Authors: Jessica Lake
"I don't talk to coppers, Callum," she hissed, moving in close to her son, "and neither do you. Now come with me. We can sort this out at home, on our own."
Callum grabbed her arm, but she wrenched it away and marched out of the pub, swearing to herself. We both jumped up and followed her out onto the street.
"Mum, you have to stay. This is important. We need to talk to you-"
She practically sprinted away from us, headed in the direction of the tube station. I decided I had to say something, offer some incentive.
"He's going to get done for murder. They have DNA evidence. If you don't help, he could be arrested at any time."
That stopped her in her tracks. She turned around and looked me right in the eyes.
"'They' have DNA evidence? And who is 'they?'"
"The police."
"I thought you said you were the police."
"I am. But I'm on Callum's side. I don't think he did it. And it's very important that we talk to you."
"Why?" She asked, clearly ready to turn on her heel and continue on to the tube station at any moment. "What possible way could I help?"
"Will you please come back into the pub and talk to us?" I pleaded, trying my best to remember she wasn't a suspect and I had no right to start ordering her around, no matter how badly I wanted to.
She turned her focus to Callum. "Do you trust this woman, Callum? A copper? Do you-" She paused suddenly, pondering. "Oh no. You're shagging her. Oh, Callum. You never could keep it in your trousers, could you? Listen to me, when you're thinking a little more clearly, you come home and we'll sort this out, alright?"
Once again, she turned and started marching towards the tube station. I was desperate.
"It's about Callum's father!" I yelled after her. She stopped dead in her tracks but didn't turn around.
"They have DNA evidence, Mrs. Cross. It could be Callum's, or it could be from a close male relative. It could be from his brother or his father. We need to find out whose DNA it is. Please. I know this is difficult, but we need to do everything we can to prove Callum didn't do what they think he did."
Finally, Helen turned around. Her face looked drained of all color and her eyes were wide with - what - shock? Fear? Some combination of the two? Her body, previously rigid with anger, was now slumped, her posture defeated. She looked at Callum, and when she spoke, all the anger had gone from her voice.
"Callum - is this true?"
He nodded. "Yes, mum. Unfortunately, this is true."
"I have to smoke."
She looked around for somewhere to sit, then plonked herself down on the curb and lit a cigarette. When I got closer I could see that she was shaking.
"Mrs. Cro-"
"Give me a minute, will you?" She barked."Just give me a damned minute!"
I backed off and stood next to Callum, watching Helen. After a couple of long drags, she looked up at the sky. She closed her eyes as the sunlight washed over her face.
"I knew this day would come, Callum," she said. "I always hoped it wouldn't but right now, sitting here, I guess maybe I always knew, yeah? You aren't going to like what I have to say, my sweet boy. You aren't going to like it at all. In fact, I think you might not want to speak to me ever again after I tell you this particular story."
Helen Cross then started to sob, loudly. People passing by on the pavement looked briefly and then turned away again, as the British tend to do when someone gets emotional in public. Callum sat down next to her. A tiny pang of envy filled me as I watched the two of them clinging to each other, mother and son, both of them aware that some deep family secret was about to be revealed, and both instinctively drawn to comfort the other.
"Please come back to the pub, mum," Callum said, wrapping his huge arm around her narrow shoulders. "Please. It's too cold out here."
Helen relented, finally. She stubbed her cigarette out on the curb before allowing us to walk her back to the pub.
"Can you get us drinks?" Helen asked me. "Strong ones. Two whiskies."
I went to fetch the drinks, whiskey for Callum and Helen, water for me. When I got back to the table both of them were sitting in silence.
"Here you go," I said, setting the drinks down.
"Thank you," Helen replied. She pushed a glass of whiskey towards Callum. "Drink it, son. You're going to need it."
Callum picked up the drink and took a small, careful sip. His face was almost as pale as his mother's.
"Mum, please. Please just tell me. I can't stand this."
I slid my hand under the table and squeezed Callum's thigh in a gesture I hoped would give him some kind of reassurance or sense of support. Then Helen started talking.
"I was married to Timothy Cross when you were born, Callum. He was one of the top men at the Streatham Club."
Callum nodded, apparently not catching the odd wording of his mother's statement. So she spelled it out for him.
"I was married to him, but he, oh Callum..." She paused to breathe and fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. "He isn't your father."
"OK..." Callum said, swallowing hard and nodding his head. "I - you've never said anything about this, mum. I don't even know who Timothy Cross-"
I held my hand up, sensing that Helen wasn't anywhere close to finished.
"Let her finish," I said. I rubbed Callum's tense back and gestured for Helen to continue.
She wiped her eyes roughly. "I'm going to tell you two a story if you don't mind. I don't know how else to say this without telling you how it happened."
I nodded encouragingly. "That's fine, Mrs. Cross. You can tell us any way you need to. However long it takes."
She took a deep breath, then she spoke. "It was 1990, maybe 1991, sometime around there. Tim wasn't the big boss at Streatham, but he was up there. Things were changing, then. The business. It was all becoming more and more difficult to manage, the coppers were less afraid than they used to be. John - he was the boss, John Stayles - he was getting right worked up about it. He wanted to hire new people, professionalize things a little."
She paused there and finished her whiskey. "Can I have another one?"
I got her another whiskey as quickly as I could. Before she started talking, she took another gulp.
"Who did he hire?" I prompted her, realizing this was where the story was going. Callum was mute, frozen in place next to me like a statue. I was torn between my need for answers and the desire to pull him out of that pub so he never had to hear the rest of his mum's story.
