Snuff

don’t think I have seen him for several days. However, by all means look for him without hindrance. The dark is in you. I would not dare to stand in your way, Mister Po-leess-maan. Such as it is, this place is yours.’
    With that the old goblin beckoned to some juvenile goblins to pick up all that was left of his wife and drifted away towards another cave mouth.
    ‘Have you seen a lot of dead bodies, commander?’ said Feeney, in a voice that almost managed not to shake.
    ‘Oh yes, lad, and some of them I helped to make.’
    ‘You’ve killed people?’
    Vimes looked at the ceiling so as not to have to look at Feeney’s face. ‘I like to think I did my best not to,’ he said, ‘and on the whole I’ve been good at that, but sooner or later there’s always going to be somebody who is determined to finish you off and you end up having to take him down the wrong way because he’s just too damn stupid to surrender. It doesn’t get any better, and I’ve never seen a corpse that looked good.’
    The funeral group had disappeared into the other cave now, and the two policemen were left alone, but feeling, however, that around them people were going about their business.
    The old goblin had just stood there and mentioned that the woman was his wife almost as an afterthought. He hadn’t even raised his voice! Vimes couldn’t have stood there like that if it had been Sybil’s body on the ground in front of him, and as sure as hell he would not be polite to any goblins who were in front of him either. How can you get like that? How can life so beat you down?
    The Street was always with you, just as Willikins had said. And Vimes remembered the ladies who scrubbed. Cockbill Street got scrubbed so often that it was surprising it wasn’t now at a lower level than the ground around it. The doorstep was scrubbed, and then whitened; the red tiles on the floor inside were scrubbed and then polished with red lead; and the black cooking stove was blackened even further by being rubbed ferociously with black lead. Women in those days had elbows that moved like pistons. And it was all about survival, and survival was all about pride. You didn’t have much control over your life, but by Jimmy you could keep it clean and show the world you were poor but respectable. That was the dread: the dread of falling back, losing standards, becoming no better than those people who bred and fought and stole in that ferocious turmoil of a rookery known as the Shades.
    The goblins had succumbed, had they? Going through the motions now, while the world gently expelled them, they were giving up, letting go … but murder was murder in any jurisdiction or none at all. He tied his thoughts in a knot under his chin, snatched a couple of smouldering torches and said, ‘Come on, chief constable, let’s go and fight crime.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Feeney, ‘but can I ask you another question?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Vimes, heading towards a tunnel that was perceptibly sloping downwards.
    ‘What’s going on here, sir, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I know that there’s been a murder and maybe some bugger wanted me to think it was you as done it, but how come, sir, that you understand that heathen lingo of theirs? I mean, I hear you talking to them, and they must understand you, ’cos they talk back, sir, but they talk like somebody cracking walnuts under their foot, sir, and I can’t understand a damn word of it, sir, if you’ll excuse my Klatchian, not a damn word. I want an answer, sir, because I feel enough of a bloody fool as it is; I don’t want to be even more foolish than I feel now.’
    Vimes, in the privacy of his own head, tried out the statement, ‘Well, since you ask, I have a deadly demon sharing my mind, which seems to be helping me for reasons of its own. It lets me see in this gloom and somehow allows me and goblins to communicate. It’s called the Summoning Dark. I don’t know what its interest in goblins is but the dwarfs think it brings down wrath on the unrighteous . If there has been a murder I’ll use any help I can get.’ He did not in fact articulate this, on the basis that most people would have left very quickly by the time he had finished, so he settled for saying, ‘I have the support of a higher power, chief constable. Now, let’s check out this place.’ This didn’t satisfy Feeney, but he appeared to understand that it was all he was going to get.
    It was an eerie journey. The hill was