Making Money d-36

by Terry Pratchett

  'He will ruin the bank!'

  'We are in fact getting many new customers, sir.'

  'You can't possibly like the man? Not you, Mr Bent?'

  'He is easy to like, sir. But you know me, sir. I do not trust those who laugh too easily. The heart of a fool is in the house of mirth. He should not be in charge of your bank.'

  'I like to think of it as our bank, Mr Bent,' said Cosmo generously, 'because, in a very real way, it is ours.'

  'You are too kind, sir,' said Bent, staring down at the floorboards visible through the hole in the cheap oilcloth which was itself laid bare, in a very real way, by the bald patch in the carpet which, in a very real way, was his.

  'You joined us quite young, I believe,' Cosmo went on. 'My father himself gave you a job as trainee clerk, didn't he?'

  'That is correct, sir.'

  'He was very… understanding, my father,' said Cosmo. 'And rightly so. No sense in dredging up the past.' He paused for a little while to let this sink in. Bent was intelligent, after all. No need to use a hammer when a feather would float down with as much effect.

  'Perhaps you could find some way that will allow him to be removed from office without fuss or bloodshed? There must be something,' he prompted. 'No one just steps out of nowhere. But people know even less about his past than they do about, for the sake of argument, yours.'

  Another little reminder. Bent's eye twitched. 'But Mr Fusspot will still be chairman,' he mumbled, while the rain rattled on the glass.

  'Oh yes. But I'm sure he will then be looked after by someone who is, shall we say, better capable of translating his little barks along more traditional lines?'

  'I see.'

  'And now I must be going,' said Cosmo, standing up. 'I'm sure you have a lot of things to' — he looked around the barren room which showed no sign of real human occupation, no pictures, no books, no debris of living, and concluded — 'do?'

  'I will go to sleep shortly,' said Mr Bent.

  'Tell me, Mr Bent, how much do we pay you?' said Cosmo, glancing at the wardrobe.

  'Forty-one dollars per month, sir,' said Bent.

  'Ah, but of course you get wonderful job security.'

  'So I had hitherto believed, sir.'

  'I just wonder why you choose to live here?'

  'I like the dullness, sir. It expects nothing of me.'

  'Well, time to go,' said Cosmo, slightly faster than he really should. 'I'm sure you can be of help, Mr Bent. You have always been a great help. It would be such a shame if you could not be of help at this time.'

  Bent stared at the floor. He was trembling.

  'I speak for all of us when I say that we think of you as one of the family,' Cosmo went on. He rethought this sentence with reference to the peculiar charms of the Lavishes and added: 'but in a good way.'

  Chapter 6

  Jailbreak — The prospect of the kidney sandwich — The barber-surgeon's knock — Suicide by paint, inadvisability of — Angels at one remove — Igor goes shopping — The use of understudies at a hanging, reflections on — Places suitable for putting a head — Moist awaits the sunshine — Tricks with your brain — 'We're going to need some bigger notes' — Fun with root vegetables — The lure of clipboards — The impossible cabinet

  ON THE ROOF OF the Tanty, the city's oldest jail, Moist was more than moist. He'd reached the point where he was so wet that he should be approaching dryness from the other end.

  With care, he lifted the last of the oil lamps from the little semaphore tower on the flat roof, and tossed its contents into the howling night. They had been only half full in any case. It was amazing that anyone had even bothered to light them on a night like this.

  He felt his way back to the edge of the roof and located his grapnel, moving it gently around the stern crenellation and then letting out more rope to lower it down to the invisible ground. Now he had the rope around the big stone bulk he slid down holding on to both lengths and pulled the rope down after him. He stashed both grapnel and rope among the debris in an alley; they would be stolen within an hour or so.

  Right, then. Now for it…

  The Watch armour he'd lifted from the bank's locker room fitted like a glove. He'd have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate. But in truth it probably didn't look any better on its owner, currently swanking along the corridors in the bank's own shiny but impractical armour. It was common knowledge that the Watch's approach to uniforms was one-size-doesn't-exactly-fit-anybody, and that Commander Vimes disapproved of armour that didn't have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked armour to state clearly that it had been doing its job.

