Sweet Oblivion

by Rhiana Ramsey

  Elizabeth glanced at her watch, noting that it was ten past seven; when she looked up she spotted Louise strolling in to the venue as if on cue, her eyes scanning the room as she tried to locate Elizabeth’s whereabouts. Louise looked radiant; she was wearing a low-cut, tight-fitting sky blue top, which displayed her pushed-up cleavage to the hungry eyes of the males in the vicinity and a pair of black trousers that clung to her thighs and arse.

  She was wearing high heels and so towered over most of the women in the place, the additional three inches extending her height to just under six feet. Her dark blonde hair was swept up into high ponytail that hung to the middle of her back and it was clear that she had taken some time to apply her make up for she looked immaculate. Not for the first time that week, Elizabeth felt decidedly shoddy in her work clothes.

  As she had mentioned to Tony just a couple of days before, Louise had always been popular with the boys, and clearly, from the appreciative glances thrown her way by the male patrons and the jealous stares of the females, she had not lost that appeal over the last fifteen years.

  Elizabeth stood up and waved to catch Louise’s attention; Louise smiled at her and picked her way through the groups of punters milling within the establishment, slowly making her way over to the table Elizabeth had been guarding for them for the last twenty minutes.

  ‘Well, busy Lizzy, here we are!’ Louise said by way of greeting.

  ‘Indeed! Who would have thought, eh?’

  ‘I know! I never thought something positive would have come out of me being arrested!’

  ‘Well, I’ve just about finished this one,’ Elizabeth said, indicating her pint glass, ‘so sit down and I’ll get us a drink then you can tell me what you’ve been up to for the past few years. What do you drink these days?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘Wine is my favourite tipple of late, so a glass of any dry white would be awesome thanks.’

  ‘Coming right up. You look great by the way,’ Elizabeth added as an after thought.

  ‘Cheers. You too. I like your suit.’

  Although Louise was smiling when she said it, Elizabeth had a feeling she didn’t mean it and was just being polite.

  ‘Thanks. Back in a sec.’

  Elizabeth disappeared to the bar and Louise settled back in her chair and took in her surroundings. This all felt so surreal to her; here she was sitting in a pub with a woman she went to school with a decade and a half ago, not really sure why she was here and wondering what on earth they would talk about. How did you catch up on fifteen years in a few hours? She also felt strangely nervous being so close to the police station and she was pretty sure a lot of the people in the pub were police officers; they had that quiet confidence about them.

  Louise glanced at the bar and saw Elizabeth was laughing with the bar staff as she handed over the money for their drinks, clearly known to them. She looked good too and not all that different to how she had looked all those years ago, just a little leaner and with a few soft lines around her eyes and mouth. From the way she carried herself it was apparent to Louise that Elizabeth possessed a lot of that copper confidence and knew how to handle herself; she couldn’t imagine Elizabeth being afraid of anything.

  As Elizabeth returned to the table, Louise heard her mobile phone ringing in her bag; she quickly rummaged around looking for the device.

  ‘Sorry, this is rude,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Let me just see who it is and turn it off.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about that. My phone is always going off at inopportune moments and unfortunately I always have to answer it,’ Elizabeth smiled.

  Louise removed the phone from her bag and looked at the caller ID; it was Ben. She wondered what he wanted; they’d only spoken a day ago and they weren’t in the habit of calling each other that often. Assuming that Ben was only calling to check up on her again, Louise pressed the reject button, silencing the call. She then turned off the phone and slid it back into her handbag. Whatever it was, Ben could wait. Tonight Louise wanted to forget about her troubles and the strangeness of the past few days; she just wanted to have a few drinks and let her hair down. ‘

  ‘So,’ Elizabeth asked, when Louise had finished silencing her phone and returned her handbag to the floor beneath her feet. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ************************************************

  Ben hung up the phone and smiled to himself. Louise had rejected his call and had by that gesture unwittingly told him all he needed to know; she was out with company, which was actually the reason he was calling her in the first place, to make sure she had gone to meet her old school chum and hadn’t decided instead to recluse herself in her flat.

  If Louise was at home she would have just let the phone ring out so that she could pretend she hadn’t heard it; because she had in effect hung up on him, he knew she was out and didn’t want to appear rude to her friend. Ben marvelled at how well he knew the woman.

  Just as Ben settled down in front of the TV in his sitting room, a cold beer in hand, he heard the front door bell ring.

  He grumbled to himself, annoyed at the intrusion and wondered who the hell would be visiting him on a Friday after seven o’clock in the evening. He just wanted to unwind and gradually ease himself into the weekend, was that too much to ask?

  Ben stepped over to his front window, swigging from his beer bottle, and pulled back the edge of the curtain so he could peek at his evening visitors. A uniformed officer and a man in a suit stood on his front step, patiently waiting for him to answer the door. Surprised and worried Ben hurried to the door to let them in.

  ‘Good evening. Are you Mr Ben Mathews?’ the man in the suit asked.

