Feet of Clay (30 page)

‘You’re raving drunk, man!’ said Mr Boggis.

Vimes’s features froze.

‘Indeed? Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,’ he snarled, prodding the man in the chest. ‘A peck of bloody pickled peppers Peter Piper damn well picked. Do you want me to continue?’ he said, poking the man until his back was against the wall. ‘It doesn’t get much better!’

‘Hwhat about thif packet?’ shouted Downey, clutching his streaming nose with one hand and waving at the desk with the other.

Vimes still wore a wild-eyed mirthless grin. ‘Ah, well, yes,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me there. A highly dangerous substance.’

‘Ah, you admit it!’

‘Yes, indeed. I suppose I have no alternative but to dispose of the evidence …’ Vimes grabbed the packet, ripped it open and tipped most of the powder into his mouth.

‘Mmm
mmm
,’ he said, powder spraying everywhere as he masticated. ‘Feel that tingle on the tongue!’

‘But that’s
arsenic
,’ said Boggis.

‘Good gods, is it?’ said Vimes, swallowing. ‘Amazing! I’ve got this dwarf downstairs, you know, clever little bugger, spends all his time with pipes and chemicals and things to find out what is arsenic and what isn’t, and all the time here’s you able to spot it just by looking! I’ve got to hand it to you!’

He dropped the torn packet into Boggis’s hand, but the thief jerked back and the packet tumbled to the floor, spraying its contents.

‘Excuse me,’ said Carrot. He knelt down and peered at the powder.

It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch ever since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said ‘Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup’, and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away.

Nevertheless, Carrot said, ‘I’m
sure
this isn’t poisonous,’ licked his finger and tried a bit.

‘It’s sugar,’ he said.

Downey, his composure severely compromised, waved a finger at Vimes. ‘You admitted it was dangerous!’ he screamed.

‘Right! Take too much of it and see what it does to your teeth!’ bellowed Vimes. ‘What did you
think
it was?’

‘We had information …’ Boggis began.

‘Oh, you had information, did you?’ said Vimes.
‘You
hear that, Captain? They had information. So that’s all right!’

‘We acted in good faith,’ said Boggis.

‘Let me see,’ said Vimes. ‘Your information was something on the lines of: Vimes is dead drunk in the Watch House and he’s got a bag of arsenic in his desk? And I’ll just
bet
you wanted to act in good faith, eh?’

Mrs Palm cleared her throat. ‘This has gone far enough. You are correct, Sir Samuel,’ she said. ‘We were all sent a note.’ She handed a slip of paper to Vimes. It had been written in capitals. ‘And I can see we have been misinformed,’ she added, glaring at Boggis and Downey. ‘Do allow me to apologize. Come, gentlemen.’

She swept out of the door. Boggis followed her quickly.

Downey dabbed at his nose. ‘What’s the guild price on your head, Sir Samuel?’ he said.

‘Twenty thousand dollars.’

‘Really? I think we shall definitely have to upgrade you.’

‘Delighted. I shall have to buy a new beartrap.’

‘I’ll, er, show you out,’ said Carrot.

When he hurried back he found Vimes leaning out of the window and feeling the wall below it.

‘Not a brick dislodged,’ Vimes muttered. ‘Not a tile loose … and the front office has been manned all day. Odd, that.’

He shrugged and walked back to his desk, where he picked up the note.

‘And I shouldn’t think we’ll be able to find any
Clues
on this,’ he said. ‘There’s too many greasy fingermarks all over it.’ He put down the paper and glared at Carrot. ‘When we find the man responsible,’ he said, ‘somewhere at the top of the charge sheet is going to be Forcing Commander Vimes to Tip a Whole Bottle of Single Malt on to the Carpet. That’s a hanging offence.’ He shuddered. There were some things a man should
not
have to do.

‘It’s disgusting!’ said Carrot. ‘Fancy them even
thinking
that you’d poison the Patrician!’

‘I’m offended that they think I’d be daft enough to keep the poison in my desk drawer,’ said Vimes, lighting a cigar.

‘Right,’ said Carrot. ‘Did they think you were some kind of fool who’d keep evidence like that where anyone could find it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Vimes, leaning back. ‘That’s why I’ve got it in my pocket.’

He put his feet on the desk and blew out a cloud of smoke. He’d have to get rid of the carpet. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life working in a room haunted by the smell of departed spirits.

