Snuff

squad of men to crew it, and I want them now, and while I’m waiting I’d like someone to get me a clean shirt and a bacon sandwich…without avec.”
    â€œThey have a pretty swift cutter, commander, for chasing smugglers!”
    â€œGood, and get me a cutlass. I’ve always wanted to try one.” Vimes thought for a moment and added, “And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich. And, Haddock, if you can scavenge a bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s very famous old brown sauce, I swear I’ll make you a full sergeant when your term here is up, ’cos any man who can find a proper down-and-dirty Ankh-Morpork sauce in Quirm, home of five hundred bloody types of mayonnaise, without getting his eye full of spit deserves to be a sergeant in anybody’s force!”
    And then, as whatever had been holding Sam Vimes up drained away, he fell gently backward, dreaming of bacon sandwiches and brown sauce.
    Even Constable Haddock or, as he was now, Acting Captain Haddock, would agree that he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but it was amazing, the things you could open with a blunt instrument. As he hurried away on this prestigious errand he was stopped by one of the Quirm officers, who said, “Hareng! * Have you heard of a watchman called Petit Fou Artour?”
    â€œWee Mad Arthur? Yes, he’s one of our lads!”
    â€œWell, you had better come quickly, my friend, because he is in our Watch House. Strong little fellow, isn’t he? A few of the other officers had laughed at him, he said, but I believe that they have learned the error of their ways—the hard way, as it happened. Apparently he has been sent to find Commandant Vimes.”

S am Vimes awoke from a pig’s nightmare to find himself lying on a pile of sacks in a godown in the docks. He was carefully lifted to his feet by Acting Constable Haddock and led unsteadily to a crude table behind which was a chef presiding over the sizzling makings of a bacon sandwich, or rather several bacon sandwiches. “He screamed a bit,” said Haddock, “when I insisted on no mayonnaise, but right now you can do no wrong here, commander. And I have one unopened bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s finest, sir, the only one in the city. I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to eat on the go, but the chef is packing the sandwiches in a hamper, with hot charcoal to keep them warm. No time to hang about, sir. The cutter will leave the dock in ten minutes.”
    A notebook was pushed under Vimes’s nose. “What’s this?”
    â€œYour signature to my promotion to full sergeant, commander,” said Haddock carefully. “I hope you don’t mind, but you did promise.”
    â€œGood man,” said Vimes. “Always write things down.”
    Haddock looked proud. “I’ve also arranged to have on board a selection of cutlasses for your perusal, commander.”
    Vimes struggled into his new shirt, and as his head appeared he said, “I want you to come too, Kipper. You know your way around here better than me. By the way, what did you do with the prisoner?”
    Haddock said, “What prisoner would that be, commander?”
    And for a moment Vimes’s blood froze. “You didn’t find a man tied up anywhere on the Fanny ?”
    Now Haddock looked worried. “No, sir, no one by the time we got there. The place was a mess, sir. Sorry, sir, we didn’t know!”
    â€œNo reason why you should’ve done. Sorry to shout, but if the Quirm police think the sun is shining out of my arse then tell them they should be looking for a youngish-looking individual known as Stratford. He’s a double murderer, at least…vicious and by now certainly armed. Tell them they’ll be doing everybody a favor if they keep guard on the boat, on the walking wounded and all the lads in your infirmary, and also they should send a clacks to Pseudopolis Yard right now to say that Commander Vimes requires that two members of the Watch should hasten via golem horse to Ramkin Hall to keep guard over Lady Sybil and Young Sam. I don’t want them to hang about: I know those things are bad news to ride, but Stratford is a nut job—they must hurry!”
    â€œExcuse me, commander,” said one of the Quirm officers, “we all speak pretty good Morporkian here. Everybody here speaks Morporkian.