Snuff

bandy-legged man and a small tail of people who, for the moment, until proved otherwise, had to be counted as “innocent bystanders.”
    They gathered around as Vimes prepared to open the barrel. He announced, “Pay attention, gentlemen. I believe this barrel contains contraband goods.” He rolled up his sleeves—“You see that I have nothing up my sleeves, but a crowbar in my hand”—and with some effort on his part the lid of the barrel came off, and the smell of tobacco was overpowering. And some of the bystanders decided it was now time to take the wonderful opportunity for a quick nonchalant walk.
    Vimes pulled out bale after bale of brown leaves bound with cotton. “Can’t take too much on the coach,” he said, “but if Mr. Dave here will, as an upstanding member of the community, sign to say that he saw me pull these from a sealed barrel, then you, Mr. Feeney, will take a brief statement and we can all go about our business.”
    Feeney beamed. “Oh, very well spotted, commander! I reckon you could hide anything in this stink, eh?” After a moment he looked at Vimes and said, “Commander?”
    Vimes appeared to look through him and said, “You’re going to go far, Chief Constable Upshot. Let’s empty the whole barrel, shall we?”
    He didn’t know where the thought had come from. Maybe from first principles. If you were going to smuggle, where would you stop? What would your market be? How would you get the best price per pound of product carried? He pulled and pulled at the bundles, and one, almost at the bottom of the barrel, was noticeably heavier than the others. Trying to keep his expression unchanged, he handed the heavy bundle to Feeney and said, “I’d be grateful if you and Mr. Dave would open this bundle and tell me what you see inside.” He sat down on the barrel and took a pinch of snuff while behind him he heard the rustling, and then Feeney said, “Well, commander, what this appears to be—”
    Vimes held up a hand. “Does it look like stone dust to you, Feeney?”
    â€œYes, but—”
    Vimes held up his hand again. “Does it appear to have little red and blue flecks in it when you hold it to the light?”
    Sometimes the ancestral copper in Feeney picked up the vibration. “Yes, Commander Vimes!”
    â€œThen it’s a good job for you and your friend Dave”—Vimes glanced at the said Dave for the second time and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt—“that the two of you are not trolls, because if you were you’d be stone dead, as it were, right now. The stuff you are holding is Crystal Slam , I’d bet my badge on it. Troll kids use it as a drug, do you know that? They take a hit as small as your little pinky and think they can walk through walls, which they invariably do, too, and when they’ve done it a few times more they drop down dead. It’s illegal everywhere in the world, and very difficult to make because the smell when they’re boiling it up is unmistakable; you get a lot of sparks too. Selling it is a hanging offense in Ankh-Morpork, Uberwald and every troll city. Diamond King of Trolls gives a very handsome bounty to anyone who presents him with evidence of manufacture.”
    Vimes looked hopefully at the aforesaid Dave, just in case the man would take the bait. No, he thought, they wouldn’t do it round here. All this tobacco must come from somewhere hot, and that means a long way away.
    Gingerly, they broke open other barrels and found plenty of tobacco and several packs of very high-class cigars, one or two of which Vimes put in his breast pocket for detailed forensic examination later, and, somewhere at the bottom of every barrel, there were neat packets of Crystal Slam, Slunkie, Slab, Slice and Slap, all of them very nasty—although Slap was generally considered to be a recreational drug, at least if your idea of recreation was waking up in the gutter not knowing whose head you had on.
    As many samples as possible were piled into the coach and Vimes only stopped when it started to creak. The other barrels were piled up and, at Vimes’s instigation, a very proud Chief Constable Upshot set fire to them. When the controlled drugs caught alight there was a brief display of pyrotechnics and Vimes thought to himself that this was only the start of the fireworks.
    As people came running out to see