‘Yes, Fred. And you wanted what, exactly?’ said Vimes, contriving to indicate that while Fred was always welcome, just now was not the best of times.
‘Er… something big’s going down on the street, sir,’ said Fred earnestly, in the manner of one who had memorized the phrase.
Vimes sighed. ‘Fred, do you mean something’s happening?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s the dwarfs, sir. I mean the lads here. It’s got worse. They keep going into huddles. Everywhere you look, sir, there’s huddlin’ goin’ on. Only they stops as soon as anyone else comes close. Even the sergeants. They stops and gives you a look, sir. And that’s makin’ the trolls edgy, as you might expect.’
‘We’re not going to have Koom Valley replayed in this nick, Fred,’ said Vimes. ‘I know the city’s full of it right now, what with the anniversary coming up, but I’ll drop like a ton of rectangular building things on any copper who tries a bit of historical recreation in the locker room. He’ll be out on his arse before he knows it. Make sure everyone understands that.’
‘Yessir. But I ain’t talking about all that stuff, sir. We all know about that,’ said Fred Colon. ‘This is something different, fresh today. It feels bad, sir, makes my neck tingle. The dwarfs know something. Something they ain’t sayin’.’
Vimes hesitated. Fred Colon was not the greatest gift to policing. He was slow, stolid and not very imaginative. But he’d plodded his way around the streets for so long that he’d left a groove and somewhere inside that stupid fat head was something very smart, which sniffed the wind and heard the buzz and read the writing on the wall, admittedly doing the last bit with its lips moving.
‘Probably it’s just that damn Hamcrusher who has got them stirred up again, Fred,’ he said.
‘I hear them mentioning his name in their lingo, yes, sir, but there’s more to it, I’ll swear. I mean, they looked really uneasy, sir. It’s something important, sir, I can feel it in my water.’
Vimes considered the admissibility of Fred Colon’s water as Exhibit A. It wasn’t something you’d want to wave around in a court of law, but the gut feeling of an ancient street monster like Fred counted for a lot, one copper to another.
He said, ‘Where’s Carrot?’
‘Off, sir. He pulled the swing shift and the morning shift down at Treacle Mine Road. Everyone’s doin’ double shifts, sir,’ Fred Colon added reproachfully.
‘Sorry, Fred, you know how it is. Look, I’ll get him on it when he comes in. He’s a dwarf, he’ll hear the buzz.’
‘I think he might be just a wee bit too tall to hear this buzz, sir,’ said Colon, in an odd voice.
Vimes put his head on one side.
‘What makes you say that, Fred?’
Fred Colon shook his head. ‘Just a feeling, sir,’ he said. He added, in a voice tinged with reminiscence and despair: ‘It was better when there was just you and me and Nobby and the lad Carrot, eh? We all knew who was who in the old days. We knew what one another was thinking…’
‘Yes, we were thinking “I wish the odds were on our side, just for once”, Fred,’ said Vimes. ‘Look, I know this is getting us all down, right? But I need you senior officers to tough it out, okay? How do you like your new office?’
Colon brightened up. ‘Very nice, sir. Shame about the door, o’course.’
Finding a niche for Fred Colon had been a problem. To look at him, you’d see a man who might well, if he fell over a cliff, have to stop and ask directions on the way down. You had to know Fred Colon. The newer coppers didn’t. They just saw a cowardly, stupid fat man, which, to tell the truth, was pretty much what was there. But it wasn’t all that was there.
Fred had looked retirement in the face, and didn’t want any. Vimes had got around the problem by giving him the post of Custody Officer, to the amusement of all,[2]and an office in the Watch Training School across the alley, which was much better known as, and probably would for ever be known as, the old lemonade factory. Vimes had thrown in the job of Watch Liaison Officer, because it sounded good and no one knew what it meant. He’d also given him Corporal Nobbs, who was another awkward dinosaur in today’s Watch.
It was working, too. Nobby and Colon had a street-level knowledge of the city that rivalled Vimes’s own. They ambled about, apparently aimless and completely unthreatening, and they watched and they listened to the urban equivalent of the jungle drums. And sometimes the drums came to them. Once, Fred’s sweaty little office had been the place where bare-armed ladies had mixed up great batches of Sarsaparilla and Raspberry Lava and Ginger Pop. Now the kettle was always on and it was open house for all his old mates, ex-watchmen and old cons — sometimes the same individual — and Vimes happily signed the bill for the doughnuts consumed when they dropped by to get out from under their wives’ feet. It was worth it. Old coppers kept their eyes open, and gossiped like washerwomen.
In theory, the only problem in Fred’s life now was his door.
‘The Historians’ Guild say we’ve got to preserve as much of the old fabric as possible, Fred,’ said Vimes.
‘I know that, sir, but… well, “The Twaddle Room”, sir? I mean, really!’
‘Nice brass plate, though, Fred,’ said Vimes. ‘It’s what they called the basic soft-drink syrup, I’m told. Important historical fact. You could stick a piece of paper over the top of it.’
‘We do that, sir, but the lads pull it off and snigger.’
Vimes sighed. ‘Sort it out, Fred. If an old sergeant can’t sort out that kind of thing, the world has become a very strange place. Is that all?’
‘Well, yes, sir, really. But—’
‘C’mon, Fred. It’s going to be a busy day.’
‘Have you heard of Mr Shine, sir?’
‘Do you clean stubborn surfaces with it?’ said Vimes.
‘Er… what, sir?’ said Fred. No one did perplexed better than Fred Colon. Vimes felt ashamed of himself.
‘Sorry, Fred. No, I haven’t heard of Mr Shine. Why?’
‘Oh… nothing, really. “Mr Shine, him Diamond!” Seen it on walls a few times lately. Troll graffiti; you know, carved in deep. Seems to be causing a buzz among the trolls. Important, maybe?’
Vimes nodded. You ignored the writing on the walls at your peril. Sometimes it was the city’s way of telling you, if not what was on its bubbling mind, then at least what was in its creaking heart.
‘Well, keep listening, Fred. I’m relying on you not to let a buzz become a sting,’ said Vimes, with extra cheerfulness to keep the man’s spirits up. ‘And now I’ve got to see our vampire.’
‘Best of luck, Sam. I think it’s going to be a long day.’
Sam, thought Vimes, as the old sergeant went out. Gods know he’s earned it, but he only calls me Sam when he’s really worried. Well, we all are.
We’re waiting for the first shoe to drop.
Vimes unfolded the copy of the Times that Cheery had left on his desk. He always read it at work, to catch up on the news that Willikins had thought it unsafe for him to hear whilst shaving.
Koom Valley, Koom Valley. Vimes shook out the paper and saw Koom Valley everywhere. Bloody, bloody Koom Valley. Gods damn the wretched place, although obviously they had already done so — damned it and then forsaken it. Up close it was just another rocky wasteland in the mountains. In theory it was a long way away, but lately it seemed to be getting a lot closer. Koom Valley wasn’t really a place now, not any more. It was a state of mind.
If you wanted the bare facts, it was where the dwarfs had ambushed the trolls and/or the trolls had ambushed the dwarfs, one ill-famed day under unkind stars. Oh, they’d fought one another since Creation, as far as Vimes understood it, but at the Battle of Koom Valley that mutual hatred became, as it were, Official, and as such had developed a kind of mobile geography. Where any dwarf fought any troll, there was Koom Valley. Even if it was a punch-up in a pub, it was Koom Valley. It was part of the mythology of both races, a rallying cry, the ancestral reason why you couldn’t trust those short, bearded/big, rocky bastards.
2
As in ‘Ol’ Fred thought he said