The Truth

are plans afoot. Who can say what really happened? People are easily confused, and here I speak as one who has spent centuries in courtrooms. Apparently, they say, a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on. What an obnoxious little phrase, don’t you think? So…do not panic, all will be well. And do not be stupid either. My…clients have long memories and deep pockets. Other killers can be hired. Do you understand me?” He snapped the catches on his case. “Good day to you.”
    The door swung to after him.
    There was a rattling behind Mr. Pin as Mr. Tulip pulled out his set of stylish executive barbecue tools.
    “What are you doing?”
    “That —ing zombie is going to end up on the end of a couple of —ing handy and versatile kebab skewers,” said Mr. Tulip. “An’ then I’m gonna put an edge on this —ing spatula. An’ then…then I’m gonna get medieval on his arse.”
    There were more pressing problems, but this one intrigued Mr. Pin.
    “How, exactly?” he said.
    “I thought maybe a maypole,” said Mr. Tulip reflectively. “An’ then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-field system, several plagues, and, if my —ing hand ain’t too tired, the invention of the —ing horse collar.”
    “Sounds good,” said Mr. Pin. “Now let’s find that damn dog.”
    “How we gonna do that?”
    “Intelligently,” said Mr. Pin.
    “I hate that —ing way.”

    He was called King of the Golden River. This was a recognition of his wealth and achievements and the source of his success, which was not quite the classical river of gold. It was a considerable advance on his former nickname, which was Piss Harry.
    Harry King had made his fortune by the careful application of the old adage: where there’s muck there’s brass. There was money to be made out of things that people threw away. Especially the very human things that people threw away.
    The real foundations of his fortune came when he started leaving empty buckets at various hostelries around the city center, especially those that were more than a gutter’s length from the river. He charged a very modest fee to take them away when they were full. It became part of the life of every pub landlord; they’d hear a clank in the middle of the night and turn over in their sleep content in the knowledge that one of Piss Harry’s men was, in a small way, making the world a better-smelling place.
    They didn’t wonder what happened to the full buckets, but Harry King had learned something that can be the key to great riches: there is very little, however disgusting, that isn’t used somewhere in some industry. There are people out there who want large quantities of ammonia and saltpeter. If you can’t sell it to the alchemists then the farmers probably want it. If even the farmers don’t want it then there is nothing, nothing, however gross, that you can’t sell to the tanners.
    Harry felt like the only man in a mining camp who knows what gold looks like.
    He started taking on a whole street at a time, and branched out. In the well-to-do areas the householders paid him, paid him to take away night soil, the by now established buckets, the horse manure, the dustbins, and even the dog muck. Dog muck? Did they have any idea how much the tanners paid for the finest white dog muck? It was like being paid to take away squishy diamonds.
    Harry couldn’t help it. The world fell over itself to give him money. Someone, somewhere, would pay him for a dead horse or two tons of prawns so far beyond their best-before date it couldn’t be seen with a telescope, and the most wonderful part of all was that someone had already paid him to take them away. If anything absolutely failed to find a buyer, not even from the cats-meat men, not even from the tanners, not even from Mr. Dibbler himself, there were the mighty compost heaps downstream of the city, where the volcanic heat of decomposition made fertile soil (“10p a bag, bring your own bag…”) out of everything that was left including, according to rumor, various shadowy businessmen who had come second in a takeover battle (“…brings your dahlias up a treat”).
    He’d kept the wood-pulp-and-rags business closer to home, though, along with the huge vats that contained the golden foundations of his fortune, because it was the only part of his business that his wife, Effie, would talk about. Rumor had it that she had also been behind the removal of the much