  Moist took some time to get his breath back, and then walked round to the big black door and rang the bell. The mechanism rattled and clanked. They wouldn't rush, not on a night like this.

  He was as naked and exposed as a baby lobster. He hoped he'd covered all the angles, but angles were — what did they call it, he'd gone to a lecture at the university… ah, yes. Angles were fractal. Each one was full of smaller angles. You couldn't cover them all. The watchman at the bank might be called back to work and find his locker empty, someone might have seen Moist take it, Jenkins might have been moved… The hell with it. When time was pressing you just had to spin the wheel and be ready to run.

  Or, in this case, lift the huge door knocker in both hands and bring it down sharply, twice, on the nail. He waited until, with difficulty, a small hatch in the door was pulled aside.

  'What?' said a petulant voice in a shadowy face.

  'Prisoner pick-up. Name of Jenkins.'

  'What? It's the middle of the bleedin' night!'

  'Got a signed Form 37,' said Moist stolidly.

  The little hatch slammed shut. He waited in the rain again. This time it was three minutes before it opened.

  'What?' said a new voice, marinated in suspicion.

  Ah, good. It was Bellyster. Moist was glad of that. What he was going to do tonight was going to make one of the warders a very uncomfortable screw, and some of them were decent enough, especially on Death Row. But Bellyster was a real old-school screw, a craftsman of small evils, the kind of bully who would take every opportunity to make a prisoner's life a misery. It wasn't just that he'd gob in your bowl of greasy skilly; but he wouldn't even have the common decency to do it where you couldn't see him. He picked on the weak and frightened, too. And there was another good thing. Bellyster hated the Watch, and the feeling was mutual. A man could use that.

  'Come for a pris'ner,' Moist complained. An' I been standing in the rain for five minutes!'

  'And you shall continue to do so, my son, oh, yes indeed, until I'm ready. Show me the docket!'

  'Says here Jenkins, Owlswick,' said Moist.

  'Let me see it, then!'

  'They said I has to hand it over when you give me the pris'ner,' said Moist, a model of stolid insistence.

  'Oh, we have a lawyer here, do we? All right, Abe, let my learned friend in.'

  The hatch slid back and, after some more clanking, a wicket door opened. Moist stepped through. It was raining just as hard inside the compound.

  'Have I seen you before?' said Bellyster, his head on one side.

  'Only started last week,' said Moist. Behind him, the door was locked again. The slamming of the bolts echoed in his head.

  'Why's there only one of you?' Bellyster demanded.

  'Don't know, sir. You'd have to ask my mum and dad.'

  'Don't you be funny with me! There should be two on escort duty!'

  Moist gave a wet and weary shrug of pure uninterest. 'Should there? Don't ask me. They just told me he's a little piece of piss who'll be no trouble. You can check if you like. I heard the palace wants to see him right away.'

  The palace. That changed the gleam in the warder's nasty little eyes. A sensible man didn't get in the way of the palace. And sending out some dim newbie to do a thankless task on a wild night like this made sense; it was exactly what Bellyster would have done.

  He held out
his hand and demanded: 'Docket!'

  Moist handed over the flimsy paper. The man read it, lips perceptibly moving, clearly willing it to be wrong in some way. There'd be no problem there, however much the man glared; Moist had pocketed a handful of the forms while Mr Spools had been making him a cup of coffee.

  'He's goin' to hang in the morning,' Bellyster said, holding the sheet up to the lantern. 'What d'they want him for now?'

  'Dunno,' said Moist. 'Get a move on, will you? I'm on my break in ten minutes.'

  The warder leaned forward. 'Just for that, friend, I will go and check. Just one escort? Can't be too careful, can I?'

  O-kay, thought Moist. All going to plan. He'll be ten minutes having a nice cup of tea, just to teach me a lesson, five minutes to find out the clacks isn't working, about one second to decide that he'll be blowed if he's going to sort out the fault on a night like this, another second to think: the paperwork was okay, he'd checked for the watermark, and that was the main thing… call it twenty minutes, give or take.

