MR SLOPES?
Snowy Slopes gingerly felt his neck, or at least the neck of his soul. The human soul tends to keep to the shape of the original body for some time after death. Habit is a wonderful thing.
‘Who the hell was he?’ he said.
NOT SOMEONE YOU KNOW? said Death.
‘Well, no! I don’t know many people who cut my head off!’
Snowy Slopes’s body had knocked against the table as it fell. Several bottles of medicated shampoo now dripped and mixed their contents into the other more intimate fluids from the Slopes corpse.
‘That stuff with the special oil in it cost me nearly four dollars,’ said Snowy. Yet, somehow, it all seemed slightly… irrelevant now. Death happens to other people. The other person in this case had been him. That is, the one down there. Not the one standing here looking at it. In life, Snowy hadn’t even been able to spell ‘metaphysical’, but he was already beginning to view life in a different way. From the outside, for a start.
‘Four dollars,’ he repeated. ‘I never even had time to try it!’
IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED, said Death, patting the man on a fading shoulder. BUT, IF I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT YOU LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, IT WILL NO LONGER BE NECESSARY.
‘No more dandruff?’ said Snowy, now quite transparent and fading fast.
EVER, said Death. TRUST ME ON THIS.
Commander Vimes ran down darkened streets, trying to buckle on his breastplate as he ran.
‘All right, Cheery, what’s happening?’
‘They say a Klatchian killed someone, sir. There’s a mob up in Scandal Alley and it’s looking bad. I was on the desk and I thought you ought to be told, sir.’
‘Right!’
‘And anyway I couldn’t find Captain Carrot, sir.’
A little bit of acid ink scribbled its subtle entry on the ledger of Vimes’s soul.
‘Oh, gods… so who’s the officer in charge?’
‘Sergeant Detritus, sir.’
It seemed to the dwarf that she was suddenly standing still. Commander Vimes had become a rapidly disappearing blur.
With the calm expression of someone who was methodically doing his duty, Detritus picked up a man and used him to hit some other men. When he had a clear area around him and a groaning heap of former rioters, he climbed the heap and cupped his hands round his mouth.
‘Listen to me, youse people!’
A troll shouting at the top of his voice could easily be heard above a riot. When he seemed to have their attention he pulled a scroll out of his breastplate and waved it over his head.
‘Dis is der Riot Act,’{43} he said. ‘You know what dat means? It means if’n I reads it out and youse don’t disb… disp… go away, der Watch can use deadly force, you unnerstand?’
‘What did you just use, then?’ moaned someone from underneath his feet.
‘Dat was you helpin’ der Watch,’ said Detritus, shifting his weight.
He unrolled the scroll.
Although there was some scuffling in alleyways and shouts from the next street, a ring of silence expanded outwards from the troll. An almost genetic component of the citizens of Ankh-Morpork was their ability to spot an opportunity for amusement.
Detritus held the document at arm’s length. And then a few inches from his face. He tried turning it round a few times.
His lips moved uneasily.
Finally, he leaned down and showed it to Constable Visit.
‘What dis word?’
‘That’s “Whereby”, sergeant.’
‘I knew dat.’
He straightened up again.
‘“Whereby… it is…”’ Beads of the troll equivalent of sweat began to form on Detritus’s forehead. ‘“Whereby it is… ack-no-legg-ed…”’
‘Acknowledged,’ whispered Constable Visit.
‘I knew dat.’ Detritus stared at the paper again, and then gave up. ‘Youse don’t want to stand here listenin’ to me all day!’ he bellowed. ‘Dis is der Riot Act and you’ve all got to read it, right? Pass it round.’
‘What if we don’t read it?’ said a voice in the crowd.
‘You got to read it. It legal.’
‘And then what happens?’
‘Den I shoot you,’ said Detritus.
‘That’s not allowed!’ said another voice. ‘You’ve got to shout “Stop! Armed Watchman!” first.’
‘Sure, dat suits me,’ said Detritus. He shrugged one huge shoulder to bring his crossbow under his arm. It was a siege bow, intended to be mounted on the cart. The bolt was six feet long. ‘It harder to hit runnin’ targets.’
He released the safety catch.
‘Anyone finishing readin’ dat thing yet?’
‘Sergeant!’
Vimes pushed his way through the crowd. And it was a crowd now. Ankh-Morpork was always a good audience.
There was a clang as Detritus saluted.
‘Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?’
‘Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.’
‘Really? Just give me a moment to talk to them, then.’
Vimes looked at the man next to him. He was holding a flaming torch in one hand and a long length of wood in the other. He gave Vimes the nervously defiant stare of someone who has just felt the ground shift under his feet.
Vimes pulled the torch towards him and lit a cigar. ‘What’s happening here, friend?’
‘The Klatchians have been shooting people, Mr Vimes! Unprovoked attack!’
‘Really?’
‘People have been killed!’
‘Who?’
‘I… there were… everyone knows they’ve been killing people!’ The man’s mental footsteps found safer ground. ‘Who do they think they are, coming over—’
‘That’s enough,’ said Vimes. He stood back and raised his voice.
‘I recognize a lot of you,’ he said. ‘And I know you’ve got homes to go to. See this?’ He pulled his baton of office out of his pocket. ‘This says I’ve got to keep the peace. So in ten seconds I’m going somewhere else to find some peace to keep, but Detritus is going to stay here. And I just hope he doesn’t do anything to disgrace the uniform. Or get it very dirty, at least.’
Irony was not a degree-level subject among the listeners, but the brighter ones recognized Vimes’s expression. It said that here was a man hanging on to his patience by his teeth.
The mob dispersed, going ragged at the edges as people legged it down side alleys, threw away their makeshift weapons and emerged at the other end walking the grave, thoughtful walk of honest citizens.
‘All right, what happened?’ said Vimes, turning to the troll.
‘We’re hearing where dis boy shot dis man,’ said Detritus. ‘We got here, next minute it rainin’ people from everywhere, shoutin’.’
‘He smote him as Hudrun smote the fleshpots of Ur,’ said Constable Visit.[6]
‘Smote?’ said Vimes, bewildered. ‘He killed someone?’
‘Not by der way der man was cussing, sir,’ said Detritus. ‘Hit him in der arm. His friends brought him round der Watch House to complain. He a baker on der night shift. He said he was late for work, he come runnin’ in to pick up his dinner, next minute he flat on der floor.’
Vimes walked across the street and tried the door of the shop. It opened a little way, and then fetched up against what seemed to be a barricade. Furniture had been piled up against the window as well.
‘How many people were there, constable?’
‘A multitude thereof, sir.’
And four people in here, thought Vimes. A family. The door moved a fraction and Vimes realized he was ducking even before the crossbow protruded.
There was the thung of the string. The bolt tumbled rather than sped. It corkscrewed wildly across the alley and was almost moving sideways when it hit the opposite wall.
6
Constable Visit-The-Ungodly-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets was a good copper, Vimes always said, and that was his highest term of praise. He was an Omnian with his countrymen’s almost pathological interest in evangelical religion and spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press. The results were handed out to anyone interested and everyone who wasn’t interested as well. Even Detritus couldn’t clear a crowd faster than Visit, Vimes said. And on his days off he could be seen tramping the streets with his colleague, Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments. So far they hadn’t made a single convert. Vimes thought that Visit was probably a really nice man underneath it all, but somehow he could never face the task of finding out.