Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  “Can I help you, miss? And perhaps you’ll tell me your name?”

  “Jane, commander. I am endeavoring to be a writer, may I ask if you have any views on that as an acceptable career for a young lady?”

  Jane, thought Vimes, the strange one. And she was. She was just as demure as the other sisters, but somehow as he looked at her he got the impression that she was seeing right through him, thoughts and all.

  Vimes leaned back in his chair, a little defensively and said, “Well, it can’t be a difficult job, given that all the words have probably been invented already, so there’s a saving in time right there, considering that you simply have to put them together in a different order.” That was about the limit of his expertise in the literary arts, but he added, “What sort of thing were you thinking of writing, Jane?”

  The girl looked embarrassed. “Well, commander, at the moment I’m working on what might be considered a novel about the complexities of personal relationships, with all their hopes and dreams and misunderstandings.” She coughed nervously, as if apologizing.

  Vimes pursed his lips. “Yes. Sounds basically like a good idea, miss, but I can’t really help you on that—though if I was you, and this is me talking off the top of my head, I’d be putting in a lot of fighting, and dead bodies falling out of wardrobes … and maybe a war, perhaps, as a bit of background?”

  Jane nodded uneasily. “A remarkable suggestion, commander, with much to recommend it, but possibly the relationships would be somewhat neglected?”

  Vimes considered this input and said, “Well, you might be right.” Then, out of nowhere, possibly some deep hole, a thought struck him, just as it had many times before, sometimes in nightmares. “I wonder if any author has thought about the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, the policeman and the mysterious killer, the lawman who must think like a criminal sometimes in order to do his job, and may be unpleasantly surprised at how good he is at such thinking, perhaps. Just an idea, you understand,” he said lamely, and wondered where the hell it had come from. Maybe the strange Jane had pulled it out of him and even, perhaps, could resolve it.

  “Would anybody like some more tea?” said Ariadne brightly.

  Lady Sybil was very quiet as their coach drove away, and so Vimes decided to bite the bullet now and get it over with. She was looking thoughtful, which was always worrying.

  “Am I in trouble, Sybil?”

  His wife looked at him blankly for a moment and then said, “You mean for telling that bunch of precious blooms to stop yearning for a life and to get out there and make one? Good heavens, no! You did everything I would have expected of you, Sam. You always do. I told Ariadne that you wouldn’t let her down. She doesn’t have much of an income, and if you hadn’t given them the righteous word I think she would have eventually driven them out with a shovel. No, Sam, I just wonder what goes on in your head, that’s all. I mean, I’m sure some people think being a policeman is just a job, but you don’t, do you? I’m very proud of you, Sam, and wouldn’t have you any other way, but I do worry sometimes. Anyway, well done! I’ll look forward with interest to see what young Jane writes.”

  Next day, Vimes took his little boy fishing, hampered somewhat by a total lack of knowledge of the art. Young Sam didn’t seem to mind. He had located a shrimping net among the largesse of the nursery and messed about in the shallows, chasing crayfish and sometimes going almost rigid in order to stare at things. Once he got over the shock, Vimes noticed that Young Sam did this quite happily, and on one occasion pointed out to his doting father things in the stream “like insects in the water with a coat made of little pebbles,” which Vimes had to investigate, to find that this was entirely true. This amazed Sam Vimes even more than it did his son, who in fact, he told his father as they strolled back for lunch, had been really looking to see if fish did a poo, a question that had never exercised Sam Vimes in his life, but which appeared to be of great importance to his son. So much so that on the way home he had to be restrained from doubling back to the stream to see if they got out to do it because otherwise, er, yuck!

  Sybil had promised Young Sam another trip around Home Farm in the afternoon, which left Sam Vimes to his own devices, or such devices as the policeman could find in the quiet lanes. Vimes was streetwise; he didn’t know what lanewise might entail, but possibly it would deal with things like throttling stoats and knowing whether whatever it was that had just said “moo” was a cow or a bull without having to bend down to find out.

  And as he walked around his rolling acres on his aching feet, wishing that there were cobblestones under him, once again he could feel the tingle; the tingle that raises little hairs on a copper’s neck when his well-honed senses tell him that there was something happening around here that shouldn’t be, and was crying out to have something done about it.

  But there was another copper here, wasn’t there, a real old flatfoot let out to grass, but being a copper stained you to the bone; you never got rid of it. He smiled. Time perhaps to go for a convivial drink with Mr. Jiminy.

  The Goblin’s Head was bare of customers at this time of day except the ever-present trio on the bench outside. Vimes settled himself at the bar with a glass of Mrs. Jiminy’s root beer and leaned confidentially toward the barman. “So, Mr. Jiminy, what’s of interest here to an old copper?”

