The Fifth Elephant

already a zombie.
    “Sorry ’bout dat,” said the troll, pulling it down and tossing it into a corner, where it coiled into a rubbery heap.
    “What d’heel wazzit?” said Constable Swires.
    “We had to pull der rubber off’f him,” said the dwarf. “Sets quick, see? Once you get it out in der air.”
    “Hey, dat’s a’ biggest Sonky I ever saw,” chuckled Buggy. “A whole-body Sonky! Reckon that’s the way he wanted to go?”
    Reg looked at the corpse. He didn’t mind being sent out on murders, even messy ones. The way he saw it, dying was really just a career change. Been there, done that, worn the shroud…And then you got over it and got on with your life. Of course, he knew that many people didn’t, for some reason, but he thought of them as not prepared to make the effort.
    There was a ragged wound in the neck.
    “Any next of kin?” he said.
    “He got a brother in Uberwald. We’ve sent word,” the troll added. “On der clacks. It cost twenty dollars! Dat’s murder!”
    “Can you think of any reason why someone would kill him?”
    The troll scratched his head.
    “Well, ’cos dey wanted him dead, I reckon. Dat’s a good reason.”
    “And why would anyone want him dead, do you think?” Reg Shoe could be very, very patient. “Has there been any trouble?”
    “Business ain’t been so good, I know dat.”
    “Really? I’d have thought you’d be coining money here.”
    “Oh yeah , dat’s what you’d fink, but not everyfing people calls a Sonky is made by us, see? It’s to do wid us becomin’—” the troll’s face screwed up with cerebral effort, “jer-nair-rick. Lots of other buggers are jumping up and down on the bandwagon, and dey got better plant and new ideas like makin’ ’em in cheese-and-onion flavor an’ wid bells on an’ stuff like dat. Mister Sonky won’t have nothin’ to do wid dat kind of fing and dat’s been costin’ us sales.”
    “I can see this would worry him,” said Reg, in a keep-on-talking tone of voice.
    “He’s been locking himself in his office a lot.”
    “Oh? Why’s that?” said Reg.
    “He’s der boss. You don’t ask der boss. But he did say dat dere was a special job comin’ up and dat’d put us back on our feets.”
    “Really?” said Reg, making a mental note. “What kind of job?”
    “Dunno. You don’t—”
    “—ask the boss,” said Reg. “Right. I suppose no one saw the murder, did they?”
    Once again the troll screwed up its enormous face in thought.
    “Der murderer, yeah, an’ prob’ly Mister Sonky.”
    “Was there a third party?”
    “I dunno, I never get invited to dem things.”
    “Apart from Mister Sonky and the murderer,” said Shoe, still as patient as the grave, “was there anyone else here last night?”
    “Dunno,” said the troll.
    “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” said Shoe. “We’ll have a look around, if you don’t mind.”
    “Sure.”
    The troll went back to his vat.
    Reg Shoe hadn’t expected to find anything and was not disappointed. But he was thorough. Zombies usually are. Mr. Vimes had told him never to get too excited about clues, because clues could lead you on a dismal dance. They could become a habit. You ended up finding a wooden leg, a silk slipper and a feather at the scene of a crime and constructing an elegant theory involving a one-legged ballet dancer and a production of Chicken Lake.
    The door to the office was open. It was hard to tell if things had been disturbed; Shoe got the impression that the mess was normal. A desk was awash with paperwork, Mr. Sonky having followed the usual “put it down somewhere” method of filing. A bench was covered with samples of rubber, bits of sacking, large bottles of chemicals and some wooden molds that Reg refrained from looking at too closely.
    “Did you hear Corporal Littlebottom talking about that museum theft when we came on duty today, Buggy?” he said, opening a jar of yellow powder and sniffing it.
    “No.”
    “I did,” said Reg.
    He put the lid on the sulfur again and sniffed the air of the factory. It smelled of liquid rubber, which is very much like the smell of incontinent cats.
    “And some things stick in the mind,” he said. “Special job, eh?”

    It was Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets’s week as Communications Officer, which largely meant looking after the pigeons and keeping an eye on the clacks, with of course the assistance of Constable Downspout. Constable Downspout was