Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  At the other end of the room her husband thrust his head even deeper into his magazine so as not to snigger. Gravid! Who would call their child Gravid? No one who had ever kept dragons or fish, that was certain. Of course, there was such a thing as a dictionary, but then the old Lord Rust had never been the kind of man to open a book if he could help it. The colonel tried to contemplate an article on the treatment of Zig-Zag Throat in older males and the wife of his heart continued, “Well, we don’t want any of Vetinari’s nonsense here. Apparently, his lordship rather enjoys allowing Vimes to break wind in the halls of the mighty. Apparently, Vimes is no respecter of rank. Indeed, quite the reverse. And indeed, it would seem that he is prepared to ambush a decent working man.”

  Funny, thought the colonel, first time I ever heard her call the smith anything other than a blasted nuisance. It seemed to him that the gossip around the table was trite, artificial, like the conversation of raw recruits on the eve of their first battle. He thought, there’s a warrant out for Commander Vimes, hero of Koom Valley (Bloody good show! Wonderful execution. Peace in our time between brother troll and brother dwarf and that sort of thing. Just the job! I’ve seen too much killing in my time) and now you are going to put him out of a job and a reputation, just because that greasy lad with a name like a pregnant frog has charmed you into doing so.

  “I understand he has a very violent nature,” said, oh, what was his name? Bit of a bad hat in the colonel’s opinion. Bought a big villa up near Overhang, one of Rust’s cronies. Never seemed to do any work. What was his name, ah yes, Edgehill, not a man that you would trust behind you or in front of you, but they’d sworn him in even so.

  “And he was just a street kid and a drunkard!” said Letitia. “What do you think of that?”

  The colonel paid careful attention to his magazine while his unspoken thoughts said, Sounds jolly good to me, my dear. All I got when I married you was the promise of a half-share in your dad’s fish and chip shop when I left the service, and I never even got that.

  “Everybody knows that his ancestor killed a king, so I can’t imagine a Vimes would jib at killing a blacksmith,” said the Honorable Ambrose. Bit of a mystery, this one. Something to do with shipping. Sent out from the city to lie low here because of something to do with a girl. And the colonel, who spent a lot of time thinking,** had some time ago wondered to himself how, in these modern days, you got banished from the city because of a girl, and instinct had told him that possibly it had something to do with the age of the girl. After incubating that thought for a while, the colonel had written to his old chum “Jankers” Robinson, who always knew a thing or two about this and that and one thing and another and who was now some political wallah in the palace. He had made an enquiry, as one might, of his friend whom he had once dragged to safety over the pommel of his saddle before a Klatchian scimitar got him, and had received a little note with nothing more than “Yes indeed, under-age, hushed up at great expense,” and after that the colonel had taken great care never to shake the bastard’s hand again.

  Blithely unaware of the thoughts of the colonel, the Honorable Ambrose, who always seemed to be slightly bigger than his clothes—said clothes being of a fashion more suited to somebody twenty years his junior—sneered, “Frankly, I think we’re doing the world a service. They say that he favors dwarfs and all kinds of low-life. You might expect anything of a man like that!”

  Yes, you might, thought the colonel.

  And Miss Pickings said, “But we haven’t done anything wrong … Have we?”

  The colonel turned a page and smoothed it down with military exactitude. He thought, Well, you all condone smuggling when the right people are doing it because they’re chums, and when they aren’t they’re heavily fined. You apply one law for the poor and none for the rich, my dear, because the poor are such a nuisance.

  He felt eyes suddenly upon him because marital telepathy is a terrible thing. His wife said, “It doesn’t do any harm, everybody does it.” Her head swung round again as her husband turned the page, his eyes fixedly on the type as he thought, as noiselessly as his brain could contrive: and of course there was the … incident, a few years ago. Not good, that. Not good. Not good when little babies of any sort are taken away from mothers. Not good at all. And you all know it and it worries you, and well it should.

  The room was silent for a moment and then Mrs. Colonel continued. “There will not be any problems. Young Lord Rust has promised me. We have rights, after all.”

  “I blame that wretched blacksmith,” said Miss Pickings. “He keeps bringing it back into people’s memories, him and that damn writing woman.”

  Mrs. Colonel bridled at this. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Miss Pickings. Legally nothing wrong has happened here.” Her head swiveled toward her husband. “Are you all right, dear?” she demanded.

  For a moment he looked as though he wasn’t and then the colonel said, “Oh, yes, dear. Right as rain. Right as rain.” But his thoughts continued: you have partaken in what is, I strongly suggest, a cynical attempt to ruin the career of a very good man.

  “I heard you coughing.” It sounded like an accusation.

  “Oh, just a bit of dust or something, dear, right as rain. Right as rain.” And then he slammed his magazine on to the table. Standing up, he said, “When I was nothing but a subaltern, dear, one of the first things I learned was that you never give away your position by frantic firing. I think I know the type of your Commander Vimes. Young Lord Rust may be safe, with his money and contacts, but I doubt very much that you all will be. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t been so hasty? What’s a bit of smuggling? You’ve just pulled the dragon’s tail and made him angry!”

