‘He’s never here, is he?’ contributed Frank, who was becoming quite skilful at fuelling Joe’s maledictions against their employer.
‘That’s a fact. To be fair to Mr Pugh, he has to look in at the market and collect the meat from the slaughterhouse, but that shouldn’t take all day. It wouldn’t hurt him to show his face here more often.’
Frank gave a sly grin. ‘It might hurt someone else.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Joe, taking offence.
‘Well, you and me. We don’t want the boss breathing down our necks, do we?’
Joe said in a curt tone, ‘Speak for yourself, boy. I’m not ashamed of my work.’ He put down the knife he was holding and went to the window to rearrange the tray of lamb chops that Frank had just put there. ‘Haven’t you any idea how to put meat on a tray to make it look attractive?’
‘I was trying to be quick.’
‘You can’t hurry a job like this. That’s why Percy starts so early. He’s an artist in his way. His windows are a picture. I wonder what’s happened to him.’
‘He could be dead.’
Joe turned to look at Frank with clear disfavour. ‘That’s a very unpleasant suggestion.’
‘It’s a possibility. He’s always falling off that old bike. Well, he could have been taken to hospital, anyway.’
‘Someone would have phoned by now.’
‘All right, perhaps he died in the night,’ persisted Frank. ‘He could be lying in his bed. He lives alone, doesn’t he?’
‘You’re talking nonsense, lad.’
‘Can you think of anything better?’
‘Any more lip from you, young man, and I’ll see that you get your cards. Get the chickens out. I’ll attend to this.’
‘Do you mean the frozen birds, Mr Wilkins?’
‘The farm birds. I’ll tell you if we need any frozen in a minute or two.’
‘Do you think we ought to phone the hospital, Mr Wilkins, just in case something has happened to Percy?’
‘What good would that do?’
Frank took seven capons from the chiller and hung them on the rail above the window. ‘That’s all there is,’ he told Joe. ‘Shall I get out some frozen ones?’
Joe shook his head. ‘It’s Monday, isn’t it? There isn’t much call for poultry on a Monday.’
‘We’ll need them for tomorrow. They need to thaw. We won’t be getting any farm birds this week with Mr Pugh on holiday.’
Joe hesitated in his rearrangement of the window display. ‘You’ve got a point there, lad.’
Frank waited.
‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘We shall want some frozen birds.’
‘Have you got the key?’
‘The key?’
‘There’s a padlock on the freezer door.’
Joe crossed the shop to take a look. It was a heavy padlock. It secured the hasp on the freezer door over an iron staple. He said, ‘Silly old beggar. What does he want to lock it for?’
‘There’s a lot of meat in there,’ said Frank, in Percy’s defence. ‘Have you got the key?’
Joe shook his head. ‘I reckon he takes it home with him.’
Frank swore. ‘What are we going to do? We’ve got to get in there. It’s not just the chickens. It’s the New Zealand. We’re right down on Iamb.’
‘We’d better look for the key, just in case he leaves it somewhere,’ said Joe, opening one of the drawers under the counter.
Their short search did not turn up the key.
‘I think I could force it with that old file of yours,’ suggested Frank.
‘No, lad, you might damage the door. You don’t want to get your marching orders from Mr Pugh. I’ve got one of those small hacksaws in my toolbag in the car. We’ll use that to cut through the padlock.’
A short time later he returned with the saw. He held the padlock firm while Frank started sawing through the staple.
‘All this trouble because of Percy,’ said Frank. ‘I’d like to strangle the old git.’
‘It might not be his fault after all,’ said Joe. ‘Mr Pugh might have given him orders to use a padlock. He’s dead scared of the boss. He does exactly what he’s told, and I don’t blame him. I heard Mr Pugh laying into him on Saturday night after you left to deliver those orders. It was vicious, it really was.’
Frank continued sawing. ‘What was it about?’
‘Well, you were there when Mr Pugh walked in out of nowhere, saying he wanted to see that things were straight before he went off for his week in Majorca. That was before you left with the orders.’
‘Yes, he’d just picked up his tickets from the travel agent.’
‘Right. You’d think he’d be on top of the world, wouldn’t you, just about to push off for a week in the sun? Not Mr Pugh. He happened to catch old Percy putting away the cuts we hadn’t sold.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘No, but Percy left the door of the chiller open while he was doing it. We all do it, but Percy got caught. You should have heard Mr Pugh go for him, ranting and raving about the cost of running a cold chamber with employees who are so idle that they let the cold air out when they can’t be bothered to open and close the door a few times. He really laid it on thick. He was quoting things about cubic feet of air and thermal units as if old Percy had done it deliberately.’
‘Almost there,’ said Frank. ‘Mind it doesn’t catch your hand.’
The hacksaw blade cut cleanly through the staple.
Joe said, ‘Good.’ But he was determined to finish his story. ‘He told Percy he was too old for the job and he ought to retire soon. Percy started pleading with him. I tell you, Frank, I was so embarrassed that I didn’t want to hear any more. I left them to it and went home.’
‘I’ll get out those frozen birds,’ said Frank as he slipped the padlock from the hasp.
‘You’d have a job to find a meaner man than Mr Pugh,’ Joe continued as Frank swung back the door of the freezer chamber. ‘Going on like that at an old man who’s worked here all his life — and all for the sake of a few pence more on his electricity bill, when we all know he makes enough profit to have holidays in Spain. What’s the matter, lad?’
Frank had uttered a strange cry as he entered the chamber.
Joe looked in and saw him standing over the huddled, hoar-white figure of a dead man. He went closer and crouched to look at the face. It was glistening with a patina of frost.
It was the face of Mr Pugh.
Joe placed his hand on Frank’s shoulder and said, ‘Come away, lad. There’s nothing we can do.’
From somewhere Joe produced a hipflask and poured some scotch for Frank as they sat in the shop and stared at the door of the freezer.
‘We’ll have to call the police,’ said Frank.
‘I’ll do it presently.’
‘He must have been trapped in there all the weekend.’
‘He wouldn’t have known much about it,’ said Joe. ‘He must have died inside a few hours.’
‘How could it have happened?’
Joe stared into space and said nothing.
‘There’s a handle on the inside of that door,’ said Frank, speaking his thoughts as they rushed through the implications. ‘Anyone caught in there can open the door and walk out, usually. But he couldn’t get out because the padlock was on the outside. Someone must have put it there. It must have been Percy. Why, Mr Wilkins, why would Percy do a thin like that?’
Joe gave a shrug and still kept silent.
Frank supplied his own answer: ‘He must have panicked when he thought he would lose his job. He’d been in fear of losing it for years. He found some way of persuading Mr Pugh to go into the freeze chamber, and then he locked him inside. I know what he did. He told Mr Pugh the handle on the inside was too stiff to move, and he liked to leave the door open because he was scared of being trapped. Mr Pugh said he was making excuses and stepped inside to show how easy it was to get out.’ Frank began to smile. ‘Mr Wilkins, I think I’m going to laugh.’