Terry Pratchett - Snuff

Heads leaned a little forward, breaths were held, and Vimes chewed the very last vinegary piece of crisp. Then he said, directing his gaze to the ceiling, ‘You’ve all got weapons. Every man jack of you. Huge, dangerous, deadly weapons. You could have done something . You could have done anything . You could have done everything . But you didn’t, and I’m not sure but that in your shoes I might not have done anything, either. Yes?’

Hasty had held up a hand. ‘I’m sure we’re sorry, sir, but we don’t have weapons.’

‘Oh, dear me. Look around. One of the things that you could have done was think. It’s been a long day, gentlemen, it’s been a long week. Just remember, that’s all. Remember for next time.’

In silence, Vimes walked across to Jiminy at the bar, noticing above the man a patch on the wall showing gleaming paint on the plaster. For a moment Vimes’s memory filled that space with a goblin’s head. Another little triumph.

‘Jiminy, these gentlemen are drinking at my expense for the rest of the evening. See they get home okay even if wheelbarrows have to be deployed. I’ll send Willikins down to settle with you in the morning.’

Only the sound of his boots broke the silence as he walked to the pub door and closed it gently behind him. Fifty yards up the road he smiled when he heard the cheering start.

The Roberta E. Biscuit was, unlike the Wonderful Fanny , a boat that strutted its stuff. It looked like a Hogswatch decoration, and on one deck a small band was trying to play as hard as a large band. Waiting on the quayside, though, was a man wearing a hat that the captain of any fleet would desire. ‘Welcome aboard, your grace, and of course your ladyship. I’m Captain O’Farrell, master of the Roberta .’ Then he looked down at Young Sam and said, ‘Want to take a turn at the wheel, young shaver? That shall be arranged! And I bet your daddy would like a turn, too.’ The captain shook Vimes’s hand industriously, saying, ‘Captain Sillitoe had nothing but good things to say about you, sir, nothing but good things indeed! And he hopes to see you again some day. But in the meantime, it’s my duty, sir, to make you King!’

The thoughts of Sam Vimes collided in their rush to get through first. Something about the word ‘king’ was getting in the way.

Still smiling, the captain said, ‘That is to say King of the River, sir, a little honour that we bestow on those heroes who have taken on Old Treachery and bested him! Allow me to present you with this gold-ish medal, sir. It’s a small token, but show it to any captain on the river and you’ll be carried for free, sir, from the mountains to the sea if you so desire!’

Whipped to a frenzy by the oration, the crowd burst into loud applause and the band struck up with the old classic ‘Surprised, Aren’t You?’, and bouquets of flowers were hurled into the air, and then picked up again carefully, because waste not, want not. And the band played and the wheels turned and the water was whisked into a foam as the Vimes family went down the river for a wonderful holiday.

Young Sam was allowed to stay up to see the dancing girls, although he didn’t see the point. Vimes, however, did. And there was a conjuror and all the other entertainment people subject themselves to in the name of fun, although he did laugh a bit when the conjuror picked his pocket in order to put in the ace of spades and found himself holding the knife that Sam had brought along just in case. When you aren’t expecting it, that’s when you should expect it!

And the conjuror had not expected it and looked goggle-eyed at Vimes until he said, ‘Oh my, you’re him , aren’t you? Commander Vimes himself!’ And to Vimes’s horror, he turned to the crowd with, ‘A big hand, please, ladies and gentlemen, for the hero of the Wonderful Fanny !’

In the end Vimes had to take a bow, which meant obviously that Young Sam took a bow next to him, causing much moistening of female eyes throughout the restaurant. And then the barman, who apparently didn’t know the score, created on the spot the ‘Sam Vimes’, which Sam later pretended to be embarrassed about when it became part of the repertoire in every drinking establishment on the Plains, apart from, of course, those where the clientele tended to open their bottles with their teeth. [33] Or, perhaps, somebody else’s. In fact, he was so overcome by the honour that he actually drank one of the cocktails and another afterwards as well, on the basis that Sybil couldn’t really object in the circumstances. Then he sat signing beer mats and pieces of paper and chatting to people rather more loudly than he normally chatted until even the barman decided to call it a day and Sybil towed her tipsy husband to bed.

And on the way to their suite he distinctly overheard one lady say to another in passing, ‘Who’s the new barman? Never seen him on this run before …’

The Roberta E. Biscuit ploughed on into the night, the water leaving a temporary white trail behind her ample stern. One ox had been led into the stable in the scuppers, leaving the other one to maintain some sensible headway while the pleasure cruise paddled towards the morning. Everyone except the pilot and the lookout was sleeping, drunk or otherwise prone. The barman was nowhere to be seen; barmen come and go, after all — whoever notices the barman? And in the corridor of staterooms a figure waited in the shadows, listening. It listened for whispers, creaks and snores building up.

There was a snore, oh yes! The shadow drifted along the dark corridor, the occasional betraying creak lost among the symphony of sounds made by any wooden boat under way. There was a door. There was a lock. There was a gentle exploration; being the kind that portrays cunning and strength rather than actually having them. There was a lockpick, a delicate movement of hinges, and the same movement again as the door was gently pushed shut from the inside. There was a smile so unpleasant that it could almost be seen in the dark, especially by the dark-assisted eye, and so there was a scream, instantly cut short—

‘Let me tell you how this is going to be,’ said Sam Vimes, as urgent sounds suddenly filled the corridor. He leaned over the body spreadeagled on the floor. ‘You will be humanely handcuffed for the rest of this voyage, and you will be watched carefully by my valet Willikins, who, apart from making a really good cocktail, is also not burdened by being a policeman.’ He squeezed a little harder and went on in a conversational tone, ‘Every now and again I have to sack a decent copper for police brutality, and I do sack them, you may be sure of that, for doing what the average member of the public might do if they were brave enough and if they had seen the dying child, or the remains of the old woman. They would do it to restore in their mind the balance of terror.’ Vimes squeezed again. ‘Often the law treats them gently, if it worries about them at all, but a copper, now, he’s a lawman — certainly if he works for me — and that means his job stops at the arrest, Mister Stratford. So what’s stopping me from squeezing the life out of a murderer who has broken into the room he thought would hold my little boy, with, oh dear me, such a lot of little knives? Why will I squeeze him only to unconsciousness, while despising myself for every fragment of breath I begrudge him? I’ll tell you, mister, that what stands between you and sudden death right now is the law you don’t acknowledge. And now I’m going to let you go, just in case you die on me, and I couldn’t have that. However, I suggest you don’t try and make a run for it, because Willikins is not bound by the same covenant as I am, and he is also quite merciless and very fond of Young Sam, who’s sleeping with his mother, I’m glad to say. Understand? You picked the single room, didn’t you, where the little boy would be. It’s lucky for you that I’m a bastard, Mister Stratford, because if you’d broken into the stateroom, where my wife, although I never dare tell her so, is snoring at least as loud as any man, you would have found that she has at her command a considerable amount of weaponry and, knowing the temper of the Ramkins, she would have quite probably done things to you that would make Willikins say, “Whoa, that’s going a bit too far.” What they have they keep, Mister Stratford.’