do you mind opening the window?’
A little later that night, Downey was walking unsteadily back to his study after a convivial time in the Prefects’ Common Room when he noticed that a torch had gone out.
With a swiftness that might have surprised someone who saw no further than his flushed face and unsteady walk, he pulled out a dagger and scanned the corridor. He glanced up at the ceiling, too. There were grey shadows everywhere, but nothing more than that. Sometimes, torches did go out all by themselves.
He stepped forward.
When he woke up in his bed next morning he put the
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headache down to some bad brandy. And some scag had painted orange and black stripes on his face.
It started to rain again. Vimes liked the rain. Street crime went down when it rained. People stayed indoors. Some of the best nights of his career had been rainy, when he’d stood in the shadows in the lee of some building, head tucked in so that there was barely anything showing between his helmet and his collar, and listened to the silvery rustle of the rain.
Once he’d been standing so quietly, so withdrawn, so not there that a fleeing robber, who’d evaded his pursuers, had leaned against him to catch his breath. And, when Vimes put his arms around him and whispered ‘Gotcha!’ into his ear, the man had apparently done in his trousers what his dear mother, some forty years before, had very patiently taught him not to do.
The people had gone home. The sewnup Gappy had been
escorted to New Cobblers, where Fred Colon had patiently explained events to the man’s parents with his round red face radiating honesty. Lawn was possibly getting some use out of his bed.
And the rain gurgled in the downpipes and gushed from the gargoyles and swirled in the gutters and deadened all sound.
Useful stuff, rain.
Vimes picked up the bottle of Mrs Arbiter’s best ginger beer.
He remembered it. It was as gassy as hell and therefore hugely popular. A young boy could, with encouragement and training, eventually manage to belch the whole first verse of the national anthem after just one swig. This is an important social attribute when you’re eight years old.
He’d chosen Colon and Waddy for this task. He wasn’t going to involve young Sam. It wasn’t that what he was planning was illegal, as such, it was just that it had the same colour and smell as something illegal and Vimes didn’t want to have to explain.
The cells were old, much older than the building above them.
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The iron cages were fairly new, and didn’t take up all the space.
There were other cellars beyond an arch, containing nothing more than rats and rubbish but, importantly, they couldn’t be seen from the cages.
Vimes got the men to carry the dead bowman through.
Nothing wrong with that. It was the middle of the night, filthy weather, no sense in waking up the people at the mortuary when there was a nice cold cellar.
He watched through the spy hole in the door as the body was taken past the cells. It caused a certain stir, especially in the first man he’d brought in. The other two had the look of men who’d seen a lot of bad stuff in the name of making money; if they were hired to steal or murder or be a copper it was all the same to them, and they’d learned not to react too readily to deaths that were not their own.
The first man, though, was getting nervous.
Vimes had nicknamed him Ferret. He was the bestdressed of the three, all in black; the dagger had been expensive and, Vimes had noticed, he had a silver Death’s Head ring on one finger. The other two had dressed nondescript and their weapons had been workmanlike, nothing much to look at but well used.
No real Assassin would wear jewellery at work. It was
dangerous and it shone. But Ferret wanted to be a big man. He probably checked himself in the mirror before he went out, to make sure he looked cool. He was the sort of little twerp that got a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars.
Ferret, in short, had big dreams. Ferret had an imagination.
Well, that was fine.
The watchmen returned, and picked up the packages Vimes had prepared.
‘Remember, we do it fast,’ he said. They’re worried, they’re tired, no one’s come for them and they’ve just seen a very dead
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colleague. We don’t want to give the first two time to think.
Understand?’
They nodded.
‘And we leave the little one until last. I want him to have lots of time…’
Ferret was considering his prospects. Regrettably, this didn’t take long.
He’d already had a row with the other two. Some rescue team they’d been. They weren’t even dressed right. But the brownjobs hadn’t done things as per spec. Everyone knew they backed away. They weren’t supposed to fight back or show any kind of intelligence. They-The main cell door was flung back.
‘It’s ginger beer time!’ roared someone.
And a watchman ran through with a box of bottles, and
disappeared into the rooms beyond.
There wasn’t much light in here. Ferret cowered against the wall and saw two watchmen unlock the cell next door, drag the shackled occupant upright and out into the cellar and then hustle him around the corner.
The voices had a slight echo.
‘Hold him down. Mind his legs!’
‘Right! Let’s have the bottle! Give it a proper shake, otherwise it won’t work!’
‘Okay, friend. Anything you want to tell us? Your name? No?
Well, it’s like this. Right now, we don’t care a whole lot if you talk or not
There was a loud pop, a hiss and then… a scream, an
explosion of agony.
After it had died away the trembling Ferret heard someone say, ‘Quick, get the next one, before the captain catches us.’
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He cringed back as two watchmen rushed into the next cell, dragged out the struggling prisoner and hustled him into the darkness.
‘All right. One chance. Are you going to talk? Yes? No? Too late!’
Once again the pop, once again the hiss, once again the scream. It was louder and longer this time, and ended in a kind of bubbling sound.
Ferret crouched against the wall, fingers in his mouth.
Around the corner, sitting in the light of one lantern, Colon nudged Vimes, wrinkled his nose and pointed down.
There was a gully that ran between all the cells, as a primitive sop to hygiene. Now a thin trickle was inching its way along it.
Ferret was nervous.
Gotcha, thought Vimes. But a good imagination needs a little more time. He leaned forward, and the other two moved closer expectantly.
‘So,’ he said in a low whisper, ‘have you boys had your holidays yet?’
After a few minutes of very small talk he stood up, strode round to the last occupied cell, unlocked the door, and grabbed Ferret, who was trying to squeeze into a corner.
‘No! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!’ the man yelled.
‘Really?’ said Vimes. ‘What’s the orbital velocity of the moon?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, you’d like something simpler?’ said Vimes, dragging the man out of the cell. ‘Fred! Waddy! He wants to talk! Bring a notebook!’
It took half an hour. Fred Colon wasn’t a fast writer. And when the painful sound of his efforts concluded with the stab of
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his last full stop, Vimes said: ‘Okay, sir. And now you write down at the end: I, Gerald Leastways, currently staying at the Young Men’s Pagan Association, am making this statement of my own free will and not under duress. And then you sign it. Or else. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The initials GL had been inscribed on the dagger. Vimes believed them. He’d met plenty of Leastwayses in his career, and they tended to spill their guts at the mere thought of spilling their guts. And when they did, you got everything. Anyone who had seen the ginger beer trick used on someone else would confess to anything.
‘Well, now,’ he said cheerfully, standing up. Thank you for your cooperation. Want a lift to Cable Street?’
Ferret’s expression, if not his mouth, said ‘huh?’
‘We’ve got to drop off your friends,’ Vimes went on, raising his voice slightly. Todzy and Muffer. We’ll drop the dead one off at the mortuary. Just a bit of paperwork for you.’ He nodded at Colon. ‘One copy of your helpful statement. One certificate of death from the pox doctor for the late mystery man, and rest assured we’ll try to track down his murderer. A chitty from Mossy about the ointment he put on Muffer’s feet. Oh… and a receipt for six bottles of ginger beer.’
He put a hand on Ferret’s shoulder and gently walked him round into the next cellar, where Todzy and Muffer were sitting gagged, bound and livid with rage. On a table near by was a box containing six flagons of ginger beer. The corks were heavily wired down.