Jingo d-21

by Terry Pratchett

“Listen to me, youse people!”

  A troll shouting at the top of his voice could easily be heard above a riot. When he seemed to have their attention he pulled a scroll out of his breastplate and waved it over his head.

  “Dis is der Riot Act,”{43} he said. “You know what dat means? It means if'n I reads it out and youse don't disb… disp… go away, der Watch can use deadly force, you unnerstand?”

  “What did you just use, then?” moaned someone from underneath his feet.

  “Dat was you helpin' der Watch,” said Detritus, shifting his weight.

  He unrolled the scroll.

  Although there was some scuffling in alleyways and shouts from the next street, a ring of silence expanded outwards from the troll. An almost genetic component of the citizens of Ankh-Morpork was their ability to spot an opportunity for amusement.

  Detritus held the document at arm's length. And then a few inches from his face. He tried turning it round a few times.

  His lips moved uneasily.

  Finally, he leaned down and showed it to Constable Visit.

  “What dis word?”

  “That's ‘Whereby’, sergeant.”

  “I knew dat.”

  He straightened up again.

  “‘Whereby… it is…’” Beads of the troll equivalent of sweat began to form on Detritus's forehead. “‘Whereby it is… ack-no-legg-ed…’”

  “Acknowledged,” whispered Constable Visit.

  “I knew dat.” Detritus stared at the paper again, and then gave up. “Youse don't want to stand here listenin' to me all day!” he bellowed. “Dis is der Riot Act and you've all got to read it, right? Pass it round.”

  “What if we don't read it?” said a voice in the crowd.

  “You got to read it. It legal.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Den I shoot you,” said Detritus.

  “That's not allowed!” said another voice. “You've got to shout ‘Stop! Armed Watchman!’ first.”

  “Sure, dat suits me,” said Detritus. He shrugged one huge shoulder to bring his crossbow under his arm. It was a siege bow, intended to be mounted on the cart. The bolt was six feet long. “It harder to hit runnin' targets.”

  He released the safety catch.

  “Anyone finishing readin' dat thing yet?”

  “Sergeant!”

  Vimes pushed his way through the crowd. And it was a crowd now. Ankh-Morpork was always a good audience.

  There was a clang as Detritus saluted.

  “Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?”

  “Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.”

  “Really? Just give me a moment to talk to them, then.”

  Vimes looked at the man next to him. He was holding a flaming torch in one hand and a long length of wood in the other. He gave Vimes the nervously defiant stare of someone who has just felt the ground shift under his feet.

  Vimes pulled the torch towards him and lit a cigar. “What's happening here, friend?”

  “The Klatchians have been shooting people, Mr Vimes! Unprovoked attack!”

  “Really?”

  “People have been killed!”

  “Who?”

  “I… there were… everyone knows they've been killing people!” The man's mental footsteps found safer ground. “Who do they think they are, coming over—”

  “That's enough,” said Vimes. He stood back and raised his voice.

  “I recognize a lot of you,” he said. “And I know you've got homes to go to. See this?” He pulled his baton of office out of his pocket. “This says I've got to keep the peace. So in ten seconds I'm going somewhere else to find some peace to keep, but Detritus is going to stay here. And I just hope he doesn't do anything to disgrace the uniform. Or get it very dirty, at least.”

  Irony was not a degree-level subject among the listeners, but the brighter ones recognized Vimes's expression. It said that here was a man hanging on to his patience by his teeth.

  The mob dispersed, going ragged at the edges as people legged it down side alleys, threw away their makeshift weapons and emerged at the other end walking the grave, thoughtful walk of honest citizens.

  “All right, what happened?” said Vimes, turning to the troll.

  “We're hearing where dis boy shot dis man,” said Detritus. “We got here, next minute it rainin' people from everywhere, shoutin'.”

  “He smote him as Hudrun smote the fleshpots of Ur,” said Constable Visit.6

  “Smote?” said Vimes, bewildered. “He killed someone?”

  “Not by der way der man was cussing, sir,” said Detritus. “Hit him in der arm. His friends brought him round der Watch House to complain. He a baker on der night shift. He said he was late for work, he come runnin' in to pick up his dinner, next minute he flat on der floor.”

  Vimes walked across the street and tried the door of the shop. It opened a little way, and then fetched up against what seemed to be a barricade. Furniture had been piled up against the window as well.

  “How many people were there, constable?”

  “A multitude thereof, sir.”

  And four people in here, thought Vimes. A family. The door moved a fraction and Vimes realized he was ducking even before the crossbow protruded.

  There was the thung of the string. The bolt tumbled rather than sped. It corkscrewed wildly across the alley and was almost moving sideways when it hit the opposite wall.

  “Look,” said Vimes, keeping his body down but raising his voice. “Anyone who got hit with that, it must have been an accident. This is the Watch. Open the door. Otherwise Detritus will open it. And when he opens a door, it stays open. You know what I mean?”

  There was no reply.

  “All right. Detritus, just step over here—”

  There was a hissed argument inside, and then the sound of scraping as furniture was moved.

  He tried the door. It swung inwards.