Carrot’s mouth was still open.

‘Oh, good grief,’ said Vimes. ‘Look, it’s quite simple, man. I was expected to go “At last, alcohol!”, and chugalug the lot without thinking. Then some respectable pillars of the community’ – he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat – ‘were going to find me, in your presence, too – which was a nice touch – with the evidence of my crime neatly hidden but not so well hidden that they couldn’t find it.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘The
trouble
is, you know, that once the taste’s got you it never lets go.’

‘But you’ve been very good, sir,’ said Carrot. ‘I’ve not seen you touch a drop for—’

‘Oh,
that
,’ said Vimes. ‘I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There’s lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there’s no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, “My name is Sam and I’m a really suspicious bastard.”’

He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. ‘We’ll get Littlebottom to have a look at this,’ he said. ‘I damn sure wasn’t going to try tasting it. So I nipped down to the canteen and filled a bag with sugar out of the bowl. It was but the work of a moment to fish Nobby’s butts out of it, I might add.’ He opened the door, poked his head out into the corridor and yelled, ‘Littlebottom!’ To Carrot he added, ‘You know, I feel quite perked up. The old brain has begun to work at last. You know the golem that did the killing?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Ah, but do you know what was
special
about it?’

‘Can’t think, sir,’ said Carrot, ‘except that it was a new one. The golems made it themselves, I think. But of course they needed a priest for the words and they had to borrow Mr Hopkinson’s oven. I expect the old men thought it would be interesting. They were historians, after all.’

It was Vimes’s turn to stand there with his mouth open.

Finally he got control of himself. ‘Yes, yes, of
course
,’ he said, his voice barely shaking. ‘Yes, I mean, that’s
obvious
. Plain as the nose on your face. But … er, have you worked out what
else
is special about it?’ he added, trying to keep any trace of hope out of his voice.

‘You mean the fact it’s gone mad, sir?’

‘Well, I didn’t think it was winner of the Ankh-Morpork Mr Sanity Award!’ said Vimes.

‘I mean they drove it mad, sir. The other golems. They didn’t mean to, but it was built-in, sir. They wanted it to do so many things. It was like their … child, I think. All their hopes and dreams. And when they found out it’d been killing people … well, that’s
terrible
to a golem. They mustn’t kill, and it was their
own clay
doing it—’

‘It’s not a great idea for people, either.’

‘But they’d put all their future in it—’

‘You wanted me, Commander?’ said Cheery.

‘Oh, yes. Is this arsenic?’ said Vimes, handing her the packet.

Cheery sniffed at it. ‘It could be arsenous acid, sir. I’ll have to test it, of course.’

‘I thought acids sloshed about in jars,’ said Vimes. ‘Er … what’s that on your hands?’

‘Nail varnish, sir.’

‘Nail varnish?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Er … fine, fine. Funny, I thought it would be green.’

‘Wouldn’t look good on the fingers, sir.’

‘I meant the arsenic, Littlebottom.’

‘Oh, you can get all sorts of colours of arsenic,
sir
. The sulphides – that’s the ores, sir – can be red or brown or yellow or grey, sir. And then you cook them up with nitre and you get arsenous acid, sir. And a load of nasty smoke,
really
bad.’

‘Dangerous stuff,’ said Vimes.

‘Not good at all, sir. But useful, sir,’ said Cheery. ‘Tanners, dyers, painters … It’s not just poisoners that’ve got a use for arsenic.’

‘I’m surprised people aren’t dropping dead of it all the time,’ said Vimes.

‘Oh, most of them use golems, sir—’

The words stayed in the air even after Cheery stopped speaking.

Vimes caught Carrot’s eye and started to whistle hoarsely under his breath.
This is it
, he thought.
This is where we’ve filled ourselves up with so many questions that they’re starting to overflow and become answers
.

He felt more alive than he had for days. The recent excitement still tingled in his veins, kicking his brain into life. It was the sparkle you got with exhaustion, he knew. You were so bone-weary that a shot of adrenalin hit you like a falling troll. They
must
have it all now. All the bits. The edges, the corners, the whole picture. All there, just waiting to be pieced together …

‘These golems,’ said Carrot. ‘They’d be
covered
in arsenic, would they?’

