A Genuine Mistake by Ted Tayler (miss read books txt) 📗

Nick Barrett. “Imagine how I looked in my early twenties. I was short, overweight, and ordinary looking at best. Gerry wasn’t a blond Adonis, but he had a far higher strike rate with the females than I ever did. That was true in the youth club on Mason’s Lane, on the university campus, or in any pubs and clubs in Bristol where students gathered to socialise. I tagged along on our travels to Australia, talked to dozens of girls on the same voyage of discovery, but when Gerry and I flew home, my powder was still dry.”

“Does that mean there isn’t a young Barrett in the wings ready to join the firm?” asked Gus.

“I found someone eventually, Mr Freeman. I was in my early forties; Ginny was three years younger. We have a daughter, Josephine, who has no interest in the law. I’m happy to say that she’s following the path that I craved. Josie is an accomplished musician with hopes to become an actress. A career in musical theatre could be where she makes her mark. Ginny and I will support her every inch of the way. Five more years and this place will have a new name on the letter heading. Bruce Atkins will find a bright young thing to join the partnership, and Ginny and I can grow old gracefully.”

“Unlike your best friend Gerry Hogan,” said Gus. “Tell us about that Australian trip now, Mr Barrett. When DI Kirkpatrick carried out his investigation six years ago, he couldn’t find a single person who might have wanted to murder Gerry. That killer had to come from somewhere in his past. I’ve studied the murder file in detail, and I can’t see evidence of much digging into what went on in the months before Gerry met Evelyn on the beach at Bondi.”

“At the end of February, we took the late-evening flight from Heathrow with Singapore Airlines and settled in for the fourteen-hour flight to Singapore. Gerry’s father drove us from home. He knew my father had already issued instructions on what to do and what to avoid at all costs. Gerry’s father just told us to have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do type of thing. We had a delay before we took the connecting flight to Darwin, but after twenty-three hours of travelling, we landed in Oz. After we collected our bags and reached the arrival hall, we soon found a rather striking looking girl waving a placard for a hostel on our list of potential places to stay. Thirty minutes later, we walked outside into blistering heat and got in a combi-van with fellow travellers for the brief trip to our digs. The place was rough and ready. It marked the start of a succession of hostels where we slept, except for the drunken nights we spent on a beach somewhere. Within a month, I’d done the things my father told me not to do at least once, except finding a girl short-sighted enough to have sex with me.”

“Gerry was more successful, I take it?” asked Gus.

“I don’t know what other friends did in those situations, Mr Freeman,” said Nick Barrett. “We would visit a bar, start drinking Toohey’s, and check out the talent. Gerry was always better at chatting up the girls than I was, so I carried on drinking while he tried his luck. When he found two girls willing to join us, I’d loosened up sufficiently to hold a conversation with whichever girl wasn’t his target. When we spoke next morning, he didn’t go into great detail about whether they’d had a splendid night or a disaster. Thank goodness. Gerry was an honourable man. He wouldn’t brag about his sexual exploits, nor would he say anything disparaging about the young ladies in question. If you pressed me for a number of nights when Gerry didn’t sleep in the same room as me or close by me on a beach under the stars, I’d say five or six. One of those nights was different. That was the night he met Evelyn. She was a beauty. I could tell from the get-go that Gerry was smitten. I hadn’t planned to sleep on the beach that night, but after another scorching hot day, a series of barbies where a hundred travellers congregated, drinking, smoking dope, and singing until the early hours, I couldn’t get up off the sand. I was wasted. I fell asleep next to an eighteen-stone New Zealander who must have drunk two cans to each can that I managed and didn’t stir until dawn. I remember stepping carefully through the arms, legs, and heads of youngsters still asleep. Everyone had stayed right where they were that night. Gerry was at the hostel when I stumbled in. We were almost at the end of our trip. I was fed up with sand in my bum crack every day. He didn’t want to fly home. All he talked about on the flights from Sydney to Singapore, then Singapore to Heathrow, was Evelyn.”

“Evelyn flew to the UK to join Gerry a month later,” said Gus. “They married in a registry office and then lived in Clifton. What did you make of that?”

“I was just glad to be in Bradford-on-Avon,” said Barrett. “Long hot baths, the comforts of home. I wouldn’t have missed that trip for the world, but I was in the thick of it here, trying to steer the firm into calmer waters. I liked Evelyn. She was a lovely girl, perfect for Gerry, and they made a handsome couple. I was proud to be asked to be his best man.”

“After they married and rented that place in Clifton, did you see much of them?” asked Gus.

“Alas, no,” said Barrett. “I was surplus to requirements. A third wheel, and a busy man. Gerry and Evelyn were making their way in their chosen careers too, and when they had spare time, they naturally spent it together.