'I want to turn King's Evidence!'
'Guess again!'
Carry lowered his voice. 'They just said I could get the damn golem to do it. I didn't think anyone was going to get hurt.'
'Right, right,' said Vimes. 'You made poisoned candles because they gave a better light, I expect.'
'You know what I mean! They told me it would all be all right and - '
'Which they would they be?'
'They said no one would ever find out!'
'Really?'
'Look, look, they said they could...' The voice paused, and took on that wheedling tone the blunt-witted use when they're trying to sound sharp.
'If I tell you everything, you'll let me go, right?'
The two sergeants had caught up. Vimes pulled Detritus towards him, although in fact he ended up pulling himself towards Detritus.
'Go round the corner and see he doesn't come out of the alley the other way,' he whispered. The troll nodded.
'What's it you want to tell me, Mr Carry?' said Vimes to the darkness in the alley.
'Have we got a bargain?'
'What?'
'A bargain.'
'No, we damn well haven't got a bargain, Mr Carry! I'm not a tradesman! But I'll tell you something, Mr Carry. They betrayed you!'
There was silence from the darkness, and then a sound like a sigh.
Behind Vimes, Sergeant Colon stamped his feet on the cobbles to keep warm.
'You can't stay in there all night, Mr Carry,' said Vimes.
There was another sound, a leathery sound. Vimes glanced up into the coils of fog. 'Something's not right,' he said. 'Come on!'
He ran into the alley. Sergeant Colon followed, on the basis that it was fine to run into an alley containing an armed man provided you were behind someone else.
A shape loomed at them.
'Detritus?'
'Yes, sir!'
'Where did he go? There are no doors in the alley!'
Then his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom. He saw a huddled outline at the foot of a wall, and his foot nudged a crossbow. 'Mr Carry?'
He knelt down and lit a match.
'Oh, nasty,' said Sergeant Colon. 'Something's broken his neck...'
'Dead, is he?' said Detritus. 'You want I should draw a chalk outline round him?'