Jingo d-21

by Terry Pratchett

  Belatedly, his nuptial radar detected a certain chilliness from the far side of the cruet.

  “Is, er, there something wrong, dear?” he said.

  “Can you remember when we last had dinner together, Sam?”

  “Tuesday, wasn't it?”

  “That was the Guild of Merchants' annual dinner, Sam.”

  Vimes's brow wrinkled. “But you were there too, weren't you?”

  A further subtle change in the dragonhouse quotient told him that this was not a well chosen answer.

  “And then you rushed off afterwards because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street.”

  “Sweeney Jones,”{39} said Vimes. “Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving—”

  “But you didn't have to go, I'm sure.”

  “Policing's a twenty-four-hour job, dear.”

  “Only for you! Your constables do their ten hours and that's it. But you're always working. It's not good for you. You're always running around during the day, and when I wake up in the middle of the night there's always a cold space beside me…”

  The dots hung in the air, the ghosts of words unsaid. Little things, thought Vimes. That's how a war starts.

  “There's so much to do, Sybil,” he said, as patiently as he could.

  “There's always been a lot to do. And the bigger the Watch gets the more there is to do, have you noticed that?”

  Vimes nodded. That was true. Rotas, receipts, notebooks, reports… the Watch might or might not be making a difference in the city, but it was certainly frightening a lot of trees.

  “You ought to delegate,” said Lady Sybil.

  “So he tells me,” muttered Vimes.

  “Pardon?”

  “Just thinking aloud, dear.” Vimes pushed the paperwork away. “I'll tell you what… let's have an evening in,” he said. “There's a nice fire in the drawing room—”

  “Er… no, Sam, there isn't.”

  “Hasn't young Forthright lit it?” Forthright was the Boy; it came as news to Vimes that this was an official servant position, but the Boy's job was to light the fires, clean the privies, help the gardener and take the blame.

  “He's gone off to be a drummer boy in the Duke of Eorle's regiment,” said Lady Sybil.

  “Him too? He seemed a bright lad! Isn't he too young?”

  “He said he was going to lie about his age.”

  “I hope he lies about his musical ability. I've heard him whistling.” Vimes shook his head. “Whatever possessed him to do such a daft thing?”

  “He thinks the uniform will impress the girls.”

  Sybil gave him a gentle smile. An evening at home suddenly began to seem very inviting.

  “Well, it won't take a genius to find the woodshed,” said Vimes. “And then we can bolt the doors and—”

  One of the aforesaid doors shook to the sound of frantic knocking.

  Vimes caught Sybil's gaze.

  “Go on, then. Answer it,” she sighed, and sat down.

  The door admitted Corporal Littlebottom, seriously out of breath.

  “You… got to come quick, sir… it's… murder this… time!”

  Vimes looked helplessly at his wife.

  “Of course you must go,” she said.

  Angua brushed out her hair in front of the mirror.

  “I don't like this,” said Carrot. “It's not a proper way to behave.”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “Don't worry,” she said. “Vimes explained it all. You're acting as though we're doing something wrong.”

  “I like being a watchman,” said Carrot, still in the mournful depths. “And you've got to wear a uniform. If you don't wear a uniform it's like spying on people. He knows I think that.”

  Angua looked at his short red hair and honest ears.

  “I've taken a lot of the work off his shoulders,” Carrot went on. “He doesn't have to go on patrol at all, but he still tries to do everything.”

  “Perhaps he doesn't want you to be quite so helpful?” said Angua, as tactfully as possible.

  “It's not as if he's getting any younger, either. I've tried to point that out.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “And I've never worn plain clothes.”

  “On you they'll never be very plain,” said Angua, pulling on her coat. It was a relief to be out of that armour. As for Carrot, there was no disguising him. The size, the ears, the red hair, the expression of muscular good-naturedness…

  “I suppose a werewolf is in plain clothes all the time, when you think about it,” said Carrot.