  When his wife regained control of her tongue, she said, “How dare you, Charles!”

  “Oh, quite easily, as it turns out, dear,” said the colonel, smiling happily. “A bit of smuggling might be considered a peccadillo, but not when you’re supposed to be upholding the law. It baffles me that none of you seems to realize that. If you have any sense, ladies and gentlemen, you will explain that whole unfortunate goblin event to his grace right now. After all, your chum Gravid organized it. The only little problem is that you allowed him to do it, as I recall, without so much as a murmur.”

  “But it was not illegal,” said his wife icily.

  Her husband didn’t move, but in some ineffable sense he was suddenly taller. “I think things got a bit tangled: you see, you thought about things as being legal or illegal. Well, I’m just a soldier and never was a very good one, but it’s my opinion you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong. And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going down to the pub.”

  Automatically, his wife said, “No, dear, you know drink doesn’t agree with you.”

  The colonel was all smiles. “This evening I intend to settle my differences with drink and make it my friend.”

  The rest of the magistrates looked at Mrs. Colonel, who glared at her husband. “I’ll talk to you about this later, Charles,” she growled.

  To her surprise, his smile did not change. “Yes, dear, I suspect you will, but I think you’ll find that I won’t be listening. Good evening to you all.” There was a click as the door shut behind him. There should have been a slam, but some doors never quite u
nderstand the situation.

  The goblin was already moving quite fast with a dot-and-carry-one gait that was deceptively speedy. Vimes was surprised to find that Feeney made heavy weather of the little jog toward—he was not surprised—Hangman’s Hill. He could hear the boy wheezing slightly. Perhaps you didn’t need to be all that fast to overtake a wayward pig, but you needed to be very fast indeed to catch up with a young troll blizzarded to the eyeballs with Slice and you needed lots of stamina to overtake him and slap the cuffs on him before he came down enough to try to twist your head off. Policing was obviously very different in the country.

  In the country, there is always somebody watching you, he thought as they sped along. Well, there was always somebody watching you in the city, too, but that was generally in the hope that you might drop dead and they could run off with your wallet. They were never interested. But here he thought he could feel many eyes on him. Maybe they belonged to squirrels or badgers, or whatever the damn things were that Vimes heard at night; gorillas, possibly.

  He had no idea what he was going to see, but certainly didn’t expect to find the top of the hill bright with lines of rope, painted yellow. He gave it only a second’s glance, however. With their backs to one of the trees, and looking very apprehensive, were three goblins. One of them stood up, thus bringing its head and therefore its eyes to a level in the vicinity of Vimes’s groin, not a good position to find himself. It held up a wrinkled hand and said, “Vimes? Hang!”

  Vimes stared down at it and then at Feeney. “What does he mean, ‘Hang”?”

  “Never been quite sure,” said Feeney. “Something like, have a nice day, I think, but only in goblin.”

  “Vimes!” the old goblin continued. “It said be, you be po-leess-maan. It be big po-leess-maan! If po-leess-maan, then just ice! But just ice it be no! And when dark inside dark! Dark moving! Dark must come, Vimes! Dark rises! Just ice!”

  Vimes had no idea of the sex of the speaker, or even its age. Dress wasn’t a clue: goblins apparently wore anything that could be tied on. Its companions were watching him unblinkingly. They had stone axes, flint, vicious stuff, but it lost its edge after a couple of blows, which was no consolation when you were bleeding from the neck. He had heard that they were berserk fighters, too. Oh, and what was the other thing people said? Ah yes, whatever you do, don’t let them scratch you. . .

  “You want justice, do you? Justice for what?”

  The goblin speaker stared at him and said, “Come with me po-leess-maan,” the words rolling out like a curse, or, at least, a threat. The speaker turned and began to walk solemnly down the far side of the hill. The other three goblins, including the one known to Vimes as Stinky, did not move.

  Feeney whispered, “This could be a trap, sir.”

  Vimes rolled his eyes and sneered, “You think so, do you? I thought it was probably an invitation to a magical show featuring the Amazing Bonko and Doris and the Collapsing Unicycle Brothers with Fido the Cat. What’s this yellow rope all about, Mr. Upshot?”

  “Police cordon, sir. My mum knitted it for me.”

  “Oh yes, I can see she’s managed to work the word PLICE in black in there several times, too.”

  “Yes, sir, sorry about the spelling, sir,” said Feeney, clearly spooked by the stares. He went on, “There was blood all over the ground, sir, so I scraped some into a clean jam jar, just in case.”

  Vimes paid that no attention, because the two goblin guards had unfolded and were standing up. Stinky beckoned Vimes to walk ahead of them. Vimes shook his head, folded his arms and turned to Feeney.

