Night Watch

going to happen, because it might not. Be yourself.

And, because he was himself, he made a few little purchases in little shops in dark alleys, and went to work.

The Treacle Mine Road Night Watch House was generally deserted around midday, but Vimes knew that Snouty, at least, would be there. He was a Persistent Floater, just like Nobby and Colon and Carrot and, when you got down to it, Vimes as well. Being on duty was their default state of being. They hung around the Watch House even when off duty, because that's where their lives took place. Being a copper wasn't something you left hanging by the door when you went home.

But I promise I'll learn how, thought Vimes. When I get back, it'll all be different.

He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn't even locked. Black mark right there, lads.

The iron bulk of the hurry-up wagon stood empty on the cobbles.

Behind it was what they called, now, the stables. In fact, the stables were only the bottom floor of what would have been part of Ankh-Morpork's industrial heritage, if anyone had ever thought of it like that. In practice they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cart away. It was part of the winding gear from a treacle mine, long since abandoned. One of the original lifting buckets was still up there, glued to the floor by its last load of the heavy, sticky, unrefined treacle which, once set, was tougher than cement and more waterproof than tar. Vimes remembered, as a kid, begging chippings of pig treacle off the miners; one lump of that, oozing the sweetness of prehistoric sugar cane, could keep a boy's mouth happily shut for a week.6

Inside the treacle-roofed stable level, chewing a bit of bad hay, was the horse. Vimes knew it was a horse because it checked out as one: four hooves, tail, head with mane, seedy brown coat. Considered from another angle, it was half a ton of bones held together with horsehair.

He patted it gingerly; as one of nature's pedestrians, he'd never been at home around horses. He unhooked a greasy clipboard from a nail near by and flicked through its pages. Then he had another look around the yard. Tilden never did that. He looked at the pigsty in the corner where Knock kept his pig, and then at the chicken run, and the pigeon loft, and the badly made rabbit hutches, and he did a few calculations.

The old Watch House! It was all there, just like the day he first arrived. It had been two houses once, and one of them had been the treacle mine office. Everywhere in the city had been something else once. And so the place was a maze of blocked-in doorways and ancient windows and poky rooms.

He wandered around like a man in a museum. See the old helmet on a stick for archery practice! See Sergeant Knock's broken-springed armchair, where he used to sit out on sunny afternoons!

And, inside, the smell: floor wax, stale sweat, armour polish, unwashed clothes, ink, a hint of fried fish and always, here, a taint of treacle.

The Night Watch. He was back.

When the first members of the Night Watch came in they found a man perfectly at ease, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a desk and leafing through paperwork. The man had sergeant's stripes and an air of an unsprung trap. He was also giving absolutely no attention to the newcomers. He particularly paid no heed to one gangly lance-constable who was still new enough to have tried to put a shine on his breastplate…

They fanned out among the desks, with muttered conversations.

Vimes knew them in his soul. They were in the Night Watch because they were too scruffy, ugly, incompetent, awkwardly shaped or bloody-minded for the Day Watch. They were honest, in that special policeman sense of the word. That is, they didn't steal things too heavy to carry. And they had the morale of damp gingerbread.

He'd wondered last night about giving them some kind of pep talk by way of introduction, and decided against it. They might be very bad at it but they were coppers, and coppers did not respond well to the Happy Families approach: “Hello, chaps, call me Christopher, my door is always open, I'm sure if we all pull together we shall get along splendidly like one big happy family.” They'd seen too many families to fall for that rubbish.

Someone cleared their throat with malice aforethought. Vimes glanced up and into the face of Sergeant “Knocker” Knock and, for a fraction of a second, had to suppress the urge to salute. Then he remembered what Knock was.

“Well?” he said.

“That's my desk you're sitting at, sergeant,” said Knock.

Vimes sighed, and pointed to the little crown on his sleeve. “See this, sergeant?” he said. “It's what they used to call the hat of authority.”

Knock's little weaselly eyes focused on the crown. And then they went back to Vimes's face, and widened in the shock of recognition.

“Bloody hell,” breathed Knock.

“That's ‘bloody hell, sir,’” said Vimes. “But ‘sarge’ will do. Most of the time. And this is your mob, is it? Oh dear. Well, let's make a start.”

He swung his feet off the desk and stood up. “I've been looking at the feed bills for Marilyn,” he said. “Interesting reading, lads. According to my rough calculations a horse eating that much ought to be approximately spherical. Instead, she's so thin that with two sticks and some sheet music I could give you a tune.”

Vimes put the papers down. “Don't think I don't know where the corn goes. I bet I know who's got the chickens and rabbits and pigeons,” he said. “And the pig. I bet the captain thinks they get fat on leftovers.”

“Yeah, but—” a voice began.

Vimes's hand slammed on the desk. “You lot even starve the damn horse!' he said. That stops right now! So will a lot of other things. I know how it works, see? Mumping free beer and a doughnut, well, that's part of being a copper. And who knows, there might even be a few greasy spoons in this town so happy to see a copper that they will spontaneously offer him a free nosh. Stranger things have happened. But nicking the oats from Marilyn, that stops now. And another thing. Says here that last night the hurry-up wagon had eight passengers,” he said. “Two of them I know about, 'cos one of them must've been me and I met the other man. The cells are empty this morning. What happened to the other six? Sergeant Knock?”

The sergeant licked his lips nervously. “Dropped 'em off in Cable Street for questioning, o'course,” he said. “As per instructions.”

“Did you get a receipt?”

“A what?”

“Your men hauled in six people who were staying out late and you handed them over to the Unmentionables,” said Vimes, with the calm that comes before a storm. “Did they sign for them? Do you even know their names?”

“Orders is just to hand 'em over,” said Knock, trying a little defiance. “Hand 'em over and come away.”

Vimes filed that for future reference and said: “Now, I didn't get taken there 'cos we had a bit of a… misunderstanding. And as you can see it was a bigger misunderstanding than you thought, because I'm not down in the Tanty counting cockroaches, Knock. No, indeed.” He took a few steps forward. “I am standing in front of you, Knock. Isn't that what I'm doing?”

“Yes, sarge,” Knock muttered, pale with fear and fury.

“Yes, sarge,” said Vimes. “But there was another man in the cells, and he's gone too. All I want to know is: how much, and who to? I don't want any looks of cherubic innocence, I don't want any ‘don't know what you're talking about, sir’, I just want to know: how much, and who to?”

A cloud of red, resentful solidarity settled over the faces in front of him. But he didn't need telling. He could remember. Corporal Quirke always had a private income from bribes; he'd been like Nobby Nobbs without the latter's amiable incompetence. An efficient Nobby, in fact, and you could throw into the mix bullying and brown-nosing and a delight in small evils.

Vimes's gaze fell on Quirke, and stayed there.

“I know you were on the wagon last night, corporal,” he said. “You and Lance-Constable, er, Vimes, it says here.”

“Not worth worrying anyone if they look a decent sort,” Quirke said.