Chapter 7

How the hell had this happened? I hadn't hit anyone had I? So how the fuck could I have murdered someone?

The police were not very forthcoming either. They tried to interview me alone at first, pressurising me to 'confess and make it easier on myself'. At least I was alert enough to realise I desperately needed a lawyer, refusing to answer any questions until I had one. Eventually the police left me alone in my cell to wait.

There was no way me or my family were going to have the wherewithal to pay for some fancy-dan defence lawyer so I was appointed a legal-aid solicitor to act as my defender. Luckily he wasn't just a wet-behind-the-ears newcomer, but a seasoned professional who refused to let me be interviewed until he had found out all the facts, leaving me alone whilst he went to find out all about the charges. When he returned about an hour later, the expression on his face was enough to tell me I was in deep, deep shit...

It appeared that Karl Simpson had, during our alleged fight, banged the back of his head violently against the corner of his car door causing a massive bleed at the rear of his brain. The accidental blow had knocked him unconscious and eventually killed him before any help had arrived.

"Fucking hell ... I only pushed him." I protested to my freshly appointed lawyer.

"That's not what the police have been told," he replied, a note of disbelief quite obvious in his tone, "They have a witness who says you caused it all."

"A witness? ... Who? ... Honestly I just pushed him slightly ... Just the once." I protested, feeling sick to my stomach through a combination of the trouble I was obviously in and the raging headache, - caused by the previous night's alcohol intake, - that was pounding in my brain.

"His companion, the woman who was with him. She alleges that you attacked him without provocation." He stared into my eyes over the top of his glasses, looking for a clue whether I was telling the truth or not, "Are you saying she is lying?" he demanded.

"Lying? ... Of course she's FUCKING LYING!..." I yelled, "SHE'S MY FUCKING EX-WIFE ... SHE LIES ABOUT ME ALL THE FUCKING TIME!..."

"Oh Dear! ... Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And I thought it was just going to be a simple drunken brawl that resulted in a tragic accidental death. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."

His words echoed through my befuddled brain as the seriousness of the accusation against me resonated in my confused mind.

"My wife ... My fucking bitch wife ... I might have known she was the cause of all this shit."

My stomach couldn't take any more. I couldn't hold back any longer. I violently threw up the contents of my churning guts all over the cell floor...

What made me absolutely realise I was up to my neck in the brown stuff, even more so than anything my solicitor tried to tell me, was when I received a letter from Gwen whilst I was on remand awaiting my trial. In it she told me she would be unable to ever forgive her husband and daughter for what they had done to me and that she would be seeking a divorce from him as soon as she could. She told me she had been to the police and tried to tell them that her daughter's statement that I had ever been violent towards her was just a pack of lies and that I had never in any way threatened or intimidated my wife in all the time we had been together.

Sadly the police had refused to believe her. They had informed her that everything she had told them was only hearsay and that it would be inadmissible as evidence at my trial. They went on to admonish her and tried to make her feel ashamed, telling her that maybe she should be supporting her daughter rather than defending someone who was, after all, only related to her by marriage.