  ‘Yes, I am. What’s happened?’ Ben studied the man’s face trying to read it for an indication as to what could have happened to warrant the police turning up at his house on a Friday evening. The man in the suit flashed his warrant card and said: ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Maddox, this is PC Howitt. We’re from the City of London Police. Can we come in please?’

  ‘What’s this about?’ Ben asked.

  ‘It involves one of your employees and it is a sensitive matter. Can we come in?’ DS Maddox asked again.

  ‘Yes, of course. Come this way.’

  Ben stepped aside to let the officers into his home and they then followed him into the living room. Ben turned off the TV as he walked past it and invited the officers to sit down.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you Mr Matthews,’ DS Maddox began, ‘this is about one of your employees, Mr Derek Cooper. He was found murdered late last night in a car park on Rampton Street.’

  ‘What?’ Ben couldn’t believe what he was hearing, he was stunned. ‘Murdered? He was in the office only yesterday.’

  Ben shook his head and brought his hands to his face in shock. Derek Cooper had been murdered on Rampton Street, close to the BizTalk offices, after drinking with former co-workers; he wondered who would do such a thing.

  ‘Why? How?’ Ben asked, so many questions filled his head.

  ‘A motive hasn’t been established yet. He was struck about the face with a sharp object, maybe a knife, and he sustained some trauma to other parts of the body. It looks like it was a blow to his eye that ultimately killed him, but we’re waiting for a full report from the coroner,’ DS Maddox explained.

  ‘Jesus. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It must be a lot to take in Mr Matthews, but I would like to ask you some questions. Do you need some time to digest this?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Anything I can do to help.’

  ‘Can you tell us about the last time you saw Mr Cooper?’ the detective asked. The PC remained silent, taking notes in his pocketbook.

  ‘It was yesterday afternoon, he had come to the office to collect files, paper work… to be honest I’m not entirely sure what he was collecting. He is actually a former employee; I made him redundant on Monday. I need to downsize the company you see. He came in about three, was in the office for a good few hours and I
know he was planning on going out for drinks with some of my staff. I wasn’t invited so the last time I saw him would have been about six thirty yesterday evening.’

  ‘I see, and what was your relationship with Mr Cooper like?’

  ‘Well, before I fired him, it was fine. I never really had any dealings with him. But when I told him I was making him redundant, he took it very personally. I received a letter on Tuesday, which he must have hand delivered to the post room, and it contained photos of me and a female co-worker. The pictures were taken to make it look like we’re having a relationship, which we’re not, and the letter suggested that Derek was going to sue me for unfair dismissal because of the romantic liaisons he thought I was having.’

  ‘Why would that give him grounds for unfair dismissal?’

  ‘Because he wanted to suggest that the female in question had put me up to it for a personal vendetta and that it wasn’t actually related to his performance,’ Ben clarified.

  ‘Right, I understand. We did find some photos in Mr Cooper’s car, and meeting you now, I realize that the man in those pictures is you. Who is the woman?’

  Ben really didn’t want to tell the officers anymore than he had to, he didn’t want to give them Louise’s name. The last thing she needed was more police sniffing around her and more unsettlement.

  ‘Do I have to tell you?’

  ‘You don’t have to, but it would be helpful for us to know who she is. We will need to speak to her too to corroborate your story.’

  ‘Am I suspect?’

  DS Maddox paused for a moment before answering.

  ‘No. But you are so far the only person we have spoken to who has any sort of motive for wanting Mr Cooper dead.’

  ‘What you think I’d rather see him dead than fight him in court?’

  ‘I’m just making an observation.

  Ben sighed, ‘Her name is Lucy Jamieson,’ he lied.

  ‘Thank you. Do you know which members of your staff went out drinking with him last night?’

  ‘No, no idea. As I mentioned, I wasn’t invited.’

  ‘The car park in question is close to your offices isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘Do many of you staff park there?’

  ‘The majority of my staff commute by public transport because I have a system in place whereby they can have a loan for their rail card or whatever, and then pay it back in instalments directly from their monthly pay.’

  ‘Would you be able to provide me with the names of all your employees and their dates of birth? We’ll need to speak to all of them, especially the one’s who saw him last night,’ DS Maddox said.

  ‘Yes, I can get that for you. I’m guessing you don’t want to wait until Monday to get that information?’

  ‘You guess right. The sooner we can speak to all potential witnesses the better’

  ‘Well, we can go to the office now and I’ll get you a list if you want? I don’t have access to the HR records from my home computer,’ Ben suggested helpfully.

  ‘That would be very helpful Mr Matthews. PC Howitt will go with you.’

  ‘Just wondering before we go, why did you come to see me if I’m not a suspect and I wasn’t a witness?’

  ‘We found documents relating to Biztalk in Mr Cooper’s car and we discovered you were the owner of the business from your website. Given the proximity of your offices to the crime scene we supposed he had been coming from work and as such you became someone we needed to talk to, as are all your employees.’

  ‘Oh right. So you suspect one of my employees may have done this?’

