The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [31]
Gaspode ran up and down, nose barely an inch from the ground. Carrot waited, holding his horse. It was a good one. Carrot hadn’t spent a lot of his wages, up until now.
Finally the dog sat down and looked depressed.
“So tell me about this wonderful nose the Patrician has got, then,” he said.
“Not a trace?”
“You better get Vetinari down here, if he’s so good,” said Gaspode. “What’s the point of starting here? Worst place in the whole city! It’s the gate to the cattle market, am I right? Trying not to smell stuff is the trick here, is the point I’m makin’. There’s ground-in stink. If you wanted to get on the trail of somebody, this is the last place I’d start.”
“Very good point,” said Carrot, carefully. “So…what’s the strongest smell heading hubward?”
“Dung carts, o’course. Yesterday. Always a big clear-out of the pens first thing Friday morning.”
“You can follow the smell?”
Gaspode rolled his eyes. “With my head in a bucket.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“So,” said Gaspode, as they began to leave the gate’s bustle behind, “We’re chasing this girl, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just you?”
“Yes.”
“Not like with dogs, then, where there might be twenty or thirty?”
“No.”
“So we’re not looking at a bucket of cold water here?”
“No.”
Constable Shoe saluted, but a little testily. He’d been waiting rather a long time.
“Afternoon, Sergeant—”
“That’s Captain,” said Captain Colon. “See the pip on my shoulder, Reg?”
Reg looked closely. “I thought it was bird doings, Sarge.”
“That’s Captain,” said Colon automatically. “It’s only chalk now because I ain’t got time to get it done properly,” he said, “So don’t be cheeky.”
“What’s up with Nobby?” said Reg. Corporal Nobbs was holding a damp cloth over one eye.
“Bit of a contry tomps with an illegally parked troll,” said Captain Colon.
“Shows what kind of troll he was, striking a lady,” muttered Nobby.
“But you ain’t a lady, Nobby. You’re just wearing your traffic-calming disguise.”
“He wasn’t to know.”
“You’d got your helmet on. Anyway, you shouldn’t have clamped him.”
“He was parked, Fred.”
“He’d been knocked down by a cart,” said Captain Colon. “And that’s Captain.”
“Well, they always have excuses,” said Nobby sullenly.
“You’d better show us the corpus, Reg,” said Colon.
The body in the cellar was duly inspected.
“…and I remember Cheery saying there was a smell of cat’s pee and sulfur at the Dwarf Bread Museum,” said Reg.
“Certainly hangs about,” said Colon. “You wouldn’t have blocked sinuses if you worked here for a day.”
“And I thought, ‘I wonder if someone’d tried to make a mold of the replica Stone,’ sir,” said Reg.
“Now that is clever,” said Fred Colon. “You’d get the real one back then, wouldn’t you?”
“Er…no, Sarge—Captain. But you’d get a copy of the replica.”
“Would that be legal?”
“Can’t say, sir. I wouldn’t think so. It wouldn’t fool a dwarf for five minutes.”
“Then who’d want to kill him?”
“A father of thirteen kids, maybe?” said Nobby. “Haha.”
“Nobby, will you stop pinching the merchandise?” said Colon. “And don’t argue, I just saw you put a couple of dozen in your handbag.”
“Dat don’t matter,” rumbled the troll. “Mister Sonky always said dey was free to the Watch.”
“That was very…civic of him,” said Captain Colon.
“Yeah, he said der last fing we wanted was more bloody coppers around the city.”
A pigeon chose that diplomatic moment to flutter into the factory and land on Colon’s shoulder, where it promoted him. He reached up, removed the message capsule and unfolded the contents.
“It’s from Visit,” he said. “There’s a clue, he says.”
“What to?” said Nobby.
“Not to anything, Nobby. Just a clue.” He took off his helmet and wiped his brow. This was what he’d hoped to avoid. In his heart of battered hearts, he suspected that Vimes and Carrot were good at putting clues next to other clues and thinking about them. That was their talent. He had other…well, he was good with people, and he had a shiny breastplate, and he could sergeant in his sleep.