Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [50]
“No thanks. I’ll just haul him out the back way and drop him in an alley.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Then…I’ll sign my name on his damn plaster cast. So he sees it when he wakes up. In bloody big letters, so it won’t rub off.”
“Now that’s what I call a sensitive area,” said Lawn. “You’re an interesting man, Sergeant. You make enemies like a craftsman.”
“I’ve never been interested in needlework,” said Vimes, hoisting the man on his shoulder. “But what sort of things would a needlewoman have in her workbasket, do you think?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Needles, thread, scissors, wool…that kind of thing,” said Mossy Lawn.
“Not very heavy things, then?” said Vimes.
“Not really. Why’d you ask?”
“Oh, no reason,” said Vimes, making a small mental note. “Just a thought. I’ll go and drop off our friend here while I’ve still got some mist to lurk in.”
“Fine. I’ll have breakfast on when you get back. It’s liver. Calf’s.”
The Beast remembers. This time, Vimes slept soundly.
He had always found it easier to sleep during the day. Twenty-five years on nights had ground their nocturnal groove in his brain. Darkness was easier, somehow. He knew how to stand still, a talent that few possess, and how to merge into the shadows. How to guard, in fact, and see without being seen.
He remembered Findthee Swing. A lot of it was history. The revolt would have happened with Swing or without him, but he was, as it were, the tip of the boil.
He’d been trained at the Assassins’ School and should never have been allowed to join the Watch. He had too much brain to be a copper. At least, too much of the wrong kind of brain. But Swing had impressed Winder with his theories, had been let in as a sergeant and then was promoted to captain immediately. Vimes had never known why; it was probably because the officers were offended at seeing such a fine genn’lman pounding the streets with the rest of the oiks. Besides, he had a weak chest or something.
Vimes wasn’t against intellect. Anybody with enough savvy to let go of a doorknob could be a street monster in the old days, but to make it above sergeant you needed a grab bag of guile, cunning, and street wisdom that could pass for “intelligence” in a poor light.
Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn’t look around, and watch, and learn, and then say, “This is how people are, how do we deal with it?” No, he sat and thought: “This is how people ought to be, how do we change them?” And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing’s patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.
There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.
Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can