Snuff

the safety of my suspect. Ideally I’d look for a lock-up. We don’t have them in the city any more, but I understand most rural areas still do, even if they only hold drunks and escaped pigs.’
    There was laughter, and Miss Beedle said, ‘We do have a village constable, your grace, and he keeps pigs in the lock-up down by the old bridge!’
    She looked brightly at Vimes, whose expression was stony. He said, ‘Does he ever put people in there? Does he have a warrant card? Does he have a badge?’
    ‘Well, he puts the occasional drunk in there to sober up, and he says the pigs don’t seem to mind, but I have no idea what a warrant card is.’
    There was more laughter at this but it faded quickly, sucked into nowhere by Vimes’s implacable silence.
    Then he said, ‘I would not consider him to be a policeman, and until I found that he was working within a framework of proper law enforcement I would regard him not as a policeman by my standards but as a slightly bossy street cleaner. Of some use, but not a policeman.’
    ‘By your standards, your grace?’ said the clergyman.
    ‘Yes, sir, by my standards. My decision. My responsibility. My experience. My arse if things go wrong.’
    ‘But, your grace, as you say, you are outside your jurisdiction here,’ said Mrs Colonel gently.
    Vimes could sense her husband’s nervousness, and it was certainly not to do with the food. The man was wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. It was funny how people always wanted to talk to policemen about crime, and never realize what strange little signals their anxieties betrayed.
    He turned to the man’s wife, smiled and said, ‘But as I’ve said, madam, if a copper comes across a flagrant crime his jurisdiction reaches out to him like an old friend. And do you mind if we change the subject? No offence meant to any of you ladies and gentlemen, but over the years I’ve noticed that bankers and military men and merchants all get a chance to eat their dinners at their leisure at affairs like this, while the poor old copper has to talk about police work, which is most of the time rather dull.’ He smiled again to keep everything friendly, and went on, ‘Exceedingly dull around here, I would imagine. From my point of view, this place is as quiet as the … grave.’ Score: one wince from the dear old colonel, and the priest looking down at his plate, although the latter shouldn’t be taken too seriously, he thought, because you seldom saw a clergyman who couldn’t strike sparks with his knife and fork.
    Sybil, using her hostess voice, shattered the silence like an icebreaker. ‘I think it’s time for the main course,’ she said, ‘which will be superb mutton avec no talking about police work at all. Honestly, if you get Sam going he’ll quote the laws and ordinances of Ankh-Morpork and force standing orders until you throw a cushion at him!’
    Well done, Vimes thought, at least I can now eat my dinner in peace. He relaxed as the conversation around him became less fraught and once again replete with the everyday gossip and grumblings about other people living in the area, the difficulties with servants, the prospects for the harvest and, oh yes, the trouble with goblins.
    Vimes paid attention then. Goblins. The City Watch appeared to contain at least one member of every known bipedal sapient species plus one Nobby Nobbs. It had become a tradition: if you could make it as a copper, then you could make it as a species. But nobody had ever once suggested that Vimes should employ a goblin, the simple reason being that they were universally known to be stinking, cannibalistic, vicious, untrustworthy bastards.
    Of course, everybody knew that dwarfs were a chiselling bunch who would swindle you if they could, and that trolls were little more than thugs, and the city’s one resident medusa would never look you in the face, and the vampires couldn’t be trusted, however much they smiled, and werewolves were only vampires who couldn’t fly, when you got right down to it, and the man next door was a real bastard who threw his rubbish over your wall and his wife was no better than she should be. But then again it took all sorts to make a world. It was not as if you were prejudiced because, after all, there had been an orc working at the university, but he liked his football, didn’t he just, and you could forgive anyone who could score from the centre spot and, well, you took as you found … But not bloody goblins, thank