Jingo

Well, at least they made a start on most meals.

Well, at least she knew he was never very far away, just somewhere where he was trying to do too much and run too fast and people were trying to kill him.

All in all, she considered, she was jolly lucky.

Vimes stared at Carrot, who was standing in front of his desk.

“So what does all that add up to?” he said. “The man we know didn't get the Prince is dead. The man who probably did… is dead. Someone tried very clumsily to make it look as if Ossie was paid by the Klatchians. OK, I can see why someone might want to do that. That's what Fred calls politics. They get Snowy to do the real business, and he helps poor dumb Ossie who's there to take the fall, and then the Watch proves that Ossie was in the pay of the Klatchians and that's another reason for fighting. And Snowy just slopes off. Only someone cured his dandruff for him.”

“After he'd written something, sir,” said Carrot.

“Ah… yes.”

Vimes looked at the notepad retrieved from Snowy's room. It was a crude affair, the wads of mismatched bits of scrap that the engravers sold off cheaply. He sniffed at it.

“Soap on the edges,” he said.

“His new shampoo,” said Carrot. “First time he'd used it.”

“How do you know?”

“We looked at all the bottles on the heap, sir.”

“Hmm. Looks like fresh blood here, at the spine, where they're stitched together…”

“His, sir,” said Angua.

Vimes nodded. You never argued with Angua about blood.

“But none of the actual pages have blood on them…” said Vimes. “Which is a bit odd. Messy business, decapitation. People tend to… spray. So the top page—”

“—has been taken away, sir,” said Carrot, grinning and nodding. “But that's not the funny part, sir. See if you can guess, sir!”

Vimes glared at him and then moved the lamp closer. “Very faint impression of writing on the top page…” he muttered. “Can't make it out…”

“We can't either, sir. We know he wrote in pencil, sir. There was one on the table.”

“Very faint traces,” said Vimes. “Blokes like Snowy write as though they're chipping stone.” He flicked the notebook. “Someone tore out… not just the page he'd written on but several below it as well.”

“Clever, eh, sir? Everyone knows—”

“—you can read the suspicious note by looking at the marks on the page below,” said Vimes. He tossed the book on to the table again. “Hmm. There's a message there, yes…”

“Perhaps he was blackmailing whoever's behind all this?” said Angua.

“That's not his style,” said Vimes. “No, what I meant was—”

There was a knock on the door, and Fred Colon entered.

“Brung you a mug of coffee,” he said, “and there's a bunch of wo– Klatchians to see you downstairs, Mr Vimes. Probably come to give you a medal and gabble at you in their lingo. And if you're on for late supper, Mrs Goriffs doing goat and rice and foreign gravy.”

“I suppose I'd better go down and see them,” said Vimes. “But I haven't even had time for a wash—”

“That's evidence of your heroic endeavours,” said Colon stoutly.

“Oh, all right.”

Unease began about halfway down the stairs. Vimes had never run into a group of citizens wishing to give him a medal and so he did not have a lot of experience on this score, but the group waiting for him in a tight cluster near the sergeant's desk did not look like a committee of welcome.

They were Klatchian. At least, they were wearing foreign-looking clothes and one or two of them had caught more sun than you generally got in Ankh-Morpork. The feeling crept over Vimes that Klatch was a very big place in which his city and the whole of the Sto Plains would be lost, and so there must be room in it for all kinds of peoples, including this short chap in the red fez who was practically vibrating with indignation.

“Are you the man Vimes?” the enfezzed one demanded.

“Well, I'm Commander Vimes—”

“We demand the release of the Goriff family! And we won't take any excuses!”

Vimes blinked. “Release?”

“You have locked them up! And confiscated their shop!”

Vimes stared at the man, and then he looked across the room at Sergeant Detritus.

“Where did you put the family, sergeant?”

Detritus saluted. “In der cells, sir.”

“Aha!” said the man in the fez. “You admit it!”

“Excuse me, who are you?” said Vimes, blinking with tiredness.

“I don't have to tell you and you can't beat it out of me!” said the man, sticking out his chest.

“Oh, thank you for telling me,” said Vimes. “I do hate wasted effort.”

“Oh, hello, Mr Wazir,” said Carrot, appearing behind Vimes. “Did you get the note about that book?”

There was one of those silences that happen when everyone has to reprogramme their faces.

Then Vimes said, “What?”