Snuff

swung it backwards and forwards. ‘I know you lot! Some of you is gamekeepers, and some of you is smugglers, and a few of you is bastards, excuse my Klatchian!’ By now she had caught sight of Vimes, and pausing only to bring her broomstick down like a mallet on the foot of a man who made a step in the wrong direction, she pointed her finger at Vimes and yelled, ‘See him? Now he is a gentleman, and also a great copper! You can tell a real copper, like my Henry, gods bless his soul, and Commander Vimes too, ’cos they’ve got proper badges what have been used to open thousands of beer bottles, I dare say, and believe me one of them would hurt you if they tried to stick it up your nose. The flimsy bits of cardboard you boys is waving make me laugh! Come any further, Davey Hackett,’ she said to the nearest man, ‘and I will shove this broomstick in your ear, trust me, I will!’
    Vimes scanned the mob, trying to sort out the vile and dangerous from the innocent and stupid, and was about to brush off a fly from his head when he heard the gasp from the crowd, and saw the arrow on the cobbles and Mrs Upshot looking at her broom falling into two pieces.
    In theory, Mrs Upshot should have screamed, but she had been around coppers for a long time, and so, face red, she pointed at the broken broom and said, as only an old mum could say, ‘That cost half a dollar! They don’t grow on trees, you know! It wants paying for!’
    Instantly there was the jingle of frantic hands in pockets. One man with great presence of mind removed his hat and coins showered into it. Since many of these coins were dollars and half-dollars snatched in haste, Mrs Upshot would clearly be self-sufficient in broomsticks for life.
    But Feeney, who had been simmering, smacked the hat to the ground just as it was proffered. ‘No! That’s like a bribe, Ma! Someone shot at you. I saw the arrow, it came straight out of this lot, right out the middle! Now I want you to go inside, Ma, ’cos I’m not going to lose you as well as Dad, understand? Damn well get inside the house, Ma, the reason being, the moment you shut the door I intend to show these gentlemen their manners!’
    Feeney was on fire. If a chestnut had fallen on his head it would have exploded, and his rage – pure righteous rage, the kind of rage in which a man might find the idea and the inclination and, above all, the stamina to beat to death everyone around him – was a pants-wetting concern to the befuddled citizens quite outweighing the secondary one, which was that there was at least six dollars of anybody’s money lying there on the cobbles, and how much of it could they get away with reclaiming?
    Vimes did not say a word. There was no room to say a word. A word might dislodge the brake that held retribution in check. Feeney’s ancestral club over his shoulder looked like a warning from the gods. In his hands it would be sudden death. No one dared run; of a certainty, to run would be to make yourself a candidate for whistling oaken crushing.
    Now, perhaps, was the time. ‘Chief Constable Upshot, may I have a word, as one policeman to another?’
    Feeney turned on Vimes a bleary look, like a man trying to focus from the other end of the universe. One of the outlying men took this as a cue to leg it, and behind the crowd there was a thump and the voice of Willikins, saying, ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, your grace, but this gentleman stumbled over my feet. Regrettably, I have very large feet.’ And, to accompany the apology, Willikins held up a man whose nose would probably look a lot better by the end of next week.
    All eyes turned to Willikins, except those of Vimes – because there in the shadows, keeping his distance from the mob, was that bloody lawyer again. Not with the mob, obviously, a respectable lawyer could not be part of a mob, oh no, he was just there watching .
    Feeney glared at the rest of the men, because tripping can come so easily to a man. ‘I appreciate your man’s assistance, commander, but this is my manor, if you know what I mean, and I will have my say.’
    Feeney was panting heavily, but his gaze swept backwards and forwards to find the first man to move or even look like someone about to move some time in the future. ‘I am a policeman! Not always a good one or a clever one, but I am a policeman and the man in my lock-up is my prisoner, and I’ll defend him to the death, and if it’s the death of some bastards who stood in front of my old mum