony. My heart hardened then. I'd had enough of Frank Hardy upsetting my family. I pulled out a blister of ibuprofen from the kitchen drawer – what an odd place to keep painkillers, Bella. Using the pestle and mortar, I crushed them as best as I could and poured the grind into his coffee, giving it a good stir before placing it in front of him. He gulped it down gratefully, with two paracetamol tablets, which I also found in the drawer.

I wasn't sure how long it'd be before they took effect. I thought they'd give him diarrhoea or stomach cramps the next day. The symptoms kicked in faster than I expected, and Zelda bore the brunt of it.

I didn't want him dead, Bella. I'm not a murderer. I wanted to teach him a lesson, that's all. How was I to know he'd pump himself full of cocaine and attack Zelda?

He came flying out from next door's back gate like a rocket. The one I'm standing in front of now. It was so dark and quiet, he didn't spot me squatting by the window, eavesdropping on your conversation.

I stood up when I saw him staggering around, blood all over his neck and shirt, mumbling to himself like an eejit. He almost leapt for joy when he saw me, thought I was his saviour. Stupid sod could barely string a sentence together. I think his tongue had swelled up.

Frank told me Zelda tried to kill him to stop him from leaving her, and that you were in love with him, too, said he'd slept with Linda, and now the three of you were planning on finishing him off. He urged me to call the police, pleaded with me to be his witness, said he'd see me alright.

When I hesitated, he pulled out his wallet and gave it to me. Well, I was never going to call the Garda, was I? I couldn't let him put you all inside, not when I'd just found you. I feigned shock, told him I'd left my phone in the car, and, with a tremulous hand, he looked at his phone – face recognition. It didn't work, probably because of the swelling of his face. I watched him tap in the number, 666007, sweat trickling down his face, congealing with the blood.

I must admit, he looked terrified. I almost felt sorry for him. I jabbed at the screen, told him to hold on, I'd get help, and then, slipping his wallet into my pocket, I pretended to talk to an operator while he leant against the wall, eyes tightly shut. I started talking, breath ragged – Ambulance please. A man has been stabbed, please come quickly, he's in a bad way. Yes, the address is – and then his eyes snapped open. He was like, ‘Hang on, what were you doing loitering in the driveway in your dressing gown?' And then he saw the screensaver on his phone. I underestimated him, Bella.

The words evil, lying, bitch spat from his lips as he lunged at me. For a moment, I froze, spiralling into the past. But the numbness thawed as quickly as it came. I slid his phone into my pocket, grabbed a wooden broom that was propped against the wall and blocked him with the handle before he could reach me. Fuelled with vicious energy, I pushed him as hard as I could, he lost his footing around some builder's gullies and fell backwards into the excavation.

I shone the torch from his phone on his still body, hair in my face, breath ragged. He'd landed into a curved cavity, almost as if it was a prepared grave. I stared down at his twisted body, eyes wide open, with a feeling of empowerment. He was dead. I'd killed him. And I liked it. But now I had a fecking body to hide.

Shrugging out of your dressing gown, I kicked off your faux fur slippers and placed them neatly by the garage door. I couldn't risk getting any grime or blood on your belongings. The sting beneath my feet was immediate. Stones, grit, slithers of wood. I knew I couldn't go down there barefoot.

I opened Zelda's recycle bin, hoping to find some plastic packaging to tie around my feet and that's when I spotted them. I pulled the wellington boots over my fleecy pyjama bottoms and made my way into the dark ditch. I checked for a pulse and any signs of breathing. Nothing. I was about to stand up when I felt moisture on my fingers. I stared at my blood-stained fingers. What was I going to do now, Bella? Looking around me wildly, I spotted a half-filled bottle of cola and an abandoned screwdriver, chucked in the ditch by the messy builders. I poured the cola over my hand and shook it dry. Noting his stab wound, I set the yellow handle of the screwdriver into the soil and rolled him onto it until his flesh met with the blade and penetrated the shank. He was bloody heavy, Bella, but I'm a strong lass –got trophies for weightlifting.

Satisfied, I was about to cover his corpse with builder's crates and rubble when something shone in the moonlight. A watch. I figured I could get a few quid for that. It felt heavy, expensive. I slipped it around my arm, and then I heard a rustle of movement and your voices in the garden. I covered his corpse as quickly as I could and got the hell out of there.

You were none the wiser when I turned up at the front door a while later, composure regained. I suspected the builders would find him the next day, of course, but figured they'd have thought it was an accident. I doubt very much there would've been an inquest, especially after discovering all that alcohol and cocaine in his system; or maybe the coroner would've ruled that the cause of his death was due to an allergic reaction. I'm not sure if you can die from an Ibuprofen allergy. Probably.

There was the little incident about the stab wound in his neck, of course, but I imagined the medical examiner would rule that it happened when he collapsed and fell onto the yellow screwdriver. Either way, we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. But, as fate would have it, a huge concrete mixer arrived the next day, who, according to Zelda, pumped the cement through a tube connected to the lorry like concrete ninjas and he was buried within half an hour. Job done.

Frank had his debit card in his wallet, Bella, with his passcode scribbled on the back of his business card. Why do people do that? Nevertheless, it came in handy when I went to St. Ives on a shopping spree on my day off. I bought you that perfume from Icecube, remember? It cost me sixty-five quid. You're wearing it today, bless you. Anyway, I digress. A homeless guy, sitting outside the station in a black hoodie, agreed to take two-hundred-and-fifty pounds out of the cash machine for me in exchange for fifty quid. And get this, he was the same height and build as Frank. Isn't karma lovely? Fortunately, he was a regular at the station and was happy to offer his services again on my next trip. Wearing Frank's watch, he held up a coffee cup, emblazoned with Frank's name, and took a selfie with Frank's phone. I gave him two hundred pounds for that. He deserved it.

The watch is expensive, Bella. A Patek Phillipe. I got it valued. It's worth between ￡170 and 200k. I'll flog it when I go back to Ireland to visit my loathsome brothers. I never let it out of my sight. Gosh, would you? It is very beautiful. I'm quite tempted to keep it. But I can't. It's too risky. Every now and then I pull it out to make sure it's still there. The emerald green strap is gorgeous. I've got a leather key fob in the exact same colour. Anyone would think it was a set. I pull out the wristwatch now and rub my thumb over the face with glee, and then…

‘Daisy, what are you doing?' My heart stops. You've startled me, Bella. Creeping up on me like that. ‘We're waiting for you. Fiona loves the flat.'

I spin round, almost dropping the watch in my haste to get it back into my handbag.

You frown, face hard. Shit. Shit. You saw it.