Cheery looked from the wrist to the bogeyman’s shoulder. Rangy though the creature was, muscles were strung along the arm like beads on a wire.
‘Hah, you wearin’ a badge,’ it sneered. ‘What’s a good we?’
Angua moved so fast she was a blur. Her free hand pulled something from her belt and nipped it up and on to Shlitzen’s head. He stopped, and stood swaying back and forth gently, making faint moaning sounds. On his head, flopping down around his ears like the knotted hanky of a style-impaired seaside sunbather, was a small square of heavy material.
Angua pushed back her chair and grabbed the beermat. The shadowy figures around the walls were muttering.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘Igor, give us half a minute and then you can take the blanket off him. Come on.’
They hurried out. The fog had already turned the sun into a mere suggestion, but it was vivid daylight compared to the gloom in Biers.
‘What happened to him?’ said Cheery, running to keep up with Angua’s stride.
‘Existential uncertainty,’ Angua said. ‘He doesn’t know whether he exists or not. It’s cruel, I know, but it’s the only thing we’ve found that works against bogeymen. Blue fluffy blanket, for preference. ‘ She noted Cheery’s blank expression. ‘Look, bogeymen go away if you put your head under the blankets. Everyone knows that, don’t they? So if you put their head under a blanket . . .’
‘Oh, I see. Ooo, that’s nasty.’
‘He’ll feel all right in ten minutes.’ Angua skimmed the beermat across the alley.
‘What was he saying about a baron?’
‘I wasn’t really listening,’ said Angua carefully.
Cheery shivered in the fog, but not just from the cold. ‘He sounded like he came from Uberwald, like us. There was a baron who lived near us and he hated people to leave.’
‘Yes
‘The whole family were werewolves. One of them ate my second cousin.’
Angua’s memory spun in a hurry. Old meals came back to haunt her from the time before she’d said, no, this is not the way to live. A dwarf, a dwarf. . . No, she was pretty sure she’d never . . . The family had always made fun of her eating habits . . .
‘That’s why I can’t stand them,’ said Cheery. ‘Oh, people say they can be tamed but I say, once a wolf, always a wolf. You can’t trust them. They’re basically evil, aren’t they? They could go back to the wild at any moment, I say.’
‘Yes. You may be right.’
‘And the worst thing is, most of the time they walk around looking just like real people.’
Angua blinked, glad of the twin disguises of the fog and Cheery’s unquestioning confidence. ‘Come on. We’re nearly there.’
‘Where?’
‘We’re going to see someone who’s either our murderer or who knows who the murderer is.’
Cheery stopped. ‘But you’ve got only a sword and I haven’t even got that!’
‘Don’t worry, we won’t need weapons.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘They wouldn’t be any use.’
‘Oh.’
Vimes opened his door to see what all the shouting was about down in the office. The corporal manning – or in this case dwarfing – the desk was having trouble.
‘Again? How many times have you been killed this week?’
‘I was minding my own business!’ said the unseen complainer.
‘Stacking garlic? You’re a vampire, aren’t you? I mean, let’s see what jobs you have been doing . . . Post sharpener for a fencing firm, sunglasses tester for Argus opticians … Is it me, or is there some underlying trend here?’
‘Excuse me, Commander Vimes?’
Vimes looked round into a smiling face that sought only to do good in the world, even if the world had other things it wanted done.
‘Ah . . . Constable Visit, yes,’ he said hurriedly. ‘At the moment I’m afraid I’m rather busy, and I’m not even sure that I have got an immortal soul, haha, and perhaps you could call again when …”
‘It’s about those words you asked me to check,’ said Visit reproachfully.
‘What words?’
‘The ones Father Tubelcek wrote in his own blood? You said to try and find out what they meant?’
‘Oh. Yes. Come on into my office.’ Vimes relaxed. This wasn’t going to be another one of those painful conversations about the state of his soul and the necessity of giving it a wash and brush-up before eternal damnation set in. This was going to be about something important.