  Of course, he could be wrong. Anything could happen. Bellyster could be rounding up a couple of his mates right now, or maybe he'd get someone to run out the back way and find a real copper. The future was uncertain. Exposure could be a few seconds away.

  It didn't get any better than this.

  Bellyster left it for twenty-two minutes. Footsteps approached, slowly, and Jenkins appeared, tottering under the weight of the irons, with Bellyster prodding him occasionally with his stick. There was no way the little man could have gone any faster, but he was going to get prodded anyway.

  'I don't think I'm going to need the shackles,' said Moist quickly.

  'You ain't getting 'em,' said the warder. 'The reason bein', you buggers never bring 'em back!'

  'Okay,' said Moist. 'C'mon, it's freezing out here.'

  Bellyster grunted. He was not a happy man. He bent down, unlocked the shackles, and stood up again with his hand once more on the man's shoulder. His other hand thrust out, holding a clipboard.

  'Sign!' he commanded. Moist did so.

  And then came the magic bit. It was why the paperwork was so important, in the greasy world of turnkeys, thief-takers and bang-beggars, because what really mattered at any one moment was habeas corpus: whose hand is on the collar? Who is responsible for this corpus?

  Moist had been through this before as the body in question, and knew the drill. The prisoner moved on a trail of paper. If he was found without a head, then the last person to have signed for a prisoner whose hat was not resting on his neck might well have to answer some stern questions.

  Bellyster pushed the prisoner forward and spake the time-honoured words: 'To you, sir!' he barked. 'Habby arse corparse!'

  Moist thrust the clipboard back at him and laid his other hand on Owlswick's other shoulder. 'From you, sir!' he replied. 'I habby his arse all right!'

  Bellyster grunted and removed his hand. The deed was done, the law was observed, honour was satisfied and Owlswick Jenkins —

  — looked up sadly at Moist, kicked him hard in the groin, and went off down the street like a hare.

  As Moist bent double, all he was aware of outside his little world of pain was the sound of Bellyster laughing himself silly and shouting: 'Your bird, milord! You habbyed him all right! Ho yus!'

  Moist had managed to walk normally by the time he got back to the little room he rented from I-don't-know Jack. He struggled into the golden suit, dried off the armour, bundled it into the bag, stepped out into the alley and hurried back to the bank.

  It was harder to get back in than it had been to get out. The guards changed over at the same time as the staff left, and in the general milling about Moist, wearing the tatty grey suit he wore when he wanted to stop being Moist von Lipwig and turn into the world's most unmemorable man, had strolled out unquestioned. It was all in the mind: the night guards started guarding when everyone had gone home, right? So people going home were no problem or, if they were, they were not mine.

  The guard who finally turned up to see who was struggling to unlock the front door gave him a bit of trouble until a second guard, who was capable of modest intelligence, pointed out that if the chairman wanted to get into the bank at midnight then that was fine. He was the damn boss, wasn't he? Don't you read the papers? See the gold suit? And he had a key! So what if he had a big fat bag? He was coming in with it, right? If he was leaving with it that might be a different matter, ho ho, just my little joke, sir, sorry about that sir…

  It was amazing what you could do if you had the nerve to try, thought Moist, as he bid the men goodnight. F'r instance, he'd been so theatrically working the key in the lock because it was a Post Office key. He didn't have one for the bank yet.

  Even putting the armour back in the locker was not a problem. The guards still walked set routes and the buildings were big and not very well lit. The locker room was empty and unregarded for hours at a time.

  A lamp was still alight in his new suite. Mr Fusspot was snoring on his back in the middle of the in-tray. A night-light was burning by the bedroom door. In fact there were two, and they were the red, smouldering eyes of Gladys.

  'Would You Like Me To Make You A Sandwich, Mr Lipwig?'

  'No, thank you, Gladys.'

  'It Would Be No Trouble. There Are Kidneys In The Ice Room.'

  'Thank you, but no, Gladys. I'm really not hungry,' said Moist, carefully shutting the door.

  Moist lay on the bed. Up here, the building was absolutely silent. He'd grown used to his bed in the Post Office, where there was always noise drifting up from the yard.

