The Freezer Murder

THE FREEZER MURDER

“Who found him?”
Detective Chad Cummings joined Sarah Hammers in the walk-in freezer. He noticed the insulated freezer door was registering minus eighteen. . The body of a man in full chef’s whites lay in the left hand corner. Sides of beef hung like silent witnesses.“The butcher found him when he delivered this morning,” Sarah told him.
“Are we the first in here since the body was found?” Sarah nodded.
Chad, who had been squatting beside the body straightened. He noticed the man had a kind of grin on his face. “Who is he?”
“Far as I can make out he’s the owner, Willy Smart. “
Chad grunted. “Wasn’t that smart, was he – dead in his own freezer.”
“The staffs don’t seem bothered that he’s dead,” Sarah commented.”
“Get their names and we’ll have a chat with them.” Chad held up his hands as Sarah opened her mouth to speak. “I know, I know. We need an interpreter and if we take anybody in for questioning, we need some sort of representative from their communities.”
Pulling an electronic cigarette out of his pocket he clamped it between his teeth. “These bloody EU and human rights policies! No wonder the place is coming down with breaks-ins and murders,” he rasped. “There was a time when I’d have the truth out of the buggers before night,” he grumbled.
“Do you know the dead man in the freezer,” he asked, speaking slowly. He turned away in frustration as the the staff, gathered in small groups stared silently at him.
“What the hell is keeping that friggen’ interpreter? I’ve been asking questions for an hour and I’m getting nowhere,” he fumed.” Hammers,” he yelled.
“Yes sir?”
“Explain if they don’t start giving me some answers soon, I’m taking the whole frigging lot of them in for questioning!” Sarah raised her eyebrows but did as her boss ordered.

Back at the station Sarah’s eyes scanned the paperwork on her desk. Another break in had been reported. . She wondered if there had been anything stolen from the restaurant. “Burglary went wrong or got ugly?”
Chad rubbed his hand over his six o’clock shadow and considered her theory. There had been no obvious sign of bruising on the body apart from some nicks on the forearms.
“Think he might have gone in for something and got locked in?” he proffered.
Sarah checked a drawing of the freezer. “According to this, there is a built in release mechanism. A forceful push from the inside should active an emergency opening.”
Chad chewed the end of a pen. “Did you think it odd that the wife, Amy, didn’t get hysterical or bawl when we broke the news to her?”
Sarah snorted. “With the amount of vodka she appeared to have consumed before we got there I’m surprised she was still conscious,”
“What do you mean?”
Sarah ducked her head. She wondered how Cummings had ever made rank of detective. ” I noticed the lid on the kitchen bin wasn’t closing. It was jammed to the throat with empty vodka bottles.”
Chad stubbed out his electronic cigarette. “I’ll have a word with the punters in the pub across from Smart’s place. You go to the house Smart rents for the workers; see if you get any more information.”

Claire knocked persistently. Finally, the door cracked open. “Mai?” She smiled recognising the woman she’d interviewed earlier. “Can I come in?” Reluctantly Mai let her in. “What happened to your face,” she enquired noticing bruising on Mai’s cheek that hadn’t been there earlier.
“I fall,” Mai said avoiding eye contact. Sarah let it go for the time being.
“How long have you work for Mr Smart?”
Mai twisted her hands. “Um…short time … he not nice very guy but kind to me.”
Sarah wondered if there had been something between them. She guessed the Polish woman was in her early twenties. But maybe Willy Smart liked them young. “How did he get on with the men?”
Mai made the sign of the cross. Claire’s senses quickened. I wondered if that means the working relationships between the men and Smart had been volatile, she thought.

Chad was sitting behind his desk when she got back. “Not a burglary,” he said shoving a sheaf of papers at her,” nothing stolen – takings still in the Till. But, Mai’s husband is missing….” He snatched up the ringing telephone, listened and then slammed it back in its cradle.” Whoever the man in the freezer is he’s not Willy Smart. We’d better have another word with the wife.”

Amy Smart wasn’t any more sober on their second visit. “It is him. I identify him,” she slurred belligerently.
“Did your husband have any distinctive marks or anything…?
Amy sneered. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, Det Cummings’s, but does being a womanising bastard count?” Before Chad could answer she went on. “Yeah, marks on his arms – I stabbed the scumbag with a bread knife. He was cheating on me with that Polish bitch,” she belched.
Mai?”
Amy Smart nodded.

When they got back to the station the place was buzzing. Willy Smart had turned up at his restaurant demanding to know why the only customers there were police fingerprinting the place.
“He immediately identified the dead man as someone he employed from time to time,” Chad pointed out. “Something doesn’t fit. The dead man was similar in height, build and colouring to Willy Smart,” he mused. “Pick him up. And pick the wife up too. Maybe the possibility of a murder charge will make them more forthcoming.”

“You think you’ve heard it all and then something else comes along,” Sarah murmured sitting across from a sobbing Mia.
“He’s gone…ran away…with boss. Now boss is back and husband not?”
Mai’s husband and Willy Smart! Sarah shook her head. Didn’t see that coming, did you, Detective Cummings, she mused.
Willy Smart had been questioned and released. He had a watertight alibi. He’d been on out of town jury service at the time the man died. Amy Cummings, too drunk to be interviewed, had been admitted to the local psychiatric hospital for alcohol addiction.
Chad Cummings got up and sticking his twitching fingers in his trousers pockets gazed out the office window. “What do you think about Amy Smart? Identifying a man who wasn’t even her husband? She took one drunken look at the marks on the dead chef’s arms and took him for her husband?” He took out the electronic cigarette and hurling it across the room rummaged in his pockets in the vain hope of finding the real thing. “That’s the reason the dead man was smiling. He finally found a way to top himself, “Sarah murmured.