The Truth (Discworld 25)

'Dead?' said William, looking carefully at the bags.

'I hope so. I really hope so. You could say he made a bit of an impression. He's a bit on the... cooked side. And there's an arrow through his head.'

'William, you realize that you are robbing a corpse?' said Sacharissa.

'Good,' said William distantly. 'Best time.' He upended a bag and jewels spilled across the charred wood.

There was a strangled noise from Goodmountain. Next to gold, jewels were a dwarf's best friend.

William emptied the other bags.

'How much do you think this lot is worth?' he said, when the gems stopped rolling and twinkling.

Goodmountain had already whipped an eye glass from an inside pocket and was inspecting a few of the larger stones. 'What? Hey? Oh, tens of thousands. Could be a hundred thousand. Could be a lot more. This one here is worth fifteen hundred, I reckon, and it's not the best of 'em,'

'He must've stolen them!' said Sacharissa.

'No,' said William calmly. 'We'd have heard about a theft this big. We hear about things. A young man would certainly have told you. Check to see if he has a wallet, will you?'

'The very idea! And what--'

'Check for a damn wallet, will you?' said William. 'This is a story.

I'm going to check his legs, and I'm not looking forward to that, either. But this is a story. We can have hysterics later. Do it. Please?'

There was a half-healed bite on the dead man's leg. William rolled up his own trouser leg for comparison while Sacharissa, her eyes averted, pulled a brown leather wallet out of the jacket.

'Any clue to who he is?' said William, carefully measuring tooth-marks with his pencil. His mind felt strangely calm. He wondered if he was actually thinking at all. It all seemed like some dream, happening in another world.

'Er... there's something done on the leather in pokerwork,' said Sacharissa.

'What does it say?'

' "Not A Very Nice Person At All",' she read. 'I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?'

'Someone who wasn't a very nice person,' said William. 'Anything else in there?'

There's a piece of paper with an address,' said Sacharissa. 'Er... I didn't have time to tell you this, er, William. Um

'What does it say?'

'It's 50 Nonesuch Street. Er. Which is where those men caught me. They had a key and everything. Er... that's your family's house, isn't it?'

'What do you want me to do with these jewels?' said Goodmountain.

'I mean, you gave me a key and everything,' said Sacharissa nervously. 'But there was this man in the cellar, highly inebriated, and he looked just like Lord Vetinari, and then these men turned up and knocked out Rocky and then--'

'I'm not suggesting anything,' said Goodmountain, 'but if these aren't stolen, then I know plenty of places that'd give us top dollar, even at this time of night--'

'--and of course they were most impolite but really there was nothing I could do--'

'--we could do with a bit of immediate cash, is the point I'm trying to make--'

It dawned on the girl and the dwarf that William was no longer listening. He seemed locked, blank-faced, in a little bubble of silence.

Slowly, he pulled the Dis-organizer towards him and pressed the button marked 'Recall'. There was a muffled 'Ouch'.

'... nyip-nyap mapnyap nyee-wheedlewheedlewheee