The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [90]
He scuffed the sand with his boot.
“They were looking hard at every cart that went in or out this morning. But that was because the Scone had been stolen. It’s at times like this you get very official, very efficient and very pointless activity. Don’t try to tell me that last week they opened every barrel and prodded every load of hay. Even the stuff coming in? Can you see Dee? Is he looking at me?”
Cheery peered around Vimes.
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
Vimes walked over to the tunnel, pressed his back against a wall, took a deep breath, and walked his legs up the opposite wall. Then he eased his way out over the plates of the weigh-bridge, inched along with feet and shoulder blades and, wincing at every protest from his knees, eventually dropped down. He strolled over to Dee, who was talking to the guards.
“How did—”
“Never mind,” said Vimes. “Let’s just say I’m longer than a dwarf, shall we?”
“Have you solved it?”
“No. But I have an idea.”
“Really? Already?” said Dee. “And what is that?”
“I’m still working it out,” said Vimes. “But it’s lucky the king told you to ask me, Dee. One thing I have found out is that no dwarf will give you the right answer.”
The opera was just ending as Vimes slipped into the seat beside Sybil.
“Have I missed anything?” he said.
“It’s very good. Where have you been?”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
He stared, unseeing, at the stage. A couple of dwarfs were engaged in a very careful mock battle.
All right, then. If it was politics it was…well, politics. There was nothing he could do about politics. So…think about it as a crime…
What was the simple solution? Best to start with the first rule of policing: Suspect the victim. Vimes wasn’t quite sure who the victim was here, though. So…suspect the witness. That was another good rule. That meant the late Dozy. He could have walked out with the Scone days before he “discovered” the loss. He could have done just about anything. The way the thing was guarded was a joke. Nobby and Colon could have done it better. Much better, he corrected himself, because they had devious little minds and that was what made them coppers…the guards on the Scone were honorable dwarfs, the last people you wanted to entrust with anything. You wanted sneaky people for a job like this.
But…it made no sense. He’d be the prime suspect. Vimes wasn’t well up on dwarf law, but he suspected that there was not a huge friendly future in store for a prime suspect, especially if no other solution was forthcoming.
Maybe he’d snapped after sixty years of changing candles? That didn’t sound right. Anyone who could put up with a job like that for ten years would probably run in their groove for the rest of eternity. Anyway, Dozy had now gone to the great big gold mine in the sky or deep underground or whatever it was dwarfs believed in. He wasn’t going to be answering any questions.
He could solve this, Vimes told himself. Everything he needed was there, if only he asked the right questions and thought the right way.
But his Vimesish instincts were trying to tell him something else.
This was a crime—if holding a piece of property to ransom was technically a crime—but it wasn’t the crime.
There was another crime here. He knew it in the same way that a fisherman spots the shoal by the ripple on the water.
The fight on stage continued. It was slowed by the need to stop after every gingerly exchanged ax blow for a song, probably about gold.
“Er…what’s this all about?” he said.
“It’s nearly over,” whispered Sybil. “They’ve only performed the bit concerning the baking of the Scone, really, but at least they’ve included the Ransom Aria. Ironhammer escapes from prison with the help of Skalt, steals the Truth that Agi has hidden, conceals it by baking it into the Scone, and persuades the guards around Bloodaxe’s camp to let him pass. The dwarfs believe that Truth was once