Snuff (Discworld 39)

Vimes leaned forward and whispered, “Does she know you’ve arrested me?”

Feeney shuddered. “No, and, sir, please, please don’t tell her, because I think she’d never let me into the house ever again.”

Vimes walked over to the door and said to the slot, “I shall be honored by your hospitality, Mistress Upshot.”

There was a nervous giggle from the other side of the slot, and Feeney’s mother managed to say, “I’m sorry to say we have no silver plates, your highness!”

At home Vimes and Sybil ate off serviceable earthenware, cheap, practical and easy to keep clean. He said aloud, “I’m sorry you don’t have any silver plates, too, Mistress Upshot, and I’ll have a set sent to you directly.”

There was something like a scuffle from the other side of the slot, at the same time as Feeney said, “I beg your pardon? Have you gone mad, sir?”

Well, that would help, Vimes thought. “We’ve got hundreds of damn silver plates up at the Hall, my lad. Bloody useless, they make the food cold and they turn black as soon as your back is turned. We appear to be overrun with silver spoons, too. I’ll see what we’ve got.”

“You can’t do that, sir! She gets scared of having valuables in the house!”

“Do you have much theft hereabouts, chief constable?” said Vimes, emphasizing the last two words.

Mr. Feeney opened the door of the lockup and picked up his mother, who had apparently been stunned by the possibility of owning silver plates, brushed her down and said over her shoulder, “No, sir, the reason being no one has anything to steal. My mum always told me money can’t buy you happiness, sir.”

Yes, Vimes thought, so did my ma, but she was glad enough when I gave her my first wages, because it meant we could have a meal with meat in it, even if we didn’t know what kind of meat it was. That’s happiness, isn’t it? Blimey, the lies we tell ourselves…

When a blushing Mistress Upshot had gone to fetch the meal, Vimes said, “Between ourselves, chief constable, do you believe that I’m guilty of murder?”

“No, sir!” said Feeney instantly.

“You said that very quickly, young man. Are you going to say that it’s copper’s instinct? Because I get the impression you ain’t been a copper long and haven’t had much to do. I’m no expert, but I don’t reckon pigs try lying to you very much either.”

Feeney took a deep breath. “Well, sir,” he said calmly, “my granddad was a wily old bird and he could read people like books. He used to walk me around the area introducing me to people, sir, and then as they strolled along he’d tell me their stories, like the one about the man who’d been caught in flagrante delicto with a common barnyard fowl…”

Vimes listened openmouthed as the pink, well-scrubbed face talked about the gentle, fragrant landscape as if it was populated by devils from the most insidious pit. He unrolled a crime sheet that badly needed the laundry: no major murders, just nastiness, silliness and all the crimes of human ignorance and stupidity. Of course, where there were people there was crime. It just seemed out of place in the slow world of big spaces and singing birds. And yet he’d smelled it as soon as he was here and now he was in the middle of it.

“You get a tingle,” said Feeney. “That’s what my dad told me. He said watch, listen and keep your eye on every man. There never was a good policeman who didn’t have a slice of villain somewhere in him, and this will call to you. It will say ‘This man has something to hide,’ or ‘This man is far more frightened than he should be’ or ‘This man is acting too cocky by half because underneath he’s a bag of nerves.’ It will call to you.”

Vimes opted for admiration rather than shock, but not too much admiration. “Well, Mr. Feeney, I reckon your grandfather and your dad got it right. So I’m sending the right signals, am I?”

“No, sir, none at all, sir. My granddad and my dad could go like that sometimes. Totally blank. It makes people nervous.” Feeney cocked his head on one side and said, “Just a moment, sir, I think we have a little problem…”

The door to the lockup clanged open as Chief Constable Upshot skidded around to the rear of the squat little building. Something yelped and squealed and then Vimes, sitting peacefully inside, suddenly had goblins on his lap. In fact it was only one goblin, but one goblin is more than sufficient at close quarters. There was the smell, to begin with, and not to end with either, because it appeared to permeate the world. Yet it wasn’t the stink—although heavens knew that they stank with all the stinks an organic creature could generate—no, anyone who walked the streets of Ankh-Morpork was more or less immune to stinks, and indeed there was now a flourishing, if that

was the word, hobby of stink-collecting,* and Dave, of Dave’s Pin and Stamp Emporium, was extending the sign over his shop again. You couldn’t bottle (or whatever it was the collectors did) the intrinsic smell of a goblin because it wasn’t so much a stink as a sensation, the sensation in fact that your dental enamel was being evaporated and any armor you might have was rusting at some speed. Vimes punched at the thing but it hung on with arms and legs together, screaming in what was theoretically a voice, that sounded like a bag of walnuts being jumped on. And yet it wasn’t attacking—unless you considered the biological warfare. It clung with its legs and waved its arms, and Vimes just managed to stop Feeney braining it with his official truncheon, because, once you paid attention, the goblin was using words, and the words were: Ice! Ice! We want just ice! Demand! Demand just ice! Right? Just ice!

Feeney, on the other hand, was shouting, “Stinky, you little devil, I told you what I’d do to you if ever I saw you stealing the pigswill again!” He looked at Vimes as if for support. “They can give you horrible diseases, sir!”

“Will you stop dancing around with that damn weapon, boy!” Vimes looked down at the goblin now struggling in his grasp, and said, “As for you, you little bugger, stop your racket!”

The little room went silent, apart from the dying strains of “They eat their own babies!” from Feeney and “Just ice!” from the goblin, simply and accurately named as “Stinky.”

Not panicking now, the goblin pointed a claw at Vimes’s left wrist, looked him in the face, and said, “Just ice?” It was a plea. The claw tugged at his leg. “Just ice?” The creature hobbled to the door and looked up at the glowering chief constable and then turned to Vimes with an expression that bored into the man’s face and said very deliberately, “Just ice? Mr. Po-leess-maan?”

Vimes pulled out his snuffbox. You could say this for the brown stuff: all that ceremony you went through before you took a pinch gave you rather more thinking time than lighting a cigar. It also got people’s attention. He said, “Well now, chief constable, here is somebody asking you for justice. What are you going to do about it?”

Feeney looked uncertain, and took refuge in a certainty. “It’s a stinking goblin!”

“Do you often see them around the lockup?” said Vimes, keeping his tone mild.

“Only Stinky,” said Feeney, glowering at the goblin, who stuck out his worm-like tongue. “He’s always hanging around. The rest of them know what happens if they’re caught thieving around here!”

Vimes glanced down at the goblin and recognized a badly set broken leg when he saw one. He turned the snuffbox over and over in his hands, and did not look at the young man. “But surely a policeman wonders what has happened for a wretched thing like this to walk right up to the law and risk being maimed…again?”