"Oh," Helen said, playing with one of the rings on her fingers, "he hired a few new guys. Most of them from Streatham, guys everyone knew. I'd known most of them since I was a child. Timothy didn't rate them, mind you, but one of them was a real arse-licker, a real piece of work. He knew exactly how to flatter John. He also made it very clear, as soon as he was in the boss's good graces, that he didn't think much of Timothy. He knew he was the competition, didn't he? He came around to the house once and behaved very badly in front of Tim, very disrespectfully. When John found out-"
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Cross," I cut in quietly, "but what do you mean by 'behaved badly'? What did he do?"
"I'm not sure I need to go into the gory details, do I? Let's just say he behaved the way men behave when there's a woman around and she belongs to one of them."
"You mean he tried it on?"
"Of course he did. He would have done anything he could to show Tim what he thought of him. Anyway. John got wind of this and he gave, uh, he gave him a dressing down. Threatened to kick him out of the Club - threatened to kick him out of London - if he didn't show Tim his due respect. Did it in front of all the other men, too."
I was almost trembling with the effort it took not to ask Helen who this man was, even though there was already a horrifying possibility looming up in my mind.
"It was a really bad time. Tim and I were already in a bad place, without any of that other stuff. He was a traditional kind of husband, not the kind you modern girls would go for."Helen threw me a meaningful glance when she said that.
"Helen, can you explain what you mean by that? I know this is very difficult for you, but it's important that I understand the whole situation."
Callum's mother gave a little shrug. "I'm trying to be polite about this, for my son's sake. But if you must know, Tim was a very violent man. Not just at work, if you see what I'm getting at. I was very unhappy."
Callum sat at the table with his eyes focused downwards, not looking at either me or Helen. I could tell he was listening very carefully to everything she said, though.
"OK," I said reassuringly, "I understand. Can you tell me what happened next?"
"Well," she started, even more hesitant than she had been two minutes ago, "after he got told off, he came over one night - to the house. I was, I was..."
She trailed off and reached into her bag for her cigarettes. "Can you give me a couple of minutes? I need to smoke if I'm going to get through this."
I waited to see if Callum would react, and when he didn't I nodded at Helen. After she'd stepped out, I reached over and tentatively squeezed Callum's hand. I wasn't sure how he was reacting to what his mother was saying, or how he was going to react to the revelation I felt sure was coming.
"Are you OK?" I asked quietly."We have to do this, you know."
Without looking up, he just said "I know," and we sat in silence until Helen returned, smelling of cigarette smoke and cold air. She sat down and suddenly started talking, rushing her words, obviously afraid that if she stopped she wasn't going to be able to finish.
"When he came over that night, I was - I had been drinking. I'm not proud of it, but things with Tim were so bad then. I didn't see a way out, so I just drank too much and hoped it would all sort itself out. Anyway, he came over and things happened, they got out of hand. I didn't like this man, not one bit, but I wanted to punish Tim. I wanted to make him suffer the way he'd made me suffer."
I knew what Helen was getting at-and I knew Callum did too - so I didn't push her to be more specific. She continued with her story.
"Tim and I weren't intimate very often by that point. Sometimes he forced me-"
As he heard his mother’s words, Callum slumped forward and held his head in his hands. Helen reached out, as if she wanted to touch him, to stroke his head or his shoulder or something, then withdrew her hand.
"What I'm saying is, Timothy Cross isn't your father, Callum. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
Helen started to cry silently. She hunched over the table, her body language mimicking her son’s. I knew the question I needed to ask, even though I suspected Callum and I both already knew the answer. But it had to be asked. For his sake.
"Helen. You need to tell us who this man was. We need that information so we can check-"
"It was Gary Wilson," she whispered, sniffling. "Gazza."
The words hung in the quiet air of the pub, singular and undeniable. Gazza was Callum's father. Of course, we would need to run further DNA tests to confirm it, but somehow I already knew it was true. Helen wouldn't have said anything if she'd been at all in doubt.
Finally, Callum lifted his head and looked his mother in the eyes. When he spoke, his voice was shaking.
"Did he force you, mum? Did Gazza force you?"
Helen answered truthfully, but it wasn't enough for Callum.
"No, Callum, I wouldn't say that. He didn't force me."
"But you said you were drunk?"
"Yes, I was. Very drunk. But I knew what I was-"
She didn't get to finish her sentence. Callum stood up, breathing heavily, his fists clenched. I reached up to try and get him to sit down again. He snatched his arm away from me.
"Don't, Callum. Don't," I begged."Please just sit down. Please. I'll have to call the police. Please don't, I-"
"Fuck you, Lily! Don't threaten me."
And then he was gone, slamming the pub door so hard the glass shattered. Helen and I ran out after him, followed by the barman shouting about the door, but Callum was running by then, and I knew we weren't going to catch him. Helen immediately turned to me.
"Well?" She looked me right in the eye, challenging me. "Are you going to call the police? You act like you care about my son but I know coppers, I know none of you give a shit about anyone else, not really. Go on then, call your friends. But do it in front of me, don't run away so you can pretend you're doing the right thing."
She bent over and spat on the ground in front of me, so close to my shoes I had to jump back. My phone was in my pocket. I knew where Callum was going, and so did Helen. I didn't know what to do.
"Helen, if Callum goes to the Club, someone is probably going to die. You know that, don't you?" I asked her, pissed off at the implication that I didn't care about Callum."He's either going to kill Gazza, in which case he's going to prison for a very long time, or Gazza's going to kill him. And you know he won't hesitate."
Helen brought her hands to her face and dug her nails into her skin. I grabbed her arms, yelling at her to stop as the barman, who I'd forgotten about, started bellowing about the door again.