  “Thank you, Carrot. And you are absolutely right.”

  “I just don't feel comfortable, living a lie.”

  “Walk a mile on these paws.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh… nothing.”

  Goriff's son Janil had been angry. He didn't know why. The anger was built up of a lot of things. The firebomb last night was a big part. So were some of the words he'd been hearing in the street. He'd had an argument with his father about sending that food round to the Watch House this morning. They were an official part of the city. They had those stupid badges. They had uniforms. He was angry about a lot of things, including the fact that he was thirteen.

  So when, at nine in the evening while his father was baking bread, the door had slammed back and a man had rushed in, Janil had pulled his father's elderly crossbow from under the counter and aimed it where he thought the heart was and pulled the trigger.

  Carrot stamped his feet once or twice and looked around.

  “Here,” he said. “I was standing here. And the Prince was… in that direction.”

  Angua obediently walked across the square. Several people turned to look curiously at Carrot.

  “All right… stop… no, on a bit… stop… turn a little bit to the left… I mean my left… back a bit… now throw your arms up…”

  He walked over to her and followed her gaze.

  “He was shot from the University?”

  “Looks like the library building,”{40} said Angua. “But a wizard wouldn't do it, surely? They keep out of that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, it's not too hard to get in there, even when the gates are shut,” said Carrot. “Let's try the unofficial way, shall we?”

  “OK, Carrot?”

  “Yes?”

  “The false moustache… it's not you, you know. And the nose is far too pink”

  “Doesn't it make me look inconspicuous?”

  “No. And the hat… I should lose the hat, too. It is a good hat,” she added quickly. “But a brown bowler… it's not your style. It doesn't suit you.”

  “Exactly!” said Carrot. “If it was my style, people would know it's me, right?”

  “I mean it makes you look like a twerp, Carrot.”

  “Do I normally look like a twerp?”

  “No, not—”

  “Aha!” Carrot fumbled in the pocket of his large brown overcoat. “I got this book of disguises from the joke shop in Phedre Road, look. Funny thing, Nobby was in there buying stuff too. I asked him why and he said it was desperate measures. What d'you think he meant by that?”

  “I can't imagine,” said Angua.

  “It's just amazing the stuff they've got. False hair, false noses, false beards, even false…” He hesitated, and began to blush. “Even false… you know, chests. For ladies. But I can't imagine for the life of me why they'd want to disguise those.”

  He probably couldn't, Angua thought. She took the very small book from Carrot and glanced through it. She sighed.

  “Carrot, these disguises are meant for a potato.”

  “Are they?”

  “Look, they're all on potatoes, see?”

  “I thought that was just for display.”

  “Carrot, it's got ‘Mr Spuddy Face’{41} on it.”

  Behind his thick black moustache Carrot looked hurt and perplexed. “What does a potato want a
disguise for?” he said.

  They'd reached the alley alongside the University that had been known informally as Scholars' Entry for so many centuries that this was now on a nameplate at one end. A couple of student wizards went past.

  The unofficial entrance to the University has always been known only to students. What most students failed to remember was that the senior members of the faculty had also been students once, and also liked to get out and about after the official shutting of the gates. This naturally led to a certain amount of embarrassment and diplomacy on dark evenings.

  Carrot and Angua waited patiently as a few more students climbed over, followed by the Dean.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Carrot, politely.

  “Good evening to you, Spuddy,” said the Dean, and ambled off into the night.

  “You see?”

  “Ah, but he didn't call me Carrot,” said Carrot. “The principle is sound.”

  They dropped down on to lawns of academia and headed for the library.

  “It'll be shut,” said Angua.

  “Remember, we have a man on the inside,” said Carrot, and knocked.

  The door opened a little way. “Ook?”

  Carrot raised his horrible little round hat.

  “Good evening, sir, I wonder if we could come in? It's Watch business.”

  “Ook eek ook?”

