Snuff

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.³¹ 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 splitarse, 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 armour 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 armour, because a lot of the power of a copper consists in looking like a copper.³² Safety considerations didn’t matter; there were plenty of weapons which, if handled with skill, could go through steel armour, 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 Piecemaker 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.

‘Fraternising 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, Mister 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, Mister 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 was mad, and pointed to the wobbling temporary clacks tower. ‘Have to check the clacks messages, Mister 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, Mister 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, Mister 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