You probably won’t remember this. Not unless you’re from Middleton, that is. Maybe you’re too young, anyway. It was a while ago.

It was in the local papers. Don’t think it made the national headlines.

A lad killed in Parkfield, well, just up from there if you know it.

Ben Tyler. Age 21.

A grubby little story.

There was a party the night it happened. I was there. So was Jenny the girl I’d met in St Anne’s a few years before, along with some others we knew from college and other places. And Ben.

We had a fight, Ben and me, that night. Over Jenny. We’d been mates, sort of, for a time, though I always kept an eye on him because underneath I didn’t trust him. I knew Ben and Jenny had had something going on at one time, and I reckoned he still had the hots for her. Though by that time, Jenny and me were pretty much an item. Definitely an item.

And on that night, we had a fight. I was jealous, I’ve never denied that, and I was angry, angry about something in particular that night.

But I didn’t kill him.

When he was found, though, and the police were called, I was the first one in the frame.

When I was taken in for questioning, I thought it was just routine.

They were actually all right with me. No heavy-handed stuff.

But they kept me in overnight.

Knowing I was innocent, I trusted the system.

‘There was a row? At the party, was there, Tony?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Loud?’

‘It was a party. Everything was loud.’

‘And this girl you mentioned, this Jenny, she went out.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, we’ve spoken to her. And then you went out.’

‘Yes, to find her.’

‘And you came across Ben and there was another row, this time with Ben.’

‘Yes. I’ve told you that already. But I didn’t kill him.’

He leaned over the desk, with something that was almost a smile. ‘His blood is all over your clothes, Tony.’

I knew it was. We`d had a fight and his nose was bleeding. But that didn’t mean I killed him.

They thought it did.

He pushed a photo across the table. ‘Do you know who that is, Tony?’

‘It’s Ben,’ I said.

‘And this, Tony…’ he pushed another photo across the table, ‘this is what we call blunt instrument trauma.’

I turned my face away.

‘You don’t like that, do you, Tony?’

I felt a spiral of panic rising through me.

Later that day, they charged me.

At some point, I made some kind of statement, but I can’t remember everything I said in it.

Everything had become unreal.

Ben had been hit with a baseball bat. It had my fingerprints on it. It had lots of other prints on it too because we’d had a game with it, using a tennis ball, earlier, before the party started.

So, they couldn’t get me for that on its own; but the blood and my admission that we’d had a fight, and what other people said, was enough.

That I had a motive.

That I was jealous.

That I thought something was going on between him and Jenny.

It all fitted together.

They put me on remand, where I found there were some seriously weird characters about. Drug crimes. Knife violence. Gang stuff. There was one lad, Derek Telfer, same age as me who looked at me as if he would just as soon kill me. I don’t know if it was just me he looked at that way, but one day he cornered me in a room and pulled out a piece of glass he’d got. I didn’t fancy my chances against him, but I had to do something, so I picked up a chair and swung it round in front of his face, and when he still came at me I smashed it against his shoulder. Others then joined in the scuffle, and I was eventually pulled away. Derek Telfer’s case came up a couple of days later, and we heard that he’d been sent down, so that was one good thing. But as for me, they knew it wasn’t my fault, but because of that scrape, and because, technically, I had no fixed address, I was refused bail and had to sit it out until my case came up.

It taught me something though. If I’d thought – and I still did to some extent – that the system was benign, and that if you sat back and showed patience and trust, things would turn out right in the end, I stopped thinking it then. The police needed to get a result, the solicitors wanted an easy life, the warden wanted to keep an orderly place, the judge, when his turn came, would want justice to be seen to be done, etc. I didn’t blame them, but what for me was a life-changer, was just another day’s work for them.

By the time my trial came up weirdos didn’t worry me anymore. I was already teaching myself how to deal with that sort of stuff. Most of the screws were all right, so long as there were no upsets.

My solicitor was all right too. He seemed like a decent bloke.

He persuaded me to plead guilty.

Well, I’d already decided to do that.

Though he fleshed it out. Walked me through. Told me what to say.

Plead guilty. Show remorse. Lighter sentence.

If you plead not guilty and the jury convicts, with the case they’ve got, they’ll throw the book at you.

In the end it was a no brainer.

But there was another reason I pleaded guilty.

And that reason was Jenny.