Snuff

But there was another copper here, wasn’t there, a real old flatfoot let out to grass, but being a copper stained you to the bone; you never got rid of it. He smiled. Time perhaps to go for a convivial drink with Mr Jiminy.

The Goblin’s Head was bare of customers at this time of day except the ever-present trio on the bench outside. Vimes seated himself at the bar with a glass of Mrs Jiminy’s root beer and leaned confidentially towards the barman. ‘So, Mister Jiminy, what’s of interest here to an old copper?’

Jiminy opened his mouth, but Vimes went on, ‘Rosewood truncheon, Pseudopolis City Watch? I know I’m right. It’s no crime. That’s the copper’s dream, and you take your trusty truncheon with you to have a little friend you can depend on if the customer can’t hold his liquor and won’t take a hint.’ Vimes was now settled with one elbow on the bar and doodling on a small puddle of spilt beer. ‘But the job follows you, doesn’t it? And if you run a pub, well, that goes double, because you hear all sorts of things, things you don’t do anything about because you aren’t a copper any more, except you know you are. And it must worry you, somewhere in your soul, that there are things going wrong in these parts. Even I can tell. It’s the copper’s nose. I can smell it in the air. It comes up through my boots. Secrets and lies, Mister Jiminy, secrets and lies.’

Jiminy made a point of wiping his cloth over the spilt beer and said, as if absent-mindedly, ‘You know, Commander Vimes, things are different in the country. People think that the country is where you can go to hide out. It ain’t so. In the city you’re a face in the crowd. In the country people will stare at you until you’re out of sight, just for the entertainment value. Like you say, I’m not a copper any more: I ain’t got a warrant card, and I ain’t got the inclination. And now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do. There’ll be more customers soon. Watch where you tread, your grace.’

Vimes didn’t let him off the hook. ‘Interesting thing, Mister Jiminy: I know you have the lease on this pub but, amazingly enough, I’m still your landlord. I’m sorry about that, but before we came down here I looked at a map and saw a pub on our land, and what a waste, I thought, but that makes me your landlord. Not very republican of me, I know, but I just wonder, Mister Jiminy, if it may be that not everyone in these parts is that keen on having the Commander of the City Watch down here in this quiet little hideaway, hmm?’ An image of poor old Lord Rust artlessly telling him that there was nothing here of interest passed across Vimes’s inner vision.

Jiminy’s expression was frozen, but Vimes, who knew this game, saw that tiny twitch which, when decoded, meant, ‘Yes, but I didn’t say anything and no one can prove I did. Not even you, my friend.’

Further discussion on the point was interrupted when the sons of the soil began to come in, one by one, to celebrate the ending of the working day. This time there was less suspicion in their eyes as they nodded to Vimes en route to the bar, and so he sat nursing his pint of spiced-up beetroot juice and just enjoyed the moment. It was a very short moment, at the end of which the blacksmith swaggered into the bar and walked straight up to him.

‘You are sitting in my seat!’

Vimes looked around. He was sitting on a bench that was indistinguishable from all the others in the room, but he accepted the possibility that there was something mystic about the one he was occupying, picked up his glass and strolled over to an unoccupied one, where he sat down just in time to hear the blacksmith say, ‘That one’s my seat too, understand?’

Oh dear, here was the overture and beginners to a brawl, and Vimes was no beginner, right enough, and the blacksmith’s eyes held the look of a man who wanted to punch somebody and very likely thought that Vimes would make the ideal candidate.

He felt the gentle pressure of his own brass knuckles in his trouser pocket. Vimes had been economical with the truth when he promised his wife that he would not take any weapons on holiday with him. However, he’d reasoned that a knuckleduster was not so much a weapon as a way of making certain that he stayed alive. It could be called a defensive instrument, a kind of shield, as it were, especially if you needed to get your defence in before you were attacked.

He stood up. ‘Mister Jethro, I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to choose which chair is yours for the evening, thank you very much, after which I intend to enjoy my drink in peace

.’

Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wrath had never worked in a bar. The blacksmith glowered at about the same temperature as his forge. ‘I ain’t Jethro to you, not by a long way. You can call me Mister Jefferson, do you hear?’

‘And you can call me Sam Vimes.’ He watched Jefferson very deliberately place his drink on the bar before he strode towards Vimes.

‘I know what I can call you, mister …’