Snuff

‘Don’t you squire me. There’s something going down here, something wrong; I can feel it in my boots and, believe me, they are the most sensitive boots that ever were. The man who runs the village pub knows everything – I know that and so do you. If you’re not on my side you’re in my way and you know something, I can see it in your eyes. If it turns out you knew something of importance about the blacksmith you’ll have invited yourself to be an accessory after the fact, with a free option, if I can get the bit between my teeth, of before the fact, which leaves you right in the middle, and that’s a fact.’

Jiminy wriggled, but Vimes’s grip was steely. ‘Your badge doesn’t work here, Mister Vimes, you know that!’

Vimes heard the tiny whine of fear in the man’s voice, but old coppers were tough. If you weren’t tough, you never became an old copper. ‘I’m going to let go, sir

,’ said Vimes, which is policeman’s code for ‘trembling arsehole’. ‘You think that legally around here I don’t have a leg to stand on. This may or may not be true, but my man here is not a policeman and is not accustomed to doing things nicely like we in the job do, and you might end up without a leg to stand on as well. I’m telling you this as a friend. We both know this game, eh? I expect you were working in the bar when the goblin was killed, yes?’

‘I didn’t know a bloody goblin was killed, did I? So how would I know when it may or may not have happened? My advice, sir,’ said Jiminy, with the same coded inflection that Vimes had used, ‘would be to report the matter to the authorities in the morning. That would be young Upshot, calls himself a copper. Look, I came here to retire, Vimes, and staying alive is part of that. I do not poke my nose into that which does not concern me. And I know there’s a lot of things that you could do and I know you ain’t going to do them, but just so’s you don’t go home empty-handed, Jethro lives where all blacksmiths live, right in the centre of the village overlooking the green. He lives with his old mum, so I wouldn’t disturb her at this time of night. And now, gents, I’d better shut the pub. Don’t want to break the law.’

The panel slid back, and there was the sound of a bolt slotting into place. A moment later, to the time-honoured cry of ‘Ain’t you lot got no homes to go to?’, they heard the front door open and the lane filled with men trying to get their brains to go in the direction of their feet, or vice versa.

In the shadows of the pub’s back yard, which smelled of old barrels, Willikins said, ‘Would you like to take a bet on whether your blacksmith is tucked up in his bed tonight, sir?’

‘No,’ said Vimes, ‘but this stinks to me. I think I’ve got a murder, but I haven’t got a corpse, not all of it anyway,’ he said, as Willikins opened his mouth. He grunted. ‘For it to be definitely murder, Willikins, you need to be missing an important bit of you that you really need to stay alive, like your head. Okay, or like your blood, but it’s difficult to collect that in the dark, isn’t it?’

They set off, and Vimes said, ‘The one thing you can say about the dead is that they stay dead, well, generally speaking, and so … it’s been a long day, and that’s a long walk and old age is creeping on, okay?’

‘Not very noticeably from the outside, commander,’ said Willikins loyally.

The door was opened to them by a yawning night footman and as soon as he had retired Willikins produced from the pocket of his coat the reeking and severed goblin claw and placed it on the hall table.

‘Not much to a goblin once you get past the head, or so they say. See, there’s the ring on the finger. Definitely looks like stone. See the little blue bead? Pretty good workmanship for a goblin.’

‘Animals don’t wear jewellery,’ said Vimes. ‘You know, Willikins, I’ve said it before, you’d make a bloody good copper if it wasn’t for the fact that you’d make a bloody good assassin.’

Willikins grinned. ‘I did think about the assassins when I was a lad, sir, but unfortunately I was not of the right social class and, besides, they have rules.’ He helped Vimes out of his jacket and went on, ‘The street don’t have rules, commander, except one, which is “Survive”, and my dear old dad would probably turn in his grave if I even thought of being a copper.’

‘But I thought you never knew who your father was?’

‘Indeed, sir, that is the case, but one must consider the fact of heredity.’ Willikins produced a small brush and whisked a speck of dirt off the coat before putting it on a hanger, then went on, ‘I do feel the absence of a parent sometimes and I have wondered whether it might be a sensible idea to go along to the cemetery at Small Gods and shout out, “Dad, I’m going to be a copper,” and then see which gravestone revolved, sir.’