‘It’s ancient Cenotine, sir. It’s out of one of their holy books, although of course when I say “holy” it is a fact that they were basically misguided in a . . .’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure,’ said Vimes, sitting down. ‘Does it by any chance say “Mr X did it, aargh, aargh, aargh”?’
‘No, sir. That phrase does not appear anywhere in any known holy book, sir. *
‘Ah,’said Vimes.
‘Besides, I looked at other documents in the room and the paper does not appear to be in the deceased’s handwriting, sir.’
Vimes brightened up. ‘Ah-ha! Someone else’s? Does it say something like “Take that, you bastard, we’ve been waiting ages to get you for what you did all those years ago”?’
‘No, sir. That phrase also does not appear in any holy book anywhere,’ said Constable Visit, and hesitated. ‘Except in the Apocrypha to The Vengeful Testament of Offter,’ he added conscientiously. ‘ These words are from the Cenotine Book of Truth,’ he sniffed, ‘as they called it. It’s what their false god . . .’
‘Could I just perhaps have the words and leave out the comparative religion?’ said Vimes.
‘Very well, sir.’ Visit looked hurt, but unfolded a piece of paper and sniffed disparagingly. These are some of the rules that their god allegedly gave to the first people after he’d baked them out of clay, sir. Rules like “Thou shall labour fruitfully all the days of your life”, sir, and “Thou shalt not kill”, and “Thou shalt be humble”. That sort of thing.’
‘Is that all?’ said Vimes.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Visit.
‘They’re just religious quotations?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Any idea why it was in his mouth? Poor devil looked like he was having a last cigarette.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I could understand if it was one of the “smite your enemies” ones,’ said Vimes. ‘But that’s just saying “get on with your work and don’t make trouble”.’
‘Ceno was a rather liberal god, sir. Not big on commandments.’
‘Sounds almost decent, as gods go.’
Visit looked disapproving. The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir.’
‘Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?’ said Vimes.
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Oh, nothing. Well thank you, Constable. I’ll, er, see that Captain Carrot is informed and, thank you once again, don’t let me keep you from’
Vimes’s desperately accelerating voice was too late to prevent Visit pulling a roll of paper out of his breastplate.
Ive brought you the latest Unadorned Facts magazine, sir, and also this month’s Battle Call, which contains many articles that I’m sure will be of interest to you, including Pastor Nasal Pedlers’ exhortation to the congregation to rise up and speak to people sincerely through their letterboxes, sir.’
‘Er, thank you.’
‘I can’t help noticing that the pamphlets and magazines I gave you last week are still on your desk where I left them, sir.’
‘Oh, yes, well, sorry, you know how it is, the amount of work these days, makes it so hard to find the time to’
‘It’s never too soon to contemplate eternal damnation, sir.’
‘I think about it all the time, Constable. Thank you.’
Unfair, thought Vimes, when Visit had gone. A note is left at the scene of a crime in my town and does it have the decency to be a death-threat? No.
The last dying scrawl of a man determined to name his murderer? No. It’s a bit of religious doggerel. What’s the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery?
He scribbled a note on Visit’s translation and chucked it into his In Tray.
Too late, Angua remembered why she avoided the slaughterhouse district at this time of the month.
She could change at will at any time. That’s what people forgot about werewolves. But they remembered the important thing. Full moonlight was the irresistible trigger: the lunar rays reached down into the centre of her morphic memory and flipped all the switches, whether she wanted them switched or not. Full moon was only a couple of days away. And the delicious smell of the penned animals and the blood from the slaughterhouses was chiming against her strict vegetarianism. The clash was bringing on her PLT.
She glared at the shadowy building in front of her. ‘I think we’ll go round the back,’ she said. ‘And you can knock.’
‘Me? They won’t take any notice of me!’ said Cheery.
‘You show them your badge and tell them you’re the Watch.’