The Fifth Elephant

hour later Vimes walked into the charge room at the Yard. Sergeant Stronginthearm looked up, saluted, and then ducked to avoid the orange that was tossed at his head.
    “Sir?” he said, bewildered.
    “Just testing, Stronginthearm.”
    “Did I pass, sir?”
    “Oh yes. Keep the orange. It’s full of vitamins.”
    “My mother always told me those things could kill you, sir.”
    Carrot was waiting patiently in Vimes’s office. Vimes shook his head. He knew all the places to tread in the corridor and he knew he didn’t make a sound, and he’d never once caught Carrot reading his paperwork, not even upside down. Just once it’d be nice to catch him out at something. If the man was any straighter you could use him as a plank.
    Carrot stood up and saluted.
    “Yes, yes, we haven’t got a lot of time for that now,” said Vimes, sitting behind his desk. “Anything new overnight?”
    “An unattributed murder, sir. A tradesman called Wallace Sonky. Found in one of his own vats with his throat cut. No guild seal or note or anything. We are treating it as suspicious.”
    “Yes, I think that sounds fairly suspicious,” said Vimes. “Unless he has a record as a very careless shaver. What kind of vat?”
    “Er…rubber, sir.”
    “Rubber comes in vats? Wouldn’t he bounce out?”
    “No, sir. It’s a liquid in the vat, sir. Mister Sonky makes…rubber things…”
    “Hang on, I remember seeing something once…Don’t they make things by dipping them in the rubber? You made sort of…the right shapes and dip them in to get gloves, boots…that sort of thing?”
    “Er…that…er… sort of thing, sir.”
    Something about Carrot’s uneasy manner got through to Vimes. And the little file at the back of his brain eventually waved a card.
    “Sonky, Sonky…Carrot, we’re not talking about Sonky as in ‘a packet of Sonkies,’ are we?”
    Now Carrot was bright red with embarrassment. “Yes, sir!”
    “My gods, what was he dipping in the vat?”
    “He’d been thrown in, sir. Apparently.”
    “But he’s practically a national hero!”
    “Sir?”
    “Captain, the housing shortage in Ankh-Morpork would be a good deal worse if it wasn’t for old man Sonky and his penny-a-packet preventatives. Who’d want to do away with him?”
    “People do have Views, sir,” said Carrot coldly.
    Yes, you do, don’t you, Vimes thought. Dwarfs don’t hold with that sort of thing.
    “Well, put some men on it. Anything else?”
    “A carter assaulted Constable Swires last night for clamping his cart.”
    “Assault?”
    “Tried to stamp on him, sir.”
    Vimes had a mental picture of Constable Swires, a gnome six inches tall but a mile high in pent-up aggression.
    “How is he?”
    “Well, the man can speak, but it’ll be a little while before he can climb back on a cart again. Apart from that, it’s all run-of-the-mill stuff.”
    “Nothing more about the Scone theft?”
    “Not really. Lots of accusations in the dwarf community, but no one really knows anything. Like you say, sir, we’ll probably know more when it goes bad.”
    “Any word on the street?”
    “Yes, sir. It’s ‘Halt,’ sir. Sergeant Colon painted it at the top of Lower Broadway. The carters are a lot more careful now. Of course, someone has to shovel the manure off every hour or so.”
    “This whole traffic thing is not making us very popular, Captain.”
    “No, sir. But we aren’t popular anyway. And at least it’s bringing in money for the city treasury. Er…there is another thing, sir.”
    “Yes?”
    “Have you seen Sergeant Angua, sir?”
    “Me? No. I was expecting her to be here.” Then Vimes noticed just the very edge of concern in Carrot’s voice. “Something wrong?”
    “She didn’t turn up for duty last night. It wasn’t full moon, so it’s a bit…odd. Nobby said she was rather concerned about something when they were on duty the other day.”
    Vimes nodded. Of course, most people were concerned about something if they were on duty with Nobby. They tended to look at clocks a lot.
    “Have you been to her lodgings?”
    “Her bed hadn’t been slept in,” said Carrot. “Or her basket, either,” he added.
    “Well, I can’t help you there, Carrot. She’s your girlfriend.”
    “She’s been a bit…worried about the future, I think,” said Carrot.
    “Um…you…she…the, er, werewolf thing…?” Vimes stopped, acutely embarrassed.
    “It preys on her mind,” said Carrot.
    “Perhaps she’s just gone somewhere to