Snuff

with him. He’s a killer, sir, a stone killer! Don’t give him a chance, sir, I beg you for all our sakes, and do it quickly for yours!” The air was electric, truly electric. Everything metal shook and jangled. “They say the dam is going to break pretty soon,” said Brassbound.
    â€œThank you for that, Mr. Brassbound. You sound like a sensible young man to me and I’ll say so to the authorities.”
    The worried young man’s face was wreathed in smiles as he said, “And you’re the famous Commander Vimes, sir! I’m glad to be at your back.”
    There were a lot of steps up to the wheelhouse. The pilot was king and rode high over the river, monarch of all he surveyed even if, as now, rain hammered at the expensive glass windows as if it found such solid slabs of sky offensive. Vimes stepped inside quickly. It was hardly worth shouting, given that the storm drowned out everything, but you had to be able to say that you’d said it: “Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch! Statute of necessary action!” Which didn’t exist, but he swore to himself that he would damn well get it enacted as soon as he got back, even if he had to call in favors from all over the world. A lawman faced with a dreadful emergency should at least have some kind of figleaf to shove down the throats of the lawyers!
    He could see the back of Mr. Sillitoe’s head with his pilot’s cap. The pilot paid Vimes no attention, but a young man was standing looking at Vimes in knock-kneed, pants-wetting horror. The sword he had been carrying landed heavily on the deck.
    Brassbound was hopping from one foot to the other. “You’d better take care of him right now, commander, he’ll have a trick or two up his sleeve and no mistake!”
    Vimes ignored this and carefully patted the young man down, freeing up one short knife, the sort a river rat might carry. He used it to cut a length of rope and tied the man’s hands together behind him. “Okay, Mr. Stratford, we’re going downstairs. Though if you’d like to dive into the water first I won’t stop you.”
    And then the man spoke for the first time. “I ain’t Stratford, sir,” he said, pleading. “I’m Squeezy McIntyre. That’s Stratford behind you with the crossbow pointing at you, sir.”
    The man formerly known as Brassbound gave a chuckle as Vimes turned. “Oh my, oh my, the great Commander Vimes! I’ll be damned if you ain’t as dumb as a pile of horseshit! You know the eyes of a killer when you see them, do you? Well, I reckon I’ve killed maybe sixteen people, not including goblins, of course, they don’t count.”
    Stratford sighted on Vimes and grinned. “Maybe it’s my boyish features, would you say? What kind of bloody fool cares about the goblins, eh? Oh, they say they can talk, but you know how those little buggers can lie!” The tip of the crossbow drifted back and forward hypnotically in Stratford’s hands. “I’m curious, though. I mean, I don’t like you, and sure as salvation I’m going to shoot you, but do me a favor and tell me what you saw in my eyes, okay?”
    Squeezy took the opportunity to hop desperately down the steps just as Vimes said, with a shrug, “I saw a goblin girl being murdered. What lies did she tell you? I know the eyes of a murderer, Mr. Stratford, oh I surely do, because I’ve looked into eyes like that many times. And if I need reminding, I look into my shaving mirror. Oh, yes, I recognize your eyes and I’m interested to see what you’re going to do next, Mr. Stratford. Though now I come to think about it, maybe it wasn’t sensible of me to give you that crossbow. Maybe I really am stupid, because I’m offering you the opportunity to surrender to me here and now and I’m doing it only once.”
    Stratford stared with his mouth open and then said, “Hell, commander, I’ve got the drop on you, and you want me to surrender to you ? Sorry, commander, but I’ll see you again in hell!”
    There was a space in the world for the crossbow to sing when the grinning Stratford pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the sound that it made approximated to the word thunk . He stared at it.
    â€œI took the safety pin out and stamped it into the dung,” said Vimes. “You can’t fire it without the pin! Now, I expect you have a couple of