Vimes realized that one of the other detainees was a woman, too. She was shorter than Rosie, and was giving him a look of pure bantam defiance. She was also holding a huge quilted workbasket. Out of reflex Vimes took it, to help her up the steps.
‘Sorry about this, miss-‘ he began.
‘Get your hands off that!’ She snatched the basket back and scrambled into the darkness.
‘Pardon me,’ said Vimes.
‘This is Miss Battye,’ said Rosie, from the bench inside the
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wagon. ‘She’s a seamstress.’
‘Well, I assumed she-‘
‘A seamstress, I said,’ said Miss Palm. ‘With needles and thread. Also specializes in crochet.’
‘Er, is that a kind of extra-‘ Vimes began.
‘It’s a type of knitting,’ said Miss Battye, from the darkness of the wagon. ‘Fancy you not knowing that.’
‘You mean she’s a real-‘ said Vimes, but Rosie slammed the iron door. ‘You just drive us on,’ she said, ‘and when I see you again, John Keel, we are going to have words!’
There was some sniggering from the shadows inside the
wagon, and then a yelp. It had been immediately preceded by the noise of a spiky heel being driven into an instep.
Vimes signed the grubby form presented to him by Fred
Colon and handed it back with a solid, fixed expression that made the man feel rather worried.
‘Where to now, sarge?’ said Sam, as they pulled away.
‘Cable Street,’ said Vimes. There was a murmur of dismay from the crated people behind them.
‘That’s not right,’ muttered Sam.
‘We’re playing this by the rules,’ said Vimes. ‘You’re going to have to learn why we have rules, lanceconstable. And don’t you eyeball me. I’ve been eyeballed by experts, and you look as if you’re desperate for the privy.’
‘Yeah, all right, but everyone knows they torture people,’
mumbled Sam.
‘Do they?’ said Vimes. Then why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?’
‘ ‘cos they torture people.’
Ah, at least I was getting a grasp of basic social dynamics, thought Vimes.
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Sullen silence reigned in the seat beside him as the wagon rumbled through the streets, but he was aware of whispering behind him. Slightly louder than the background, he heard Rosie Palm’s voice hiss: ‘He won’t. I’ll bet anything.’
A few seconds later a male voice, slightly the worse for drink and very much the worse for bladdertwisting dread, managed:
‘Er, sergeant, we… er… believe the fine is five, er, dollars?’
‘I don’t think it is, sir,’ said Vimes, keeping his eyes on the damp streets.
There was some more frantic whispering, and then the voice said: ‘Er… I have a very nice gold ring.’
‘Glad to hear it, sir,’ said Vimes. ‘Everyone should have something nice,’ He patted his pocket for his silver cigar case, and for a moment felt more anger than despair, and more sorrow than anger. There was a future. There had to be. He remembered it. But it only existed as that memory, and that was fragile as the reflection on a soap bubble and, maybe, just as easily popped.
‘Er… I could perhaps include-‘
‘If you try to offer me a bribe one more time, sir,’ said Vimes, as the wagon turned into Cable Street, ‘I shall personally give you a thumping. Be told.’
‘Perhaps there is some other-‘ Rosie Palm began, as the lights of the Cable Street House came into view.
‘We’re not at home to a tuppenny upright, either,’ said Vimes, and heard the gasp. ‘Shut up, the lot of you.’
He reined Marilyn to a halt, jumped down and pulled his clipboard from under the seat. ‘Seven for you,’ he said, to the guard lounging against the door.
‘Well?’ said the guard. ‘Open it up and let’s be having them, then.’
‘Right,’ said Vimes, flicking through the paperwork. ‘No problem.’ He thrust the clipboard forward. ‘Just sign here.’
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The man recoiled as though Vimes had tried to offer him a snake.
‘What d’ya mean, sign?’ he said. ‘Hand ’em over!’
‘You sign,’ said Vimes woodenly. ‘That’s the rules. Prisoners moved from one custody to another, you have to sign. More’n my job’s worth, not to get a signature.’
‘Your job’s not worth spit,’ snarled the man, grabbing the board. He looked at it blankly, and Vimes handed him a pencil.
‘If you need any help with the difficult letters, let me know,’
he said helpfully.
Growling, the guard scrawled something on the paper and thrust it back. ‘Now open up, please,’ he said.
‘Certainly,’ said Vimes, glancing at the paper. ‘But now I’d like to see some form of ID, thank you.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not me, you understand,’ said Vimes, ‘but if I went back and showed my captain this piece of paper and he said to me, Vi- Keel, how d’you know he’s Henry the Hamster, well, I’d be a bit… flummoxed. Maybe even perplexed.’
