Snuff

Flutter looked at him in astonishment. ‘Catch the Fanny? Bless you, sir, a man with one leg could do that! She’s a bulk carrier, not a streaker! Even going all night she won’t have got much past Fender’s Bend by now. There are bends all the way, you see? I reckon you never get more than half a mile without a bend! And it’s full of rocks, too. Seriously, you have to zigzag so much on Old Treachery that you’re often crossing your own wake.’

Vimes nodded at this. ‘One last thing, Ted. Remind me again … What exactly does Mister Stratford look like?’

‘Oh, you know the type, sir, sort of average. Dunno how old he is. Maybe twenty-five. Maybe twenty. Sort of mousy hair. No scars that show, amazingly.’ Ted looked embarrassed at this paucity of information and shrugged. ‘Sort of average height, sir.’ He scrabbled for details and gave up. ‘To tell you the truth, he sort of looks like everyone else, sir, that is until he gets angry’ – Ted’s face lit up – ‘and that, sir, is when he looks like Stratford.’

Willikins was sitting on the bench under the chestnut tree with his hands resting peacefully on his knees. He was good at it. He had a talent for resting that had escaped Vimes. It must be a servant thing, Vimes thought: if you don’t have anything to do, don’t do anything. And right now he

could do with a rest. Maybe evidence was going downstream even as he stood there, but by the sound of it at a speed that could almost be overtaken on foot. Regrettably Sybil was right. At his age you had to be sensible. You sometimes had to catch your breath, while you still had some. He sat down beside the man, and said, ‘An interesting day, Willikins.’

‘Indeed, yes, commander, and may I say that young Constable Upshot handled his responsibilities with great aplomb. You have a talent for inspiring people, sir, if I may say so.’

There was silence for a while, and then Vimes said, ‘Well, of course, we were helped by the fact that some bloody fool actually let an arrow go! You could see them thinking about what might happen if you’re one of the gang that killed a dear old lady. That’s a kind of trouble you don’t get out of easily. That opened them up! And it was obviously a real stroke of luck for us,’ Vimes added, without turning his head. He let the silence continue as the storm raged in the distance, while, nearby, whatever it was that was chirruping in the bushes carried on doing so in the warm, sultry afternoon.

‘It puzzles me, though,’ he went on, as if a thought had only just crossed his mind. ‘If it was someone in the front of the crowd who had loosed his crossbow then surely I would have seen it, and if it was one towards the back then he would have to have been clever and skilful enough to sight through maybe a very narrow space. That would be very clever shooting, Willikins.’

Willikins was still staring placidly ahead. Vimes’s sideways glance spotted no hint of moisture on his brow. Then the gentleman’s gentleman said, ‘I expect these country lads excel at trick shooting, commander.’

Vimes slapped him on the back and laughed. ‘Well, that’s the funny thing, don’t you think? I mean, did you see their gear? It was low-grade stuff, in my opinion, not well maintained, the kind of stuff that granddad brought back from some war, whereas that arrow, I recognized that evil little package as a custom-made bolt for the Burleigh and Stronginthearm Piecemaker Mark IX, you remember?’

‘I am afraid you will have to refresh my memory, commander.’

Vimes was beginning to enjoy himself and said, ‘Oh, you must! Only three of them were made, and two of them are still under wizard-assisted lock and key in the company vaults and the other – surely you remember this? – is locked safely in that little vault that we made in the cellar in Scoone Avenue last year? You and I poured concrete while Sybil and the lad were out, and rubbed dirt all over the floor so that you had to know it was there in order to find it. It’s a hanging matter for anyone to be found with one of them, according to Vetinari, and the Assassins’ Guild told the Times that hanging would be a picnic compared with what would happen to anyone they found in possession of one of those. I mean, think about it: can’t hardly tell it’s a crossbow. Silent, folds up and fits in a pocket in an instant, easily concealed and deadly in the hands of a skilled man, such as you or I.’ Vimes laughed again. ‘Don’t be surprised, Willikins, I recall your prowess with even a standard military bow during the war. Heavens know what someone like you could manage with the damn Piecemaker. I just wonder how one turned up out here in the country. After all, Feeney confiscated all the weapons he found, but maybe one of those chaps had hidden it in his boot. What do you think?’