  “Er…”

  “What did he say?” said Angua.

  “If you must know, he said, ‘My goodness me, a walking potato,’” said Carrot.

  The Librarian wrinkled his nose at Angua. He did not like the smell of werewolves. But he beckoned them inside and then left them waiting while he knuckled back to his desk and rummaged in a drawer. He produced a Watch Special Constable's badge on a string, which he hung around the general area where his neck should have been, and then stood as much to attention as an orang-utan can, which is not a great deal. The central ape gets the idea but outlying areas are slow to catch on.

  “Ook ook!”

  “Was that ‘How may I be of assistance, Captain Tuber?’” said Angua.

  “We need to have a look on the fifth floor, overlooking the square,” said Carrot, a shade coldly.

  “Ook oook — ook.”

  “He says that's just old storerooms,” said Carrot.

  “And that last ‘ook’?” said Angua.

  “‘Mr Horrible Hat’,” said Carrot.

  “Still, he hasn't worked out who you are, eh?” said Angua.

  The fifth floor was a corridor of airless rooms, smelling sadly of old, unwanted books. They were stacked not on shelves but on wide racks, bundled up with string. A lot of them were battered and missing their covers. Judging by what remained, though, they were old textbooks that not even the most ardent bibliophile could treasure.

  Carrot picked up a torn copy of Woddeley's Occult Primer. Several loose pages fell out. Angua picked one up.

  “‘Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy’,” she read aloud. “‘Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel…’”

  She put it down again and sniffed the air. The presence of the Librarian filled the nasal room like an elephant in a matchbox, but—

  “Someone else has been in here,” she said. “In the last couple of days. Could you leave us, sir? When it comes to odours, you're a bit… forthright…”

  “Ook?”

  The Librarian nodded at Carrot, shrugged at Angua and ambled out.

  “Don't move,” said Angua. “Stay right where you are, Carrot. Don't disturb the air…”

  She inched forward carefully.

  Her ears told her the Librarian was down the corridor, because she could hear the floorboards creaking. But her nose told her that he was still here. He was a little fuzzy, but—

  “I'm going to have to change,” she said. “I can't get a proper picture this way. It's too strange.”

  Carrot obediently shut his eyes. Shed forbidden him to watch her en route from a human to a wolf, because of the unpleasant nature of the shapes in between. Back in Uberwald people went from one shape to the other as naturally as ordinary humans would put on a different coat, but even there it was considered polite to do it behind a bush.

  When he re-opened them Angua was slinking forward, her whole being concentrated in her nose.

  The olfactory presence of the Librarian was a complex shape, a mere purple blur where he had been moving but almost a solid figure where he'd been standing still. Hands, face, lips… they'd be just the centre of an expanding cloud in a few hours' time, but now she could still smell them out.

  There must be only the tiniest air currents in here. There weren't even any flies buzzing in the dead air to cause a ripple of disturbance.

  She edged nearer to the window. Vision was a mere shadowy presence, providing a charcoal sketch of a room over which the scents painted their glorious colours.

  By the window… by the window…

  Yes! A man had stood there, and by the scent of it he hadn't moved for some time. The smell wavered in the air, on the edge of her nasal skill. The curling, billowing traces said that the window had been opened and closed again, and was there just the merest, tiniest suggestion that he'd held an arm out in front of him?

  Her nose raced, trying to form original shapes from the patterns hanging in the room like dead smoke…

  When she'd finished, Angua went back to her pile of clothes and coughed politely while she was pulling on her boots.

  “There was a man standing by the window,” she said. “Long hair, a bit dry, stinks of expensive shampoo. He was the man who nailed the boards back after Ossie got into the Barbican.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Is this nose ever wrong?”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “I'd say he was heavy-set, a bit bulky for his height. He doesn't wash a lot, but when he does he uses Windpike's Soap, the cheap brand. But expensive shampoo, which is odd. Quite new boots. And a green coat.”

