Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  “Yes, Mr. Vimes,” said Nobby, looking at his boots.

  “And, Nobby, if you see a goblin who stinks like a latrine and glows slightly blue, well, that’s a fellow copper and don’t you forget it.”

  Sybil was halfway down the lane as Vimes quickly walked up it, and Young Sam was running ahead and cannoned into his father’s legs, throwing his arms around them as best he could.

  “Dad! I know how to milk a goat, Dad! You have to pull its tits, Dad, they’re all wiggly!” Vimes’s expression did not change as Young Sam went on. “And I’m learning to make cheese! And I have some badger poo now, and some weasel poo, too!”

  “My word, you have been busy,” said Vimes. “Who told you the word ‘tits,’ lad?”

  Young Sam beamed. “That was Willy the cowherd, Dad.”

  Vimes nodded. “I’ll have a little talk to you about that later, Sam, but first I think I’ll have a word with Willy the cowherd.” He lifted up Young Sam, ignoring a twinge in his back. “I hope that washing your hands played a part in these adventures?”

  “I take care of that,” said Lady Sybil, catching up. “Honestly, Sam, I let you out of my sight for hardly any time at all and here you are a hero, again! Really! Honestly, the whole river is talking about it! Fights on a riverboat? Maritime chases? Oh dear me, I don’t know where to put my face, so if you would be so kind as to let our child down carefully I’ll press said face mightily to yours!”

  When Vimes surfaced for breath he growled, “It is a real bloody clacks tower, isn’t it, yes? And now The Times have got hold of all this they’ll make out I’m some kind of hero, the damn fools!”

  With the suction released, Lady Sybil said, “No, Sam—well maybe a little of that, but you would be amazed at how fast news travels along the river. Apparently you were standing on the wheelhouse roof of the Wonderful Fanny fighting with a murderer, and he shot a crossbow at you and it bounced off! I’m told there’s going to be a large artist’s impression in tomorrow’s paper! Once again, I won’t know where to put my face!” And then Sybil couldn’t contain herself anymore and burst out laughing. “Frankly, Sam, you may have anything you want for dinner tonight.”

  Vimes leaned over and whispered, causing his wife to slap his hand and say, “Later, perhaps!”

  At this point, somewhat emboldened, Vimes said, “I couldn’t help noticing that the bridge is severely damaged?”

  Sybil nodded. “Oh, yes dear, a terrible storm, wasn’t it? It took away the entire central arch and all of the three disgraces.* “I remember them from my childhood. My mother used to put her hand over my eyes when we crossed the bridge and so I took a keen interest in them, especially as one was scratching her bottom.” Her smile brightened. “But don’t worry, Sam, naked ladies are not difficult to come by.”

  Vimes took comfort from her smile, and a tiny treacherous suspicion bubbled up once more. He thought he had stamped it down, but the damn thing kept coming back. And so he cleared his throat and said, “Sybil, you did discuss plans for my holiday with Vetinari, didn’t you?”

  Sybil looked surprised. “Why yes, dear, of course. After all, he is technically your superior. Only technically, of course. I had a word with him on the subject at some charity do or other. I can’t remember which right now as there’re always so many. But there wasn’t any difficulty. He said that it was high time you took a decent rest from your valiant activities!”

  Vimes was wise enough not to utter the words that entered his mouth, and instead said, carefully, “Er, so he didn’t actually suggest that you came down to the Shires?”

  “To be honest, Sam, it was quite some time ago, but we both have your best interests at heart, as you surely know. We generally discussed the matter and that’s it, really.”

  Vimes left it at that. He would never know for sure. And anyway, the ball had dropped.

  Later, Samuel Vimes, all of him, had a bath in the huge bathroom with his nose only just above the surface and came out feeling exactly the same man as before but at least a lot cleaner. The affidavits were in the strongroom, and when the Ramkins design a strongroom, it’s not a room that you’ll get into in a hurry: first you needed a combination, which opened a smaller but nevertheless dangerously efficient safe, simply to remove a key which then had to be inserted in locks hidden in three separate clocks in the Hall and each key triggered a clockwork timing mechanism. Sybil told him that she had fond memories of her grandfather running split-arse, as the old man called it, down the main hall to get the key into the last lock before the clock controlling the first lock had run down and certainly before the guillotines dropped. What we have we keep, Vimes had thought as he tried it out. Well, they definitely meant it. Now, he dressed in clothes that didn’t smell of fish. What next?

