‘Terry?’ Isaac reminded her why he was in the house.
‘He starts going on about the past, and how I had cheated him out of a child, conveniently forgetting that he had been checked out and found to be the fault.’
‘Not something a virile man would want to accept. He wouldn’t have been down the pub of a Saturday night bragging to his friends about it.’
‘Easier to blame me. He’s here and he’s fluctuating between anger and amorous advances. The first is getting my back up, the second is about to get him a rolling pin to the head.’
‘Rolling pin?’
‘You know what I mean. Anyway, he’s going on about Christine and me, slandering her, maligning me.’
‘Is that it?’
‘He’s got verbal diarrhoea by now, and he starts talking nonsense. I can’t remember him being keen on children anyway. He wasn’t the paternal type, not that I ever saw.’
‘An affront to his manhood, not having children.’
‘Peer pressure from his friends whose partners were pushing them out at a rapid rate. And there I am, barren, the Virgin Queen.’
‘Why the Virgin Queen?’
‘It was his friends, their women, they all thought I was looking down on them, ramming my education down their throats. Terry was a common man. He had left school with a couple of O Levels and an ambition to drive fast cars and to fix them up. He’s good at one, not the other.’
‘Lousy driver?’
‘No coordination. He could never manage to heel-and-toe; you know where you combine braking and changing down a gear, matching the engine’s revolutions. He always thought it was the car, and if he had something better, then he’d be able to do it.’
‘But he couldn’t, not in the better car?’
‘Terry? We had a ten-year-old Ford, a bomb it was. The one time I tried heel-and-toe, I aced it after the second attempt. He drank more than he should that night, said that I was lucky, and that tomorrow he’d show me how it was done, how a professional racing driver would have achieved the feat, not a woman with the luck of the Irish.’
‘You’re not Irish?’
‘And he wasn’t sober either. The next day, he’s out with his friends, and he’s there hurtling around the country lanes not far from where we lived. He ended up heel-and-toeing the three of them into the hospital after he blipped the throttle when he should have been braking. Ended up in a field, the car rolling twice. Terry got out of it with a broken arm, two broken ribs, and a bruised ego.’
‘What about the other two?’
‘One was unharmed, a few bruises, that’s all. The other man, an uncouth individual who peppered every three words with an expletive, is still in a wheelchair. So much for Terry’s attempt at winning the Formula One World Championship.’
‘So Terry’s here in the house with you; he’s angry or fancying his chances,’ Isaac said.
‘He starts to blame me for his life, and “that bitch Christine”, his words, not mine, for denying him fatherhood. As I said, I believe it was not that important all those years ago, and I doubt if it is now. But that’s Terry, a mouth that works overtime. He starts making statements, such as how he had sorted out Christine’s fancy man, how he was going to have his revenge, how he knew about her and what she had got up to over the years. He even found a couple of men that I had supposedly had affairs with, even the individual in the wheelchair. As I said, he’s talking nonsense, and he’s irritating me.’
‘How long did he stay in the house?’
‘Twenty-eight minutes. A lawyer’s attention to detail and I documented all that happened and what he said. At the time, I thought nothing to it. I was used to him, and I’ve met more than my fair share of deluded fools, drunks, and ne’er-do-wells, the same as you have.’
‘Yet you called me,’ Isaac said.
‘He said that he had been in London and he had seen the dead man jogging alongside the Serpentine, and that…’
‘Is that it?’
‘He clammed up, said no more. After that, he got up from the chair and walked out of the house. He never said goodbye. He closed the front door gently, not banging it as he was apt to do after we had had an argument.’
‘Are you suggesting that he could have killed Colin Young?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. It was him probably sounding off, a touch of bravado, an attempt to frighten me, to get his revenge.’
‘If he killed the man, then he could come for you and Christine,’ Isaac said.
‘I can’t see it, but it’s a possibility, especially if he’s had a few drinks. I’m not certain if he’s mentally stable, either. According to you and your team, his business is shaky, the woman he’s with is on the rough side. Embittered men commit terrible crimes.’
‘Have you told your sister what you’ve just told me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘We’ll get the police up in Liverpool to check on his movements, and it may be a good idea if you move out of your house. For a few days, that is.’
‘I have enough money. I’ll pay for twenty-four-hour security for the house and for me. It’s not the first time that I’ve been threatened, occupational hazard if you’ve been a prosecuting lawyer.’
‘Or a police officer,’ Isaac said. ‘Your sister?’
‘She can come and stay here if she wants.’
‘If she doesn’t?’
‘I’ll ensure that her house is watched. She’s my sister, and she drives me crazy, but blood is thicker than water.’
Isaac hoped that the reference to blood was metaphorical and that Homicide would not see any more