‘Listen, we don’t sign for prisoners!’
‘We do, Henry,’ said Vimes. ‘No signature, no prisoners.’
‘And you’ll stop us taking ’em, will you?’ said Henry the Hamster, taking a few steps forward.
‘You lay a hand on that door,’ said Vimes, ‘and I’ll-‘
‘Chop it off, will you?’
‘-I’ll arrest you,’ said Vimes. ‘Obstruction would be a good start, but we can probably think of some more charges back at the station.’
‘Arrest me? But I’in a copper, same as you!’
‘Wrong again,’ said Vimes.
‘What is thetrouble… here?’ said a voice.
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A small, thin figure appeared in the torchlight. Henry the Hamster took a step back, and adopted a certain deferential pose.
‘Officer won’t hand over the curfew breakers, sir,’ he said.
‘And this is the officer?’ said the figure, lurching towards Vimes with a curiously erratic gait.
‘Yessir.’
Vimes found himself under cool and not openly hostile
inspection from a pale man with the screwedup eyes of a pet rat.
‘Ah,’ said the man, opening a little tin and taking out a green throat pastille. ‘Would you be Keel, by anychance? I have been…
hearing about you.’ The man’s voice was as uncertain as his walk. Pauses turned up in the wrong places.
‘You hear about things quickly, sir.’
‘A salute is generally in order, sergeant.’
‘I don’t see anything to salute, sir,’ said Vimes.
‘Goodpoint. Goodpoint. You are new, of course. But, you see, we in theParticulars… often find it necessary to wearplain…
clothes.’
Like rubber aprons, if I recall correctly, thought Vimes.
Aloud, he said: ‘Yes, sir.’ It was a good phrase. It could mean any of a dozen things, or nothing at all. It was just punctuation until the man said something else.
‘I’in Captain Swing,’ said the man. Tindthee Swing. If you think the name is amusing, pleasesmirk… and get it over with.
You may now salute.’
Vimes saluted. Swing’s mouth turned up at the corners very briefly.
‘Good. Your first night on our hurryup wagon, sergeant?’
‘Sir.’
‘And you’re here so early. With a full load, too. Shall we take
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alook… at your passengers?’ He glanced in between the ironwork. ‘Ah. Yes. Good evening, Miss Palm. And an
associate, I see-‘
‘I do crochet!’
‘and what appear to be some partygoers. Well, well.’ Swing stood back. ‘What little scamps your street officers are, to be sure. They really have scoured the streets. How they love their…
littlejokes, sergeant.’ Swing put his hand on the wagon door’s handle and there was a little noise which was nevertheless a thunderclap in the silence, and it was the sound of a sword moving very slightly in its scabbard.
Swing stood stock still for a moment and then delicately popped the pastille into his mouth. ‘Aha. I think that perhaps this little catch can be… thrownback, don’t you, sergeant? We don’t want to make a mockery of… thelaw. Take them away, take them away.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But just onemoment, please, sergeant. Indulge me… just a little hobby of mine
‘Sir?’
Swing had reached into a pocket of his overlong coat and pulled out a very large pair of steel calipers. Vimes flinched as they were opened up to measure the width of his head, the width of his nose and the length of his eyebrows. Then a metal ruler was pressed against one ear.
While doing this, Swing was mumbling under his breath.
Then he closed the calipers with a snap, and slipped them back.
‘I must congratulateyou, sergeant,’ he said, ‘in overcoming your considerable natural disadvantages. Do you know you have the eye of a mass murderer? I am neverwrong… in these matters.’
‘Nosir. Didn’t know that, sir. Will try to keep it closed, sir,’
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said Vimes. Swing didn’t crack a smile.
‘However, I’in sure that when you have settled in you and Corporal, aha, Hamster here will get along like a… houseonfire.’
‘A house on fire. Yes, sir.’
‘Don’tlet… me detain you, Sergeant Keel.’
Vimes saluted. Swing nodded, turned in one movement, as though he was on a swivel, and strode back into the Watch House. Or jerked, Vimes considered. The man moved in the same way he talked, in a curious mixture of speeds. It was as if he was powered by springs; when he moved a hand, the first few inches of movement were a blur, and then it gently coasted until it was brought into conjunction with whatever was the intended target. Sentences came out in spurts and pauses. There was no rhythm to the man.