  Jiminy opened his mouth, but Vimes went on, “Rosewood truncheon, Pseudopolis City Watch? I know I’m right. It’s no crime. That’s the copper’s dream, and you take your trusty truncheon with you to have a little friend you can depend on if the customer can’t hold his liquor and won’t take a hint.” Vimes was now settled with one elbow on the bar and doodling on a small puddle of spilt beer. “But the job follows you, doesn’t it? And if you run a pub, well that goes double, because you hear all sorts of things, things you don’t do anything about because you aren’t a copper anymore, except you know you are. And it must worry you, somewhere in your soul, that there are things going wrong in these parts. Even I can tell. It’s the copper’s nose. I can smell it in the air. It comes up through my boots. Secrets and lies, Mr. Jiminy, secrets and lies.”

  Mr. Jiminy made a point of wiping his cloth over the spilt beer and said, as if absent-mindedly, “You know, Commander Vimes, things are different in the country. People think that the country is where you can go to hide out. It ain’t so. In the city you’re a face in the crowd. In the country people will stare at you until you’re out of sight, just for the entertainment value. Like you say, I’m not a copper anymore: I ain’t got a warrant card, and I ain’t got the inclination. And now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do. There’ll be more customers soon. Watch where you tread, your grace.”

  Vimes didn’t let him off the hook. “Interesting thing, Mr. Jiminy: I know you have the lease on this pub but, amazingly enough, I’m still your landlord. I’m sorry about that, but before we came down here I looked at a map and saw a pub on our land, and what a waste, I thought, but that makes me your landlord. Not very republican of me, I know, but I just wonder, Mr. Jiminy, if it may be that not everyone in these parts is not that keen on having the Commander of the City Watch down here in this quiet little hideaway, hmm?” An image of poor old Lord Rust artlessly telling him that there was nothing here of interest passed across Vimes’s inner vision.

  Jiminy’s expression was frozen, but Vimes
, who knew this game, saw that tiny twitch which, when decoded, meant, “Yes, but I didn’t say anything and no one can prove I did. Not even you, my friend.”

  Further discussion on the point was interrupted when the sons of the soil began to come in, one by one, to celebrate the ending of the working day. This time there was less suspicion in their eyes as they nodded to Vimes en route to the bar, and so he sat nursing his pint of spiced-up beetroot juice and just enjoyed the moment. It was a very short moment, at the end of which the blacksmith swaggered into the bar and walked straight up to him.

  “You are sitting in my seat!”

  Vimes looked around. He was sitting on a bench that was indistinguishable from all the others in the room, but he accepted the possibility that there was something mystic about the one he was occupying, picked up his glass and strolled over to an unoccupied one, where he sat down just in time to hear the blacksmith say, “That one’s my seat too, understand?”

  Oh dear, here was the overture and beginners to a brawl, and Vimes was no beginner, right enough, and the blacksmith’s eyes held the look of a man who wanted to punch somebody and very likely thought that Vimes would make the ideal candidate.

  He felt the gentle pressure of his own brass knuckles in his trouser pocket. Vimes had been economical with the truth when he promised his wife that he would not take any weapons on holiday with him. However, he’d reasoned that a knuckleduster was not so much a weapon as a way of making certain that he stayed alive. It could be called a defensive instrument, a kind of shield, as it were, especially if you needed to get your defense in before you were attacked.

  He stood up. “Mr. Jethro, I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to choose which chair is yours for the evening, thank you very much, after which I intend to enjoy my drink in peace.”

  Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wrath had never worked in a bar. The blacksmith glowered at about the same temperature as his forge. “I ain’t Jethro to you, not by a long way. You can call me Mr. Jefferson, do you hear?”

  “And you can call me Sam Vimes.” He watched Jefferson very deliberately place his drink on the bar before he strode toward Vimes.

  “I know what I can call you, mister … .”

  Vimes felt the smooth brass of the surrogate knuckles, polished as they had been by years of abrasion from his pants and, needless to say, the occasional chin. As he dug down, they almost leapt to his grasp.

  “Sorry about this, your grace,” said Jiminy as he pushed him gently out of the way and said to the smith. “Well now, Jethro, what’s this all about, then?”

  “Your grace?” sneered Jethro. “I ain’t going to call you that! I ain’t going to lick your boots like all the others do! Coming back here, lording it over us, ordering us about as if you owned the place! And that’s it, isn’t it? You do own the place! One man with all this country! That’s not right! You tell me, how did that happen? Go on, you tell me!”

  Vimes shrugged. “Well, I’m not an expert, but as I understand it my wife’s ancestors fought somebody for it.”

  The blacksmith’s face bloomed with an evil pleasure as he threw off his leather apron. “Well, okay. No problem. That’s how it’s done, is it? Fair enough. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you for it, here and now, and, tell you what I’ll do, I’ll fight you with one hand strapped behind my back, on account of you being a bit shorter than me.”

  Vimes heard a slight wooden sound behind him: it was the sound of a barman stealthily pulling a two-foot-long rosewood truncheon from its accustomed place under the bar.