  “You can smell the colour?”

  “No. The dye. It comes from Sto Lat, I think. And… I think he shot a bow. An expensive bow. There's a hint of silk in the air, and that's what the strongest bowstrings are made of, isn't it? And you wouldn't put one of those on a cheap bow.”

  Carrot stood by the window. “He got a good view,” he said, and looked down at the floor. And then at the sill. And on the shelves nearby.

  “How long was he here?”

  “Two or three hours, I'd say.”

  “He didn't move around much.”

  “No.”

  “Or smoke, or spit. He just stood and waited. A professional. Mr Vimes was right.”

  “A lot more professional than Ossie,” said Angua.

  “Green coat,” said Carrot, as if thinking aloud. “Green coat, green coat…”

  “Oh… and bad dandruff,” said Angua, standing up.

  “Snowy Slopes?!” shouted Carrot.

  “What?”

  “Really bad dandruff?”

  “Oh, yes, it—”

  “That's why they call him Snowy,” said Carrot. “Daceyville Slopes, the man with the reinforced comb. But I'd heard he'd moved to Sto Lat—”

  In unison they said: “—where the dye comes from—”

  “Is he good with a bow?” said Angua.

  “Very good. He's good at killing people he never met, too.”

  “He's an Assassin, is he?”

  “Oh, no. He just kills people for money. No style. Snowy can't read and write.”{42}

  Carrot scratched his head in sympathetic recollection. “He doesn't even look at complicated pictures. We'd have got him last year, but he shook his head fast and got away while we were trying to dig out Nobby. Well, well. I wonder where he's staying?”

  “Don't ask me to follow him in these streets. Thousands of people will have walked over the trail.”

  “Oh, there's people who will know. Someone sees everything in this town.”

  MR SLOPES?

  Snowy Slopes gingerly
felt his neck, or at least the neck of his soul. The human soul tends to keep to the shape of the original body for some time after death. Habit is a wonderful thing.

  “Who the hell was he?” he said.

  NOT SOMEONE YOU KNOW? said Death.

  “Well, no! I don't know many people who cut my head off!”

  Snowy Slopes's body had knocked against the table as it fell. Several bottles of medicated shampoo now dripped and mixed their contents into the other more intimate fluids from the Slopes corpse.

  “That stuff with the special oil in it cost me nearly four dollars,” said Snowy. Yet, somehow, it all seemed slightly… irrelevant now. Death happens to other people. The other person in this case had been him. That is, the one down there. Not the one standing here looking at it. In life, Snowy hadn't even been able to spell “metaphysical”, but he was already beginning to view life in a different way. From the outside, for a start.

  “Four dollars,” he repeated. “I never even had time to try it!”

  IT WOULDN'T HAVE WORKED, said Death, patting the man on a fading shoulder. BUT, IF I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT YOU LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, IT WILL NO LONGER BE NECESSSARY.

  “No more dandruff?” said Snowy, now quite transparent and fading fast.

  EVER, said Death. TRUST ME ON THIS.

  Commander Vimes ran down darkened streets, trying to buckle on his breastplate as he ran.

  “All right, Cheery, what's happening?”

  “They say a Klatchian killed someone, sir. There's a mob up in Scandal Alley and it's looking bad. I was on the desk and I thought you ought to be told, sir.”

  “Right!”

  “And anyway I couldn't find Captain Carrot, sir.”

  A little bit of acid ink scribbled its subtle entry on the ledger of Vimes's soul.

  “Oh, gods… so who's the officer in charge?”

  “Sergeant Detritus, sir.”

  It seemed to the dwarf that she was suddenly standing still. Commander Vimes had become a rapidly disappearing blur.

  With the calm expression of someone who was methodically doing his duty, Detritus picked up a man and used him to hit some other men. When he had a clear area around him and a groaning heap of former rioters, he climbed the heap and cupped his hands round his mouth.