  It was nice to have a walk with Young Sam again. Dad self-consciously out for a walk with his lad, yes? That was the picture. Regrettably, this picture included a distant prospect of Sergeant Detritus, who was merging with the landscape, a feat that a troll officer can achieve by simply removing his armor and sticking a geranium behind his ear, whereupon he becomes, being of a rocky and stony persuasion, pretty much part of the landscape without even trying. Usually the troll officers wore super-sized versions of the standard-issue armor, because a lot of the power of a copper consists in looking like a copper.* Safety considerations didn’t matter; there were plenty of weapons which, if handled with skill, could go through steel armor, but all they would do to a naked troll was make him angry.

  Right now Detritus was failing to maintain a low profile. He was a bodyguard, that was the truth of it, and he was also carrying his Peacemaker which could, as it were, do what it said on the box. Some weapons are called a Saturday Night Special; Detritus’s multi-arrow crossbow would last you all week. And somewhere, where Vimes couldn’t see him, which meant that nobody else could either, there was Willikins. There was your picture: Dad taking his lad for a walk in the presence of enough firepower to kill a platoon. Sybil had insisted, and that was that. Vimes himself being in danger was one thing, and Sybil had accepted that right from the start, but Young Sam? Never!

  As they strolled up Hangman’s Hill to see the new clacks tower, Vimes told himself that Stratford would not use a bow. A bow was for expediency, but a killer … now a killer would want to be up close, where he could see. Stratford had killed the goblin girl and had gone on killing her long after she was dead. He was a boy who liked his fun. He would want Vimes to know who was killing him. Vimes, Vimes realized, knew killers too well for his own peace of mind.

  As they arrived on the hill they were met by a grinning Nobby, who saluted with a variation on the theme of smartness, but with some embarrassment, because he was not alone. A young goblin woman was sitting next to him. Nobby hastily tried to shoo her away and she, apparently with reluctance, retired to a minimum safe distance, still looking adoringly at the corporal.

  Despite everything, Vimes tried to suppress the urge to smile, and managed to turn it into a stiff look.

  “Fraternizing with the natives, are you, Nobby?”

  Young Sam wandered over to the goblin girl and took hold of her hand, which was something he tended to do to any female that he met for the first time, a habit which his father considered would quite possibly open doors for him in later life. The girl tried gently to pull her hand away, but Young Sam was a ferocious holder.

  Nobby looked embarrassed. “I ain’t fraternizing with her, Mr. Vimes, she wants to fraternize with me! She come out with the straw basket of little mushrooms and gives them to me, honestly!”

  “Are you sure they aren’t poisonous?”

  Nobby looked blank. “Don’t know, Mr. Vimes. I ate them anyway, very nice, very crunchy, slightly nutty you might say, and Fred’s here now, sir. This young lady”—and to Vimes’s surprise and approval Nobby did not put inverted commas around the word lady—“walked right up to
him, took this weird shiny pot thing out of his hand, which was amazing because no one else could get it off of him, and there he was! Just like normal! Although I think we’re going to have to remind him about washing, and crapping only in the privy and so on.”

  Vimes gave up. It was true that every organization had to have its backbone, and therefore it stood to reason that there also would have to be some person who equated to the bits usually destined for dog food. But Nobby was loyal and lucky, and if there is anything that a policeman really needs, it’s luck. Maybe Nobby had got lucky.

  “What are you doing up here, Nobby?” he said. Nobby looked at Vimes as if he were mad, and pointed to the wobbling temporary clacks tower. “Have to check the clacks messages, Mr. Vimes. Actually, young Tony, who is the only one manning it, he sort of types them, and wraps them around a stone and they drops down, which is—” There was a rattle on Nobby’s helmet and he deftly caught a stone wrapped in a strip of paper before it hit the ground. “Which is why I stand just here, Mr. Vimes.” Nobby unrolled the paper and announced, “One double stateroom and one single on the Roberta E. Biscuit, departing at 9 p.m. tomorrow! Lucky you, Mr. Vimes. Clacks! What would we do without it, eh?”