  ‘All options are open at the moment, we can’t say anything for definite at this stage.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  Ben felt his blood run cold. Could one of his staff, someone he knew, actually have murdered Derek Cooper?

  ‘Ok Mr Matthews, I think we’re done here unless you have any questions?’

  Ben shook his head: ‘No, not at the moment.’

  DS Maddox gave Ben his card and told him to call if he thought of anything else. Ben thanked him and got up to get his office keys; he wasn’t really listening anymore to what the officers had to say.

  All he could hear was Louise’s voice in his head, repeating over and over what she had said to him hours before Derek Cooper had wound up dead. ‘Hopefully he’ll trip going down the stairs on his way out and kill himself. That would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it? If he died?’ Louise’s words now took on a sinister edge. ‘That would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it? If he died? …solve…your problems… if he died?’

  They’d joked about it but now it had happened. Was it just a dark coincidence that she had uttered those words and now Derek was dead? Or was there more to it than Ben wanted to believe? He thought back to the way Louise had reacted when he had told her about the letter Derek had sent him, the way she had flown off the handle. He had felt like he was momentarily talking to someone else; he’d glimpsed a darker side to her.

  As much as Ben didn’t believe it was possible and he couldn’t begin to fathom that Louise was involved, he found himself wondering: could Louise have something to do with Derek’s death?

  ************************************************

  Louise and Elizabeth were having a great time; the drinks were flowing and the conversation was easy, any shyness washed away by the alcohol. They’d talked about their school days, reminiscing on old teachers and pupils and wondering what had become of them all; they’d talked about places they’d travelled to, people they’d met and they talked about how they had ended up in their current professions. Elizabeth told Louise she had done well to get into such a coveted position so quickly; Louise told Elizabeth she couldn’t believe she had become a police officer.

  ‘I thought you’d become a doctor or something,’ Louise said. ‘You were so adamant you were going to fix people.’

  ‘Well, I kind of do fix people as a copper. I help mend lives by catching the bad guys,’ Elizabeth giggled into her drink. ‘God that sounds really pretentious! I mend lives; I’m amazing don’t you know!’

  The women laughed.

  ‘So you’re working on that female serial killer case aren’t you?’ Louise asked

  ‘Sure am. Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘How’s the case going?’

  ‘I can’t really tell you Louise, as much as I’d like to. And I swear that is not me being pretentious again!’

  ‘I understand, I’m just curious, you know? It fascinates me. This killer is a woman and that’s really rare isn’t it? Especially if she’s acting alone, cos don’t most women killers have a partner of some sort?’ Louise asked, genuinely interested.

  ‘Well, I’m no authority but from what I have read and studied over the years, yes, our current killer would be rare; she’s killing so violently, taking trophies from the bodies and appears to be working alone. Don’t think I’ve ever read a case that is similar to this one; the closest I could think of was Mary Bell. And oi, you’re making me say too much.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Mary Bell, the killer child right? That’s seriously creepy isn’t it, a killer that is a child?’

  ‘You’re telling me!’ Elizabeth agreed.

  ‘So, are you guys close to catching her, this bondage killer?’

  ‘Louise, you know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘I don’t want details, just wondering if the men of London still need to be running scared.’

  ‘We’re getting closer,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Actually, I’m really excited because we have a name, well, we have a nickname.’

  ‘Wow, that’s great news then, isn’t it? So you should work out who it is soon?’

  Elizabeth was about to reply when her work phone started to ring; Tony was calling her.

  ‘Hold on Louise I need to get this; it’s work.’ Louise nodded and smiled, indicating she didn’t mind.

  ‘Tony, what is it?’ Elizabeth asked, there was a pause and then she
said, ‘If it’s not work related Tony, I’m not interested.’ She paused again as she listened to what Tony had to say. Louise looked at her curiously.

  ‘Tony, like I said, if it isn’t work related, I’m not interested. I’m out with a friend at the moment, ok? It’s none of you business who, so go away.’ She hung up the phone, huffing loudly. ‘Bloody men.’

  ‘Tell me about it. My whole life would have been a hell of a lot easier if there were no men in this world!’ Louise concurred. ‘That your boyfriend?’

  ‘No, yes, oh I don’t bloody know. It’s complicated,’ Elizabeth took a large gulp of her drink. ‘We work together, we slept together and now I don’t know what we are. He wasn’t totally honest with me about something and now I don’t know what I should do. I don’t want to bore you with the details.’

  ‘I don’t mind. I enjoy a good man bashing every now and then,’ Louise smiled broadly, displaying her perfectly straight, white teeth.

  ‘Nah, you’re alright. You’re single, right?’ Elizabeth asked.

  Louise’s smile dropped and her facial expression changed to one of hatred. She didn’t answer Elizabeth straight away, she instead stretched her arms in front of her and rolled her head as if easing away tension in her neck. Elizabeth watched her, wondering what the hell she was doing.

  ‘Yeah. I’m single. Newly single. The guy I was with cheated on me with a member of his staff. They’d been having an affaire for months and I didn’t suspect a thing,’ Louise eventually answered, her voice low and dull.