Snuff

moment there was a dripping cave in front of him, and no other thought except of terrible endless vengeance. He blinked and the goblin was tugging at his sleeve again and Feeney was getting angry.
    ‘I didn’t do that! I didn’t see it done!’
    ‘But you know it happens, yes?’ And again Vimes remembered the darkness and the thirst for vengeance, in fact vengeance itself made sapient and hungry. And the little bugger had touched him on that arm. It all came back, and he wished that it hadn’t, because while all coppers must have a bit of villain in them, no copper should walk around with a piece of demon as a tattoo.
    Feeney had lost his anger now, because he was frightened. ‘Bishop Scour says they’re demonic and insolent creations made as a mockery of mankind,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t know about any bishops,’ said Vimes, ‘but something is going on here and I can feel the tingle, felt it on the day I came here, and it’s tingling on my land. Listen to me, chief constable. When you apprehend the suspect you should take the trouble to ask them if they did it, and if they say no you must ask them if they can prove their innocence. Got it? You’re supposed to ask. Understand? And my answers are, in order, hell no and hell yes!’
    The little clawed hand scratched at Vimes’s shirt again. ‘Just ice?’
    Vimes thought, Oh well, I thought I’d been gentle with the lad up until now. ‘Chief constable, something is wrong, and you know that something is wrong, and you are all alone, so you’d better enlist the help of anyone you know that can be trusted. Such as me, for example, in which case I’ll be the suspect who, having been bailed on my own recognizance of one penny,’ and here Vimes handed a partly corroded small copper disc to the astonished Feeney, ‘has been requested to help you with your inquiries, such as they are, and that will be all fine and dandy and in accordance with the standard work on police procedure, which, my lad, was written by me, and you had better believe it. I’m not the law, no policeman is the law. A policeman is just a man, but when he wakes up in the morning it is the law that is his alarm clock. I’ve been nice and kind to you up until now, but did you really think I was going to be spending the night in a pig pen? Time to be a real copper, lad. Do the right thing and fudge the paperwork afterwards, like I do.’ Vimes looked down at the persistent little goblin. ‘Okay, Stinky, lead the way.’
    ‘But my old mum is just coming out with your dinner, commander!’ Feeney’s voice was a wail, and Vimes hesitated. It didn’t do to upset an old mum.
    It was time to let the duke out. Vimes never normally bowed to anybody, but he bowed to Mistress Upshot, who almost dropped her tray in ecstatic confusion. ‘I am mortified, my dear Mistress Upshot, to have to ask you to keep your Man Dog Suck Po warm for us for a little while, because your son here, a credit to his uniform and to his parents, has asked me to assist him in an errand of considerable importance, which can only be entrusted to a young man with integrity, as your lad here.’
    As the woman very nearly melted in pride and happiness Vimes pulled the young man away.
    ‘Sir, the dish was Bang Suck Duck. We only have Man Dog Suck Po on Sundays. With mashed carrots.’
    Vimes turned back and shook Mrs Upshot warmly by the hand, and said, ‘I look forward to tasting it later, my dear Mistress Upshot, but if you’ll excuse me, your son is a stickler for his police work, as I’m sure you know.’
    Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace had long ago, with the expertise of a lifelong strategist, decided to let Letitia have her way in all things. It saved so much trouble and left him able to potter around in his garden, take care of his dragons and occasionally go trout fishing, a pastime that he loved. He rented half a mile of stream, but was sadly now finding it difficult to keep running fast enough. Nowadays he spent a lot of time in his library, working on the second volume of his memoirs, keeping from under his wife’s feet and not getting involved.
    Until this moment he had been quite happy that she had the role of chairman of the magistrates because it kept her away from home for hours at a time. He had never been very much of a one for thinking in terms of good or bad and guilty or not guilty. He had learned to think in terms of us and them and dead and not dead.
    And therefore he wasn’t exactly listening