Thud!

Oh.” Vimes hesitated. “Well, that’s good. And Detritus is an officer of the law. We’ve still got some law here. And as far as I’m concerned, it goes deep. All the way down.”

B loody stupid thing to say, Vimes thought five minutes later, as he walked through the streets at the head of the little squad. He cursed himself for saying it.
    Coppers stayed alive by trickery. That’s how it worked. You had your Watch Houses with the big blue lights outside, and you made certain there were always burly watchmen visible in the big public places, and you swanked around like you owned the place. But you didn’t own it. It was all smoke and mirrors. You magicked a little policeman into everyone’s head. You relied on people giving in, knowing the rules. But in truth, a hundred well-armed people could wipe out the Watch, if they knew what they were doing. Once some madman finds out that a copper taken unawares dies just like anyone else, the spell is broken.
    Hamcrusher’s dwarfs don’t believe in the City Watch? That could turn out to be a problem. Maybe bringing a troll along was provocative, but Detritus was a citizen, gods damn it, just like everyone else. If you—
    “Duddle-dum-duddle-dum-duddle-dum!”
    Ah, yes. No matter how bad things were, there was always room for them to get just that little bit worse…
    Vimes pulled the smart brown box out of his pocket and flipped it open. The pointy-eared face of a small green imp stared up at him with that wistful, hopeless smile, which, in its various incarnations, he’d come to know and dread.
    “Good morning, Insert Name Here! I am the Dis-Organizer Mark Five, the Gooseberry tM . How may I—” it began, speaking fast in order to get as much said as possible before the inevitable interruption.
    “I swear I switched you off,” said Vimes.
    “You threatened me with a hammer,” said the imp accusingly, and rattled the tiny bars. “He threatens state-of-the-Craft technomancy with a hammer, everybody!” it shouted. “He doesn’t even fill in the registration card! That’s why I have to call him Insert Nam—”
    “I thought you’d got rid of that thing, sir,” said Angua, as Vimes snapped the lid shut. “I thought it had had an…accident.”
    “Hah!” said a muffled voice from the box.
    “Sybil always gets me a new one,” said Vimes, making a face. “A better one. But I know this one was turned off.”
    The box’s lid thrust upwards.
    “I wake up for alarms!” the imp shrieked. “ Ten colon forty-five colon Sit for Damn Portrait! ”
    Vimes groaned. The portrait with Sir Joshua. He’d get into trouble for this. He’d already missed two sittings. But this dwarf thing was…important.
    “I won’t be able to make it,” he mumbled.
    “Then would you like to engage the handy-to-use Bluenose TM Integrated Messenger Service?”
    “What does that do?” said Vimes, with deep suspicion. The succession of Dis-Organizers he had owned had proved quite successful at very nearly sorting out all the problems that stemmed from owning them in the first place.
    “Er…basically, it means me running with a message to the nearest clacks tower really fast ,” said the imp hopefully.
    “And do you come back?” said Vimes, hope also rising.
    “Absolutely!”
    “Thank you, no,” said Vimes.
    “How about a game of Splong! TM , specially devised for the Mark Five?” pleaded the imp. “I have the bats right here. No? Perhaps you would prefer the ever-popular ‘Guess My Weight in Pigs’? Or I could whistle one of your favorite tunes? My iHUM TM function enables me to remember up to one thousand five hundred of your all-time—”
    “You could try learning to use it, sir,” said Angua, as Vimes once again shut the lid on the protesting voice.
    “Did use one,” said Vimes.
    “Yup. As a doorstop,” rumbled Detritus, behind him.
    “I’m just not at home with technomancy, all right?” said Vimes. “End of discussion. Haddock, nip along to Moon Pond Lane, will you. Present my apologies to Lady Sybil, who will be at Sir Joshua’s studio there. Tell her I’m very sorry, but this has come up and it needs careful handling.”
    Well, it does, he thought, as they headed onwards. It probably needs more careful handling than I’m going to give it. Well, to hell with that. It comes to something if you have to tread carefully even to find out if there’s been a murder.

T reacle Street was just the kind of area the dwarfs colonized —on the edge of