‘Could be, sir. I saw one at the Alchemists’ Guild building in Quirm and, hah, it’d even got arsenic plated on its hands, sir, on account of stirring crucibles with its fingers …’

‘They don’t feel heat,’ said Vimes.

‘Or pain,’ said Carrot.

‘That’s right,’ said Cheery. She looked uncertainly from one to the other.

‘You can’t poison them,’ said Vimes.

‘And they’ll obey orders,’ said Carrot. ‘Without speaking.’

‘Golems do
all
the really mucky jobs,’ said Vimes.

‘You could have mentioned this before, Cheery,’ said Carrot.

‘Well, you know, sir … Golems are just
there
, sir. No one notices golems.’

‘Grease under his fingernails,’ said Vimes, to the room in general. ‘The old man scratched at his murderer. Grease under his fingernails. With arsenic in it.’

He looked down at the notebook, still on his desk.
It’s there
, he thought.
Something we haven’t seen. But we’ve looked everywhere. So we’ve seen the answer and haven’t seen that it
is
the answer. And if we don’t see it now, at this moment, we’ll never see it at all
…

‘No offence, sir, but that’s probably not a help,’ said Cheery’s voice somewhere in the distance. ‘So many of the trades that use arsenic involve some kind of grease.’

Something we don’t see
, thought Vimes.
Something invisible. No, it wouldn’t have to be invisible. Something we don’t see because it’s always there. Something that strikes in the night
…

And there it was.

He blinked. The glittering stars of exhaustion
were
causing his mind to think oddly. Well, thinking rationally hadn’t worked.

‘No one move,’ he said. He held up a hand for silence. ‘There it is,’ he said softly. ‘There. On my desk. You see it?’

‘What, sir?’ said Carrot.

‘You mean
you
haven’t worked it out?’ said Vimes.

‘
What
, sir?’

‘The thing that’s poisoning his lordship. There it is … on the desk. See?’

‘Your notebook?’

‘No!’

‘He drinks Bearhugger’s whisky?’ said Cheery.

‘I doubt it,’ said Vimes.

‘The blotter?’ said Carrot. ‘Poisoned pens? A packet of Pantweeds?’

‘Where’re they?’ said Vimes, patting his pockets.

‘Just sticking out from under the letters in the In Tray, sir,’ said Carrot. He added reproachfully, ‘You know, sir, the ones you don’t answer.’

Vimes picked up the packet and extracted another cigar. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Hah! I didn’t ask Mildred Easy what else she took! But of course they’re a servant’s little bonus, too! And old Mrs Easy was a seamstress, a
proper
seamstress! And this is autumn! Killed by the nights drawing in! See?’

Carrot crouched down and looked at the surface of the desk. ‘Can’t see it myself, sir,’ he said.

‘Of course you can’t,’ said Vimes. ‘Because there’s nothing to see. You can’t see it. That’s how you can tell it’s there. If it wasn’t there you’d soon
see
it!’ He gave a huge manic grin. ‘Only you wouldn’t! See?’

‘You all right, sir?’ said Carrot. ‘I know you’ve been overdoing it a bit these last few days—’

‘I’ve been
under
doing it!’ said Vimes. ‘I’ve been running around looking for damn Clues instead of just thinking for five minutes! What is it I’m always telling you?’

‘Er … er … Never trust anybody, sir?’

‘No, not that.’

‘Er … er … Everyone’s guilty of something, sir?’

‘Not that, either.’

‘Er … er … Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?’

‘N— When did I say that?’

‘Last week, sir. After we’d had that visit from the Campaign for Equal Heights, sir.’

Well, not that. I mean … I’m pretty sure I’m always saying something else that’s very relevant here. Something pithy about police work.’

‘Can’t remember anything right now, sir.’

‘Well, I’ll damn well make up something and start saying it a lot from now on.’

‘Jolly good, sir.’ Carrot beamed. ‘It’s good to see you’re your old self again, sir. Looking forward to kicking ar—to prodding buttock, sir. Er … What have we found, sir?’

‘You’ll see! We’re going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant.’

‘You mean the sledgehammer, sir?’

‘Yes. And Sergeant Colon, too.’

‘He hasn’t signed in again yet, sir,’ said Cheery. ‘He should have gone off-duty an hour ago.’

‘Probably hanging around somewhere, staying out of trouble,’ said Vimes.