Snuff

and this will call to you. It will say “This man has something to hide”, or “This man is far more frightened than he should be” or “This man is acting too cocky by half because underneath he’s a bag of nerves”. It will call to you.’
    Vimes opted for admiration rather than shock, but not too much admiration. ‘Well, Mister Feeney, I reckon your grandfather and your dad got it right. So I’m sending the right signals, am I?’
    ‘No, sir, none at all, sir. My granddad and my dad could go like that sometimes. Totally blank. It makes people nervous.’ Feeney cocked his head on one side and said, ‘Just a moment, sir, I think we have a little problem …’
    The door to the lock-up clanged open as Chief Constable Upshot skidded around to the rear of the squat little building. Something yelped and squealed and then Vimes, sitting peacefully inside, suddenly had goblins on his lap. In fact it was only one goblin, but one goblin is more than sufficient at close quarters. There was the smell, to begin with, and not to end with either, because it appeared to permeate the world. Yet it wasn’t the stink – although heavens knew that they stank with all the stinks an organic creature could generate – no, anyone who walked the streets of Ankh-Morpork was more or less immune to stinks, and indeed there was now a flourishing, if that was the word, hobby of stink-collecting, 13 and Dave, of Dave’s Pin and Stamp Emporium, was extending the sign over his shop again. You couldn’t bottle (or whatever it was the collectors did) the intrinsic smell of a goblin because it wasn’t so much a stink as a sensation, the sensation in fact that your dental enamel was evaporating and any armour you might have was rusting at some speed. Vimes punched at the thing but it hung on with arms and legs together, screaming in what was theoretically a voice, but sounded like a bag of walnuts being jumped on. And yet it wasn’t attacking – unless you considered the biological warfare. It clung with its legs and waved its arms, and Vimes just managed to stop Feeney braining it with his official truncheon, because, once you paid attention, the goblin was using words, and the words were: Ice! Ice! We want just ice! Demand! Demand just ice! Right? Just ice!
    Feeney, on the other hand, was shouting, ‘Stinky, you little devil, I told you what I’d do to you if ever I saw you stealing the pigswill again!’ He looked at Vimes as if for support. ‘They can give you horrible diseases, sir!’
    ‘Will you stop dancing around with that damn weapon, boy!’ Vimes looked down at the goblin now struggling in his grasp, and said, ‘As for you, you little bugger, stop your racket!’
    The little room went silent, apart from the dying strains of ‘They eat their own babies!’ from Feeney and ‘Just ice!’ from the goblin, simply and accurately named as ‘Stinky’.
    Not panicking now, the goblin pointed a claw at Vimes’s left wrist, looked him in the face, and said, ‘Just ice?’ It was a plea. The claw tugged at his leg. ‘Just ice?’ The creature hobbled to the door and looked up at the glowering chief constable and then turned to Vimes with an expression that bored into the man’s face and said very deliberately, ‘Just ice? Mister Po-leess-maan?’
    Vimes pulled out his snuffbox. You could say this for the brown stuff: all that ceremony you went through before you took a pinch gave you rather more thinking time than lighting a cigar. It also got people’s attention. He said, ‘Well now, chief constable, here is somebody asking you for justice. What are you going to do about it?’
    Feeney looked uncertain, and took refuge in a certainty. ‘It’s a stinking goblin!’
    ‘Do you often see them around the lock-up?’ said Vimes, keeping his tone mild.
    ‘Only Stinky,’ said Feeney, glowering at the goblin, who stuck out his worm-like tongue. ‘He’s always hanging around. The rest of them know what happens if they’re caught thieving around here!’
    Vimes glanced down at the goblin and recognized a badly set broken leg when he saw one. He turned the snuffbox over and over in his hands, and did not look at the young man. ‘But surely a policeman wonders what has happened for a wretched thing like this to walk right up to the law and risk being maimed … again ?’
    It was a leap in the dark, but, hell, he had leapt so often that the dark was a trampoline.
    His arm itched. He tried to ignore it, but just for a