  Jethro must have heard it too, because he called out, “And don’t you try anything with that, Jim. You know I’ll have it out of your hands before you know what’s happening, and this time I’ll shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  Vimes took a look at the rest of the clientele, who were doing remarkable impersonations of stone statues. “Look,” he said, “you really don’t want to fight me.”

  “I do, indeed I do! You said it yourself. Some ancestor got all of this by fighting for it, yeah? Who said it’s the time to stop fighting?”

  “Burleigh and Stronginthearm, sir,” said a polite yet chilly voice behind the big man. To Vimes’s shock it was Willikins. “I’m not cruel, sir, I won’t shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted. No, please do not make any sudden movements. Burleigh and Stronginthearm crossbows have notoriously responsive triggers.”

  Vimes resumed breathing again when Jethro raised his hands. Somewhere in all that rage there must have been a halfpennyworth of self-preservation. Nevertheless the blacksmith glared at him and said, “You need to be protected by a hired killer, do you?”

  “In point of fact, sir,” said Willikins smoothly, “I am employed by Commander Vimes as a gentleman’s gentleman, and I require this crossbow because sometimes his socks fight back.” He looked at Vimes. “Do you have any instructions, commander? and then he shouted, “Don’t move, mister, because as far as I know a blacksmith needs two hands to work with.” He turned back to Vimes. “Do excuse that interjection, commander, but I know his sort.”

  “Willikins, I rather think you are his sort.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.”

  “Now, I want you to put that bloody thing down, Willikins. People could get hurt!” Vimes said in his formal voice.

  “Yes, sir, that would have been my intention. I could not face her ladyship if anything had happened to you.”

  Vimes looked from Willikins to Jethro. Here was a boil that needed lancing. But you couldn’t blame the lad. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought the same way himself, many times. “Willikins,” he said, “please put that wretched thing down carefully and get out your notebook. Thank you. Now please write down as follows: “I, Samuel Vimes, somewhat reluctantly the Duke of Ankh, do intend to Duke it out, haha, with my friend Jethro … What’s your full name again, Jethro?”

  “Now look here, mister, I didn’t—”

  “I asked you your damn name, mister! Jiminy, what’s his surname?”

  “Jefferson,” said the landlord, holding his truncheon like a security blanket. “But look, your grace, you don’t want to go … .”

  Vimes ignored him and went on, “Now where was I? Oh, yes: ‘my friend Jethro Jefferson, in a friendly fight for the ownership of the Manor and environs, whatever the hell they are, which will go to the which of us that does not first cry “uncle,” and should it be myself that utters the same, there will be no repercussions of any sort upon my friend Jethro, or on my man Willikins, who pleaded with me not to engage in this friendly bout of fisticuffs.’ Got that, Willikins? I’ll even give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to show to her ladyship if I get bruised. Now give it to me to sign.”

  Willikins handed over the notebook with reluctance. “I don’t think it’ll work on her ladyship, sir. Look, dukes aren’t expected to go around—” His voice faltered in the face of Vimes’s smile.

  “You were going to say that dukes shouldn’t fight, weren’t you, Willikins? And if you had, I would have said that the word ‘duke’ absolutely means that you do fight.”

  “Oh, very well, sir,” said Willikins, “but perhaps you ought to warn him … ?”

  Williki
ns was interrupted by the pub’s customers pushing their way out at speed and running through the village, leaving Jethro standing alone and bewildered. Halfway toward the man, Vimes turned to look back at Willikins and said, “You may think you see me lighting a cigar, Willikins, but on this occasion, I think, your eyes may turn out to be at fault, do you understand?”

  “Yes, and in fact I am deaf as well, commander.”

  “Good lad. Now let’s get outside where there’s less glass and a better view.”

  Jethro looked like a man who had had the ground cut from under his feet but didn’t know how to fall down.

  Vimes lit his cigar and savored, just for a moment, the forbidden fruit. Then he offered the packet to the blacksmith, who waved it away without a word.

  “Very sensible,” said Vimes. “Now then, I’d better tell you that at least once a week, even these days, I have to fight people who’re trying to kill me with everything from swords to chairs and in one case a very large salmon. They probably don’t actually want to kill me, but they’ll try to stop me arresting them. Look,” he waved a hand at the landscape in general, “all this … stuff, just happened, whether I wanted it to or not. By trade I’m just a copper.”

  “Yeah,” said Jethro, glaring at him. “Stamping on the faces of the struggling masses!”

  Vimes was used to this sort of thing, and put it mildly. “Can’t tread on their faces these days, my grinder gets in the way. All right, not very funny, I admit.” Vimes was aware that people were coming back down the lane. They included women and children. It looked as though the pub’s clientele had roused the neighborhood. He turned to Jethro. “Are we going to do this by the Marquis of Fantailer’s Rules?”

  “What are they?” said the blacksmith, waving at the oncoming horde.