  The family were at the far end of the room. Vimes felt eight eyes on him. The atmosphere had a hot, worrying feel, spiced with the smell of burnt food.

  Mr Goriff was holding the crossbow gingerly, and the expression on his son's face told Vimes a lot of what he needed to know.

  “All right,” he said. “Now you all listen to me. I'm not arresting anyone right now, you hear? This sounds like one of those things that make his lordship yawn. But you'd do better spending the rest of the night in the Watch House. I can't spare the men to stand guard here. Do you understand? I could arrest you. But this is just a request.”

  Mr Goriff cleared his throat.

  “The man I shot—” he began, and left the question and the lie hanging in the air.

  Vimes forced himself not to glance at the boy. “Not badly hurt,” he said.

  “He… ran in,” said Mr Goriff. “And after last night—”

  “You thought you were being attacked again and grabbed the crossbow?”

  “Yes,” said the boy, defiantly, before his father could speak.

  There was a brief argument in Klatchian. Then Mr Goriff said:

  “We must leave the house?”

  “For your own good. We'll try to have someone watch it. Now, get something together and go off with the sergeant. And give me that crossbow.”

  Goriff handed it over with a look of relief. It was a typical Saturday Night Special, so badly made and erratic that the only safe place to be when it was fired would be directly behind it, and even then you would be running a risk. And then no one had told its owner that under the counter in a steamy shop and a perpetual rain of grease wasn't the best place to keep it strung. The string sagged. Probably the only way you could reliably hurt someone with it was to beat them over the head.

  Vimes waited until they'd been ushered out and took a last look around the room. It wasn't large. In the kitchen behind the shop something spicy in a pot was boiling dry. After burning his fingers a couple of times he managed to tip the pot on to the fire to put it out and then,
vaguely remembering his mother doing something like this, put the pot under the pump to soak.

  Then he barricaded the windows as best he could and went out, locking the door behind him. A discreetly obvious brass Thieves' Guild plaque over the door told the world that Mr Goriff had conscientiously paid his annual fee,7 but the world had plenty of less formal dangers and so Vimes took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and wrote on the door:

  UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE WATCH

  As an afterthought he signed it:

  SGT DETRITUS

  In the imaginations of the less civically minded the majesty of the rule of law didn't carry anything like as much weight as the dread of Detritus.

  The Riot Act! Where the hell had he dredged that from? Carrot, probably. It hadn't been used for as long as Vimes could remember, and that was no wonder when you knew what it really did. Even Vetinari would hesitate to use it. Now it was nothing more than a phrase. Thank goodness for trollish illiteracy…

  It was when Vimes stood back to admire his handiwork that he saw the glow in the sky over Park Lane, almost at the same time as he heard the clatter of iron boots on the street.

  “Oh, hello, Littlebottom,” he said. “What now? Don't tell me — someone's set fire to the Klatchian embassy.”

  “All right, sir,” said the dwarf. She stood uncertainly in the middle of the alley, looking worried.

  “Well?” said Vimes.

  “Er… you said—”

  With a sinking feeling Vimes remembered that the generic dwarfish skill with iron was matched only by the fumble-fingered grasp of irony.

  “The Klatchian embassy is really on fire?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Mrs Spent opened the door a crack.

  “Yes?”

  “I'm a friend of…” Carrot hesitated, wondering if Fred would have given his real name. “Er… big fat man, suit doesn't fit—”

  “The one who goes around with the sex maniac?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Skinny little twerp, dresses like a clown?”

  “They said you'd have a room,” said Carrot desperately.

  “They've got it,” said Mrs Spent, trying to shut the door.

  “They said I could use it—”

  “No sub-lettin'!”

  “They said I should pay you two dollars!”

  The pressure of the door was released a little.

  “On top of what they paid?” said Mrs Spent.

  “Of course.”

  “Well…” She looked Carrot up and down and sniffed. “All right. What shift are you on?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You're a watchman, right?”

  “Er…” Carrot hesitated, and then raised his voice. “No, I am not a watchman. Haha, you think I'm a watchman? Do I look like a watchman?”

  “Yes, you do,” said Mrs Spent. “You're Captain Carrot. I seen you walking about the town. Still, I suppose even coppers have to sleep somewhere.”

  On the roof, Angua rolled her eyes.

  “No wimmin, no cookin', no music, no pets,” said Mrs Spent, as she led the way up the creaking stairs.

  Angua waited in the dark until she heard the window open.

  “She's gone,” Carrot hissed.

  “There's glass on the tiles out here, just like Fred reported,” said Angua, as she swung herself over the sill. Inside the room she took a deep breath and shut her eyes.

  First she had to forget the smell of Carrot — anxious sweat, soap, the lingering hints of armour polish…

  …and Fred Colon, all perspiration with a hint of beer, and then the odd ointment Nobby used for his skin condition, and the smells of feet, bodies, clothes, polish, fingernails…

  After an hour it was possible for the eye of the nose to see someone walk across the room, frozen in time by their smell. But after a day smells criss-crossed and entangled. You had to take them apart, remove the familiar pieces, and what you had left.

  “They're so mixed up!”

  “All right, all right,” said Carrot soothingly.

