Dr Whiteface.
‘Who are these gentlemen?’ he demanded.
‘Er—’ Boffo began.
‘Night Watch, sir,’ said Colon, saluting.
‘And why are you here?’
‘Investigating our inquiries as to the fatal demise of the clown Beano, sir,’ said Colon.
‘I rather think that is Guild business, sergeant. Don’t you?’
‘Well, sir, he was found in the—’
‘I am sure it is something we don’t need to bother the Watch with,’ said Dr Whiteface.
Colon hesitated. He’d prefer to face Dr Cruces than this apparition. At least the Assassins were supposed to be unpleasant. Clowns were only one step away from mime artists, too.
‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘It was obviously an accident, right?’
‘Quite so. Brother Boffo will show you to the door,’ said the head clown. ‘And then,’ he added, ‘he will report to my office. Does he understand?’
‘Yes, Dr Whiteface,’ mumbled Boffo.
‘What’ll he do to you?’ said Nobby, as they headed for the gate.
‘Hat full of whitewash, probably,’ said Boffo. ‘Pie inna face if I’m lucky.’
He opened the wicket gate.
‘A lot of us ain’t happy about this,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t see why those buggers should get away with it. We ought to go round to the Assassins and have it out with them.’
‘Why the Assassins?’ said Colon. ‘Why would they kill a clown?’
Boffo looked guilty. ‘I never said a thing!’
Colon glared at him. ‘There’s definitely something odd happening, Mr Boffo.’
Boffo looked around, as if expecting a vengeful custard pie at any moment.
‘You find his nose,’ he hissed. ‘You just find his nose. His poor nose!’
The gate slammed shut.
Sergeant Colon turned to Nobby.
‘Did exhibit A have a nose, Nobby?’
‘Yes, Fred.’
‘Then what was that about?’
‘Search me.’ Nobby scratched a promising boil. ‘P’raps he meant a false nose. You know. Those red ones on elastic? The ones,’ said Nobby, grimacing, ‘they think are funny. He didn’t have one.’
Colon rapped on the door, taking care to stand out of the way of any jolly amusing booby traps.
The hatch slid aside.
‘Yes?’ hissed Boffo.
‘Did you mean his false nose?’ said Colon.
‘His real one! Now bugger off!’
The hatch snapped back.
‘Mental,’ said Nobby, firmly.
‘Beano had a real nose. Did it look wrong to you?’ said Colon.
‘No. It had a couple of holes in it.’
‘Well, I don’t know about noses,’ said Colon, ‘but either Brother Boffo is dead wrong or there’s something fishy going on.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, Nobby, you’re what I might call a career soldier, right?’
‘’S’right, Fred.’
‘How many dishonourable discharges have you had?’
‘Lots,’ said Nobby, proudly. ‘But I always puts a poultice on ’em.’
‘You’ve been on a lot of battlefields, ain’t you?’
‘Dozens.’
Sergeant Colon nodded.
‘So you’ve seen a lot of corpses, right, when you’ve been ministering to the fallen—’
Corporal Nobbs nodded. They both knew that ‘ministering’ meant harvesting any personal jewellery and stealing their boots. In many a faraway battlefield the last thing many a mortally wounded foeman ever saw was Corporal Nobbs heading towards him with a sack, a knife and a calculating expression.
‘Shame to let good stuff go to waste,’ said Nobby.
‘So you’ve noticed how dead bodies get … deader,’ said Sergeant Colon.
‘Deader than dead?’
‘You know. More corpsey,’ said Sergeant Colon, forensic expert.
‘Goin’ stiff and purple and suchlike?’
‘Right.’
‘And then sort of manky and runny …’
‘Yes, all right—’
‘Makes it easier to get the rings off, mind you—’
‘The point is, Nobby, that you can tell how old a corpse is. That clown, for e.g. You saw him, same as me. How long, would you say?’
‘About 5’ 9”, I’d say. His boots didn’t fit, I know that. Too floppy.’
‘I meant how long he’d been dead.’
‘Couple of days. You can tell because there’s this—’
‘So how come Boffo saw him yesterday morning?’
They strolled onwards.
‘Bit of a poser, that is,’ said Nobby.
‘You’re right. I expect the captain’ll be very interested.’
‘Maybe he was a zombie?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Never could stand zombies,’ Nobby mused.
‘Really?’
‘It was always so hard to nick their boots.’
Sergeant Colon nodded at a passing beggar. ‘You still doing the folk dancing on your nights off, Nobby?’
‘Yes, Fred. We’re practising “Gathering Sweet Lilacs” this week. There is a very complicated double crossover-step.’
‘You’re definitely a man of many parts, Nobby.’
‘Only if I couldn’t cut the rings off, Fred.’
‘What I mean is, you presents an intriguing dichotomy.’
Nobby took a kick at a small scruffy dog.
‘You been reading books again, Fred?’
‘Got to improve my mind, Nobby. It’s these new recruits. Carrot’s got his nose in a book half the time, Angua knows words I has to look up, even the shortarse is brighter’n me. They keep on extracting the urine. I’m definitely a bit under-endowed in the head department.’
‘You’re brighter than Detritus,’ said Nobby.
‘That’s what I tell myself. I say, “Fred, whatever happens, you’re brighter than Detritus.” But then I say, “Fred — so’s yeast.” ’
He turned away from the window.
So. The damn Watch!
That damn Vimes! Exactly the wrong man in the wrong place. Why didn’t people learn from history? Treachery was in his very genes! How could a city run properly with someone like that, poking around? That wasn’t what a Watch was for. Watchmen were supposed to do what they were told, and see to it that other people did too.
Someone like Vimes could upset things. Not because he was clever. A clever Watchman was a contradiction in terms. But sheer randomness might cause trouble.
The gonne lay on the table.
‘What shall I do about Vimes?’
Kill him.
Angua woke up. It was almost noon, she was in her own bed at Mrs Cake’s, and someone was knocking at the door.
‘Mmm?’ she said.
‘Oi don’t know. Shall I ask him to go away?’ said a voice from around keyhole level.
Angua thought quickly. The other residents had warned her about this. She waited for her cue.
‘Oh, thanks, love. Oi was forgetting,’ said the voice.
You had to pick your time, with Mrs Cake. It was difficult, living in a house run by someone whose mind was only nominally attached to the present. Mrs Cake was a psychic.
‘You’ve got your precognition switched on again, Mrs Cake,’ said Angua, swinging her legs out of bed and rummaging quickly through the pile of clothes on the chair.
‘Where’d we got to?’ said Mrs Cake, still on the other side of the door.
‘You just said, “I don’t know, shall I ask him to go away?” Mrs Cake,’ said Angua. Clothes! That was always the trouble! At least a male werewolf only had to worry about a pair of shorts and pretend he’d been on a brisk run.