Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [64]
“Yeah?” said Vimes. It wasn’t prizewinning repartee, but Carcer obviously wanted to talk. “And how did you get made a sergeant, Carcer?”
“I heard where they were looking for coppers with fresh ideas,” said Carcer. “And that nice Captain Swing hisself talked to me and said he was in no doubt I was an honest man who had been unlucky. Measured me up, he did, with his calipers and his rulers and jommetry and he said it proved I was not a criminal type. It was all the fault of my environment, he said.”
“What, you mean all those dead bodies everywhere you went?” said Vimes.
“Nice one, Duke, haha.”
“And you had fresh ideas, did you?”
“Well, he liked one of ’em,” said Carcer, narrowing his eyes. “Turned out he didn’t know the ginger-beer trick.”
The ginger-beer trick. Well, that just about put the tin lid on it. Torturers down the ages hadn’t found the ginger-beer trick, and Carcer has handed it over to a patient maniac like Captain Swing.
“The ginger-beer trick,” said Vimes. “Well done, Carcer. You’re just what Swing’s been looking for. The complete bastard.”
Carcer grinned as if he’d been awarded a small prize. “Yeah, I already told ’em how you got a down on me for stealing a loaf of bread.”
“Come on, Carcer,” said Vimes. “That’s not you. You never pinched a loaf of bread in your life. Murdering the baker and stealing the bakery, that’d be your style.”
“He’s a card, eh?” said Carcer, winking at his men and nodding toward Vimes. Then, in one movement, he spun around and punched the man beside him in the stomach.
“You don’t call me ‘sarge,’” he hissed. “It’s ‘sergeant,’ understand?”
On the floor, the man groaned.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then, haha,” said Carcer, slipping the brass knuckles back into this pocket. “Now the thing is…Duke…what you have there is one of my men, so how about you hand him over and we’ll say no more about it?”
“What’s happening, Sarge?”
The voice was coming from some way behind Vimes. He turned. It was Wiglet and Scutts. They looked like men who’d been running but now were trying to affect a nonchalant swagger. It was getting less nonchalant and considerably less swaggy as they eyed up the Unmentionables.
The frantically ringing bell. That’s what they’d always used. All the coppers who heard it would converge on it, because an Officer Was In Trouble.
Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily help him get out of trouble, not if the odds weren’t right. This was the old Night Watch, after all. But at least they could fish him out of the river or cut him down and see he got a decent burial.
There was a rumble from further up the street, and the rattling bulk of the hurry-up turned the corner, with Fred Colon at the reins and Constable Waddy hanging on behind. Vimes heard the shouts.
“What’s up, Bill?”
“It’s Keel and Vimesy,” Wiglet called back. “Hurry up!”
Vimes tried to avoid Carcer’s eyes, tried to appear as if nothing had happened, tried to pretend that the world had not suddenly cracked open and let in the cold winds of infinity. But Carcer was smart.
He glanced at Vimes, looked at Sam.
“Vimesy?” he said. “Your name Sam Vimes, mister?”
“I ain’t saying anything,” said Lance Constable Vimes staunchly.
“Well, well, well, well, well,” said Carcer happily. “Now here’s a nice how-d’yer-do, eh? Something for a chap to think about, and no mistake, haha.”
There was a creak as the hurry-up wagon rolled to a stop. Carcer glanced up at the round, pale face of Corporal Colon.
“You just go about your business, Corporal,” said Carcer. “You just leave now.”
Colon swallowed. Vimes could see his Adam’s apple bob as it tried to hide.
“Er…we heard the ringing,” he said.
“Just a bit of high spirits,” said Carcer. “Nothing that need worry you. We’re all coppers here, right? I wouldn’t like there to be any trouble. There’s just been a bit of a misunderstanding, that’s all. Sergeant Keel here was just going to hand over my friend there, right, Sergeant? No hard feelings, eh? You just happened to blunder into a little operation of ours. Best not to talk about it. Just you hand him over and we’ll