  There was a shout from above: “Stand back, man coming down!” and Vimes saw the whole structure of the clacks tower tremble as the young man carefully lowered himself from one spar to another, testing every one before putting his weight on it. He dropped the last few feet and held out his hand to Vimes. “Pleased to meet you, Sir Samuel! Sorry it’s shaky, but we were still working on it last night. A real rush job! Needs must when Lord Vetinari drives, you might say. We’ll do it properly later if that’s okay by you? I’ve got it lined up on a Grand Trunk tower, and they’ll bounce it to anywhere you want, plus a feed down to a clacks on your house, too. Of course you’ll have to have somebody manning this one to maintain the link, but from what I see that won’t be a problem.” The young man saluted Vimes and added, “Best of luck to you, sir, and now I’m off to have my meal and a wash.”

  There was another clang on the helmet of Nobby Nobbs, and a wad of paper wrapped around a pebble fell at his feet.

  The young clacksman picked it up proprietorially and read the message. “Oh, it’s just an acknowledgment of service closure, confirming that I am standing down for a break. My assistant typed it. He didn’t really need to pass it on, but he is a conscientious little bugger and I have never seen such a quick study. Show him how to do something once and that’s enough! Reliable little devil as well. And with those big hands he has no problem with the keyboard.”

  As the man strode off whistling down the hill, Vimes jumped to a conclusion like a grasshopper. “Stinky! Just you come down here, you little perisher!” he yelled.

  “Right here, commander!” The little goblin was already standing almost between Vimes’s boots.

  “You? You! You operating a clacks? Can you read?”

  Stinky held out both large hands. “No, but can look, but can remember! Green man say ‘Stinky, this pointy thing it called A’ and Stinky don’t need telling twice, and he say ‘This one, look like bum, he called B.’ Good fun!” The cracked voice wheedled, but in a way that seemed to Vimes to be full of cynical knowingness. “The goblin is useful, goblin is trustworthy, goblin is helpful? Goblin isn’t dead!”

  And it seemed to Vimes that he was the only one hearing these words. Young Sam had shuffled up to hold Stinky’s hand, but had thought better of it. Under his breath, Sam Vimes said, “What are you, Stinky?”

  “What are you, Sam Vimes?” Stinky grinned. “Hang, Sam Vimes. Hang together or hang separately. Above all, hang on. Hang, Mr. Vimes.”

  Vimes sighed. “I think it’s quite likely that I might, ” he said gloomily. He looked around to find himself pinned in the gazes of Young Sam, Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl who had been looking at Nobby as if the little corporal was an Adonis. Embarrassed, he shrugged and said, “Just a passing thought.”

  However you put it, Fred Colon was one of Vimes’s oldest friends—and it was sobering to think that so was Nobby Nobbs. Vimes found the sergeant halfway down the goblin cave looking strangely pink, bemused, but nevertheless quite cheerful, possibly because he was eating a roasted rabbit like there was no tomorrow—which clearly had been the case for the rabbit. Cheery was watching him with some care from a distance, and when she saw Vimes gave him a smile and a thumbs-up sign, which was reassuring.

  Fred Colon tried to salute, but had to think about it for a moment. “Sorry about this, Mr. Vimes, had some kind of nasty turn. All a bit vague, really, and suddenly here I am among these people.”

  Vimes held his breath and Colon continued, “Very nice, very helpful, very generous, too. They’ve been giving me all kinds of mushrooms, extremely tasty. Not very well versed in the trouser department, but I speak as I find. Makes a man think; I ain’t sure what, but it does.” He looked around with a strange fluorescence in his eyes. “Nice in here, isn’t it? Nice and calm away from the maddening crowd. Wouldn’t mind staying here for a bit … Nice.”

  Sergeant Colon stopped, flung the rabbit bones over his shoulder and reached down quickly into the mess of stones beside him. He picked one up. Was it Vimes’s imagination or did it twinkle for a moment as it once again turned into just a stone.

