Peter Lovesey
Butchers and Other Stories of Crime
‘Arabella’s Answer’ was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 1984;
‘The Bathroom’ in Winter’s Crimes 5, Macmillan, 1973;
‘Belly Dance’ in Winter’s Crimes 15, Macmillan 1983;
‘Butchers’ in Winter’s Crimes 14, Macmillan, 1982;
‘Did You Tell Daddy?’ in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 1984;
‘Fall-Out’ in Company, 1983;
‘How Mr. Smith Traced His Ancestors’ in The Mystery Guild Anthology, Book Club Associates, 1980;
‘The Locked Room’ in Winter’s Crimes 10, Macmillan, 1978;
‘The Secret Lover’ in Winter’s Crimes 17, Macmillan, 1985;
‘The Virgin and the Bull’ in John Creasey’s Crime Collection, Gollancz, 1983;
‘Vandals’ in Woman’s Own, 1984;
‘Woman and Home’ (as ‘Taking Possession’) in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 1982.
‘The Corder Figure’, ‘Private Gorman’s Luck’, ‘The Staring Man’ and ‘Trace of Spice’ were first published in this collection.
Butchers
He had passed the weekend in the cold store of Pugh the butcher’s. It was now Monday morning. The door was still shut. He was unconcerned. Quite early on Saturday evening he had given up beating his fists on the door and screaming for help. He had soon tired of jumping and arm-swinging to keep his circulation going. He had become increasingly drowsy as his brain had succumbed to the deprivation of oxygen. He had lain on the tiled floor below the glistening carcases and by Sunday morning he had frozen to death.
On the other side of the door Joe Wilkins filled two mugs with instant coffee. It was still only 8 a.m. and the shop didn’t open until 8.30. He was Mr Pugh’s shop manager, forty-four, a master butcher, dark, good-looking with an old-fashioned Clark Gable moustache and quick, laughing eyes that had a way of involving everyone in the shop each time he passed a joke with a customer.
The second mug was for Frank, the apprentice butcher. Frank was eighteen and useful for heavy work. He earned extra money on Saturday nights as a bouncer in Stacey’s, the disco across the street. When the deliveries came from the slaughterer’s, Frank would take the sides of beef on his back as if they were pieces of polystyrene. The girls from Woolworth’s next door often came into the shop in their lunch-hour and asked Frank for rides on his motorbike. Frank got embarrassed when Joe Wilkins teased him about it.
Frank hung up his leather jacket and put on a clean apron. Joe was already wearing his straw boater. He watched the young man struggle awkwardly with the apron strings, tying a bow so loose that it was sure to fall apart as soon as he stretched up to lift a carcase off its hook.
‘Another heavy weekend, lad?’
‘Not really,’ answered Frank, taking his coffee and slopping some on the chopping block. ‘Same as usual.’
‘That’s good to hear. Looks as if we’ve got a busy morning ahead of us.’
Frank gave a frown.
Joe snapped his fingers. ‘Come on, lad, what’s different this morning, or haven’t you noticed yet?’
Frank looked around the shop. ‘Meat’s not out yet.’
‘Right! And why not?’
‘Percy isn’t in.’
‘Right again. By Jove, I was wrong about you. You ought to be on the telly with a mind as sharp as that. Why spend the rest of your life hacking at pieces of meat when you could earn millions sitting in an armchair answering questions? And now for five hundred and a holiday for two in the Bahamas, Mr Dobson, what do you think has happened to Percy?’
‘Dunno,’ answered Frank.
‘You don’t know? Come on, lad. You’re not trying.’
‘He could have fallen off his bike again.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Joe as he took his knives and cleavers from the drawer behind the counter and started sharpening them. ‘Get the window ready, will you?’
Frank put down his coffee and looked for the enamel trays that usually stood in the shop window.
Joe said, ‘You’re probably right about Percy. He’s too old to be in charge of a bike. Seven miles is a long way on a morning like this, with ice all the way up Bread and Cheese Hill and the motorists driving like lunatics. He was knocked in the ditch last week, poor old devil.’
‘Where does he put the trays?’ asked Frank.
‘Trays?’
‘For the meat — in the window.’
‘Aren’t they there, then?’ Joe put down his knife and went to look. ‘Well, I never noticed that before. I suppose he puts them away somewhere. By the time I arrive, they’re always here. Have a look behind the deep-freeze cabinet. Got ’em? Good. Blowed if I understand why he bothers to do that.’
‘Dust, I expect,’ said Frank.
‘Quite right. Wipe them over with a cloth, lad. I used to wonder what he did with himself before we arrived in the morning. He’s in by six, you know, regular. How about that? He must be up at five. Could you do that six mornings a week? And it gets no easier as you get older. Percy must be pushing seventy by now.’
‘What does he do before we get in?’ asked Frank.
‘Well, it’s always spotless, isn’t it?’
‘I thought that was because he stays on of a night to clean up after we close.’
‘So he does — but there’s always more dust by the morning. Percy wipes all the surfaces clean. He puts out the trays, and the cuts from the cold store, and hangs up the poultry, and opens a tin of liver and checks everything against the price list and puts out the tags and the plastic parsley, and the new-laid eggs and the packets of stuffing and bread sauce. I hope you’re listening, lad, because I want all those jobs done before we open.’
Frank gave another frown. ‘You want me to do all that?’
‘Who else, lad?’ said Joe in a reasonable voice. ‘It’s obvious that Percy isn’t going to make it this morning, and I’ve got the orders to get out.’
‘He hasn’t had a day off since I started last year,’ said Frank, still unable to believe his bad luck.
‘He hasn’t had a day off in the twenty years I’ve been working here. Six in the morning till seven at night, six days a week. And what for? Boy’s work. He does the work you ought to be doing, lad. No one else but Percy would stand for it. Fetching and carrying and sweeping up. Do you know, he’s never once complained to me or Mr Pugh or anyone else. You’ve seen him bent nearly double carrying in the carcases. A man of his age shouldn’t be doing work like that. It’s exploitation, that’s what it is.’
‘Why does he do it, then? He’s old enough to draw his pension.’
Joe shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t be happy with his feet up. He’s spent the best years of his life working in this shop. He was here before Mr Pugh took it over. It was Slater’s in those days. Yes, Percy can tell you some tales about the old days. It means a lot to him, working in this shop.’
Frank gave a shrug and went to the cold store to get out the small joints left over from Saturday. The cold store consisted of two chambers, one for the chilled meat, the other for the frozen. He opened the door of the chiller and started taking out legs of lamb. He needed to hurry to fill the trays in the window by opening time.
Joe was still sharpening knives. He continued telling Frank about the injustices heaped on Percy. ‘He gets no recognition for all the work he puts in. Blind loyalty, I call it, but there are some that would call it plain stupidity. Do you think Mr Pugh appreciates what Percy does? Of course he doesn’t.’