  “At least three people! But I think one of them is Ossie… It's stronger round the bed… and…”

  She opened her eyes wide and looked down at the floor. “Somewhere here!”

  “What? What is?”

  Angua crouched down with her nose just above the floorboards.

  “I can smell it but I can't see it!”

  A knife appeared in front of her. Carrot got down on his knees and ran the blade along the dust-filled crack between the floorboards.

  Something splintery and brown popped up. It had been trodden on and rolled underfoot, but at this distance even Carrot could pick up traces of the clove smell. “Do you think Ossie made a lot of apple pies?” he whispered.

  “No cookin', remember?” said Angua, and grinned.

  “There's something else…”

  Carrot levered out more dirt and dust. In it, something glittered. “Fred said all the glass was outside, didn't he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, supposing we assume that someone didn't pick up all the bits when they broke in?”

  “For someone that doesn't like lying, Carrot, you can be quite devious, you know?”

  “Just logical. There's glass outside the window, but all that means is that there is glass outside the window. Commander Vimes always says there're no such things as clues. It's how you look at them.”

  “You think someone broke in and then carefully put the glass outside?”

  “Could be.”

  “Carrot? Why are we whispering?”

  “No wimmin, remember?”

  “And no pets,” said Angua. “So she's got me coming and going. Don't look like that,” she added, when she saw his face. “It's only bad taste if someone else says it. I'm allowed.”

  Carrot scratched up some more glass fragments. Angua looked under the bed and pulled out the battered magazines.

  “Ye gods, do people really read this stuff?” she said, flicking through Bows and Ammo. “‘Testing the Locksley Reflex 7: A Whole Lotta Bow’…{44} ‘Footsore! We test the Ten Best Caltrops!’… and what's this magazine…? Warrior of Fortune?”

  “There's always little wars somewhere,” said Carrot, pulling out the box of money.

  “But will you look at the size of this axe here? ‘Get A Head, Get A Burleigh and Stronginthearm “Streetsweeper” and Win By A Neck!’ Well, it must be true what they say about men who like big weapons…”

  “And that is?” said carrot, lifting the lid of the box.

  She looked at the top of his head. As always, Carrot radiated innocence like a small sun. But he'd… They'd… Surely he…

  “They, er… they're rather small,” she said.

  “Oh, that's true,” said Carrot, picking up some of the Klatchian coins. “Look at dwarfs. Never happier than with a chopper the same size as them. And Nobby's fascinated by weapons and he's practically dwarf-sized.”

  “Er…”

  Technically, Angua was sure she knew Carrot better than anyone else. She was pretty sure he cared a lot for her. He seldom said so, he just assumed that she knew. She'd known other men, although turning into a wolf for part of the month was one of those little flaws that could put any normal man off and, up until Carrot, always had. And she knew the sort of things men said in what might be called the heat of the moment and then forgot. But when Carrot said things, you knew that he felt that everything was now settled until further notice, so if she made any comment he'd be genuinely surprised that she'd forgotten what it was he had said and would probably quote date and time.

  And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. No one could be so simple, no one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor.

  “Rather a lonely person, our Nobby,” said Carrot.

  “Well, yes…”

  “But
I'm sure he'll find the right person for him,” Carrot added, cheerfully.

  Probably in a bottle, said Angua to herself. She remembered the conversation with him. It was a terrible thing to think, but there was somethin itchy about the thought of Nobby being allowed in pool, even at the shallow end.

  “You know, these coins are odd,” said Carrot.

  “How do you mean?” said Angua, grateful for the distraction.

  “Why would he be paid in Klatchian wols? He wouldn't be able to spend them here, and the money changers don't give very good rates.” Carrot tossed a coin in the air and caught it. “When we were leaving, Mr Vimes said to me, ‘Make sure you find the bunch of dates and the camel hidden under the pillow.’ I think I know what he meant.”

  “Sand on the floor,” said Angua. “Now, isn't that an obvious clue? You can tell they were Klatchian because of the sand in their sandals!”

  “But these cloves…” Carrot prodded the little bud. “It's not as if it's a common habit, even among Klatchians. That's not a very obvious clue, is it?”

  “It smells newer,” said Angua. “I'd say he was here last night.”

  “After Ossie was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know? What kind of name is 71-hour Ahmed?” said Angua.

  Carrot shrugged. “I don't know. I think Mr Vimes thinks that someone in Ankh-Morpork wants us to believe that Klatchians paid to have the Prince killed. That sounds… nasty but logical. But I don't understand why a real Klatchian would get involved…”

  Their eyes met.

  “Politics?” they said together.

  “For enough money, a lot of people would do anything,” said Angua.

  There was a sudden and ferocious knocking at the door.

  “Have you got someone in there?” said Mrs Spent.

  “Out of the window!” said Carrot.

  “Why don't I just stay and rip her throat out?” said Angua. “All right, all right, it was a joke, all right?” she said, swinging her legs over the sill.

  Ankh-Morpork no longer had a fire brigade. The citizens had a rather disturbingly direct way of thinking at times, and it did not take long for people to see the rather obvious flaw in paying a group of people by the number of fires they put out. The penny really dropped shortly after Charcoal Tuesday.