  But it was not the silence that kept him awake. He stared up at the ceiling and thought: stupid, stupid, stupid! In a few hours there would be a shift change at the Tanty. People wouldn't get too worried about the missing Owlswick until the hangman turned up looking busy, and then there would be a nervous time when they decided who was going to go to the palace to see if there was any chance of being allowed to hang their prisoner this morning.

  The man would be miles away by now, and not even a werewolf could smell him on a wet and windy night like this. They couldn't pin anything on Moist, but in the cold wet light of two a.m. he could imagine bloody Commander Vimes worrying at this, picking away at it in that thick-headed way of his.

  He blinked. Where would the little man run to? He wasn't part of a gang, according to the Watch. He'd just made his own stamps. What kind of a man goes to the trouble of forging a ha'penny stamp?

  What kind of a man…

  Moist sat up. Could it be that easy?

  Well, it might be. Owlswick was crazy enough in a mild, bewildered sort of way. He had the look of one who'd long ago given up trying to understand the world beyond his easel, a man for whom cause and effect had no obvious linkage. Where would a man like that hide?

  Moist lit the lamp and walked over to the battered wreckage of his wardrobe. Once again he selected the tatty grey suit. It had sentimental value; he had been hanged in it. And it was an unmemorable suit for an unmemorable man, with the additional advantage, unlike black, of not showing up in the dark. Thinking ahead, he went into the kitchen, too, and stole a couple of dusters from a cupboard.

  The corridor was reasonably well lit by the lamps every few yards. But lamps create shadows and in one of them, beside a huge Ping Dynasty vase from Hunghung, Moist was just a patch of grey on grey.

  A guard walked past, treacherously silent on the thick carpet. When he'd gone, Moist hurried down the flight of marble steps and tucked himself behind a potted palm that someone had thought it necessary to put there.

  The floors of the bank all opened on to the main hall which, like the one in the Post Office, went from ground floor to roof. Sometimes, depending on the layout, a guard on a floor above could see the floor below. Sometimes, the guards walked over uncarpeted marble. Sometimes, on the upper floors, they crossed patches of fine tiling which rang like a bell.

  Moist stood and listened, trying to pick up the rhythm o
f the patrols. There were more than he'd expected. Come on, lads, you're working security: what about the traditional all-night poker game! Don't you know how to behave?

  It was like a wonderful puzzle. It was better than night-climbing, better even than Extreme Sneezing! And the really good thing about it was this: if he was caught, why, he was just testing the security! Well done, lads, you found me…

  But he mustn't be caught.

  A guard came upstairs, walking slowly and deliberately. He leaned against the balustrade and, to Moist's annoyance, lit the stub of a cigarette. Moist watched from between the fronds while the man leaned comfortably on the marble, looking down at the floor below. He was sure that guards weren't supposed to do this. And smoking, too!

  After a few reflective drags, the guard dropped the dog-end, trod on it and continued up the stairs.

  Two thoughts struggled for dominance in Moist's mind. Screaming slightly louder was: he had a crossbow! Do they shoot first to avoid having to ask questions later? But also there, vibrating with indignation, was a voice saying: he stubbed out that damn cigarette right there on the marble! Those tall brass wossnames with the little bowls of white sand are there for a reason, you know!

  When the man had disappeared above him Moist ran down the rest of the flight, slid across the polished marble on his duster-covered boots, found the door that led down to the basement, opened it quickly and remembered just in time to close it quietly behind him.

  He shut his eyes and waited for cries or sounds of pursuit.

  He opened his eyes.

  There was the usual brilliant light at the far end of the undercroft, but there was no rushing of water. Only the occasional drip demonstrated the depth of the otherwise all-pervading silence.

  Moist walked carefully past the Glooper, which tinkled faintly, and into the unexplored shadows beneath the wonderful fornication.

  If we build it, wilt thou comest? he thought. But the hoped-for god never came. It was sad but, in some celestial way, a bit stupid. Well, wasn't it? Moist had heard that there were maybe millions of little gods floating around in the world, living under rocks, blown about like tumbleweed, clinging to the topmost branches of trees… They awaited the big moment, the lucky break that might end up with a temple and a priesthood and worshippers to call your own. But they hadn't come here, and it was easy to see why.