  “Let me tell you what you thought, Mr. Upshot. You acted on information received, didn’t you? And you heard that the blacksmith and I indulged in a bout of fisticuffs outside the pub the other night, and that is true. No doubt you were also told that at some time later someone heard a conversation in which he arranged to meet me up at this place, yes? Don’t bother to answer, I can see it in your face—you haven’t quite got the copper’s deadpan yet. Has Mr. Jefferson gone missing?”

  Feeney gave up. “Yes, Mr. Vimes.”

  He didn’t deserve or perhaps he did deserve, the force with which Vimes turned on him.

  “You will not call me Mr. Vimes, lad, you ain’t earned the right. You call me ‘Sir’ or ‘Commander,’ or even ‘Your grace’ if you’re dumb enough to do so, understand? I could have sent the blacksmith home walking very strangely if I’d had a mind to do so the other night. He’s a big man but no street hero. But I let him get the steam out of his tubes and calm down without losing face. Yes, he did say he wanted to meet me up here last night. When I came up here, with a witness, there was blood on the ground which I will warrant is goblin blood, and certainly no sign of any blacksmith. You had a bloody stupid case against me when you came up to my house and it’s still a bloody stupid case. Any questions?”

  Feeney looked down at his feet. “No, sir, sorry, sir.”

  “Good, I’m glad. Think of this as a training experience, my lad, and it won’t cost you a penny. Now, these goblins seem to want us to follow them and I intend to do so, and I also intend that you will come with me, understood?”

  Vimes looked at the two goblin guards. An ax was waved in a half-hearted sort of way, indicating that they should indeed be traveling. They set off and he could hear sorrowful Feeney trying to be brave, but broadcasting anxiety.

  “They’re not going to touch us, kid, first because if they had intended to do that they’d have done it already, and second, they want something from me.”

  Feeney moved a little closer. “And what would that be, sir?”

  “Justice,” said Vimes. “And I think I have a premonition about what that is going to mean … .”

  Sometimes people asked Commander Vimes why Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs were still on the strength, such as it was, of the modern Ankh-Morpork City Watch, given that Nobby occasionally had to be held upside down and shaken to reclaim small items belonging to other people, while Fred Colon had actually cultivated the ability to walk his beat with his eyes closed, and end up, still snoring, back at Pseudopolis Yard, sometimes with graffiti on his breastplate.

  To Lord Vetinari, Commander Vimes had put forward three defenses. The first was that both of them had an enviable knowledge of the city and its inhabitants, official and otherwise, that rivaled Vimes’s own.

  The second was the traditional urinary argument. It was better to have them inside pissing out than outside pissing in. It was at least easy to keep an eye on them.

  And not least, oh my word not least, they were lucky. Many a crime had been solved because of things that had fallen on them, tried to kill them, tripped one of them up, been found floating in their lunch, and in one case had tried to lay its eggs up Nobby’s nose.

  And so it was that, today, whatever god or other force it might be that regarded them as its playthings directed their steps to the corner of Cheapside and Rhyme Street, and the fragrant Emporium of Bewilderforce Gumption.**

  Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs, as is the way with policemen, entered the building by the back door and were greeted by Mr. Gumption with that happy but somewhat glassy smile with which a trader greets an old acquaintance who he knows will end up getting merchandise with a discount of one hundred per cent.

  “Why, Fred, how nice to see
you again!” he said, while awakening the mystic third eye developed by all small shopkeepers, especially those who see Nobby Nobbs coming into the shop.

  “We were patrolling in the area, Bewilderforce, and I thought I’d drop in to get my tobacco and see how you were managing, with all this fuss about the tax and everything?”

  The sergeant had to speak up to be heard above the rumbling of the snuff mill, and the carts that were moving across the factory floor in a stream. Rows of women at tables were packing snuff and—here, he leaned sideways to get a better view—the cigarette production line was also a-bustle.

  Sergeant Colon looked around. Policemen always look, on the basis that there is always something to see. Of course, sometimes they may find it sensible to forget that they have seen anything, at least officially. Mr. Gumption had a new tie pin, in which a diamond flashed. His shoes were also clearly new—bespoke, if Fred Colon was any judge—and a barely noticeable sniff suggested the wearing of, let’s see now, oh yes, Cedar Fragrance Pour Hommes, from Quirm at $15 a pop.

  He said, “How’s business doing? Is the new tax hitting you at all?”

  Mr. Gumption’s visage flew into the expression of a hard-working man sorely pressed by the machinations of politics and fate. He shook his head sadly. “We’re barely making ends meet, Fred. Lucky to break even at the end of the day.”

  Oh, and a gold tooth, too, thought Sergeant Colon. I nearly missed that. Out loud he said, “I’m very sorry to hear that, Bewilderforce, I really am. Allow me to raise your profits by expending two dollars in the purchase of my usual three ounces of twist tobacco.”

  Fred Colon proffered his wallet and Mr. Gumption, with a scolding noise, waved it away. It was a ritual as old as merchants and policemen, and it allowed the world to keep on turning. He cut a length of tobacco from the coil on the marble counter, wrapped it quickly and expertly, and as an afterthought reached down and came up with a large cigar, which he handed to the sergeant.