  “Stay as long as you like, Fred,” said Vimes. “I’ve got to go, but Nobby’ll be around, and just about everybody else from the Watch or so it seems. Stay as long as you like”—he glanced at Cheery Littlebottom—“but perhaps not too long.”

  More thoughts passed as Young Sam’s daily stroll progressed back down the hill and through the village, and when Jiminy appeared at the doorway of the pub and gave Vimes a little nod that spoke volumes, Vimes’s passing thought was that an astute publican knows which way the wind is blowing and adjusts his sails accordingly. No one knew better than he that no one knows where rumors come from and how they are spread, but the little convoy, even though it included Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl, got smiles and nods where a week ago there would have been blank stares. Because the dreadful truth is that nobody wants to support the losing side.

  When they reached Ramkin Hall again Vimes found Sybil in the rose garden, apparently deadheading, something that had to be done because it was on the list of things you had to do in the country whether you liked to do it or not. She glanced up at her husband and then got on with what she was doing, and said quietly, “You’ve been worrying people, haven’t you, Sam? Lady Rust popped in unexpectedly for a social visit, right after you left.” Snip! Snip! went the pruning shears, furiously.

  “Did you let her in?”

  Snip! Snip! “Of course! Of course!”

  There was another Snip! Snip! “And I gave her tea and chocolate macaroons, too. She may be an ignorant whey-faced bitch who gives herself a title that is not rightfully hers, but there is such a thing as manners, when all is said and done.” Snip! Snip! Snap! “I only did that because that one rather spoils the symmetry, honestly. Anyway, I had a lecture about maintaining standards, and banding together in defense of our culture, you know the sort of thing, it’s always just a code.”

  Lady Sybil leaned back with her shears poised, and regarded the rosebushes like a bloody-handed revolutionary looking for his next aristocrat. “Do you know what the bitch said? She said, ‘My dear, who cares what happens to a few trolls! Let them take drugs if they want to, that’s what I say.’ ” Eyes ablaze, Sybil continued, “And so I thought about Sergeant Detritus and how often he’s saved your life, and then there was young Brick, that troll lad he adopted. And it made me so angry that I nearly said something unrepeatable! They think that I’m like them! I hate that! They just don’t get it! They’ve got on well for years without ever having to think differently, and now they don’t know how!” Snip! Snip! Crack!

  “You’ve just killed a rosebush, dear,” said Vimes, impressed. It took a pr
etty good grip to push those blades through an inch of what looked like a small tree.

  “It was a brier, Sam, wouldn’t ever do any good.”

  “You could have given it a chance, perhaps?”

  “Sam Vimes, you treasure your ignorance of gardening, so don’t start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade! There is a difference between plants and people!”

  “Do you think her husband sent her?” Vimes said, standing back a little. “He is in the frame, you know, and I expect by the end of the day to be able to link him to smuggling, trafficking in goblins and certainly in attempting to send Jethro Jefferson abroad to get him out of the way. I know what happens to the goblins taken to Howondaland and it’s not good for their health. Jefferson told me that Rust was behind the eviction of the local goblins three years ago. I’m hoping to get confirmation of this very shortly. All in all, it’ll wipe the smile off his aristocratic face, at least.”

  The birds were singing and roses were pumping perfume into the air and Lady Sybil dropped the shears into her apron pocket.

  “It will shame old Lord Rust, you know.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know that,” said Vimes. “The old boy tried to warn me off when we first got here, which just about shows his talent as a tactician. But I’ll say this for the old bastard: he is honorable, honest and straightforward. It’s a shame that he is also pigheaded, stupid, and incompetent. But you’re right, it’ll hurt him, although he must have killed so many soldiers by his own incompetence that shame should by now be second nature to him, an old friend as it were.” He sighed. “Sybil, every time I have to arrest some twit who thought he could get away with swindling or extortion or blackmail, well, I know that there is probably going to be a family in difficulties, you understand? I think about it. It preys on my mind. The trouble is, the idiots commit the crimes! As it is, I’m trying to spare some of the hangers-on in this case, provided their gratitude results in testimony. I can stretch the law for the greater good, but that’s the end of it.”