Thanks again to Charli800 for betareading!
And a big thank you for everyone who commented on the last chapter! I love you all! :-D
Set just before Making Money btw (otherwise Mr Fusspot would have to be around somewhere - which, I realised, he's not :-P).
Sorry it took so long to update, some idiot people decided that now (while I'm in the final stages of a project!) would be a great time to paint my laboratory - so lots of last minute panicing to do.
Chapter 3:
Scene 1:
It had taken a while, but Susan had managed to find the bolts on the secret door. There had been several of them, all very slim. They lay flush against the door and had been covered with a veneer of wood to make them even harder to detect by touch. She pulled the last one towards the centre of the door.
"Hey, I did it." Drumknott explained excitedly as the door swung open.
"Ha, how did you open it?" Susan heard Vimes ask.
"I, I... don't really know." The clerk admitted.
She could hear Vimes grunt and moved out of the way so that he and Angua could enter the narrow passageway. Angua immediately stepped ahead of Vimes.
"I should stay here and see to the mess in the palace." Drumknott said.
"Yes, of course. This is a watch investigation. And thank you for the file."
Vimes said [while], waving the folder on Lord Contandi. He was no longer facing the clerk, though, but was already following Angua, who had set off down the corridor.
Angua lead them slowly but deliberately through the dark passage. Susan was fumbling along blindly. When they were a way from the door, Vimes spoke to Angua in a hushed voice. Although no one else was around who could have overheard him, Susan put it down to the fact that this place seemed so lifeless and dead that it just demanded respect.
"What can you smell?"
"The scent isn't hard to follow. Vetinari and another person were down here. Luckily there wasn't much blood involved."
There was a long pause before Vimes replied to this.
"Surely Vetinari knew about that passage. You'd think he'd have taken some precautions. Traps or something. I mean, yeah, I am glad he is not as mad as Winder or Snapcase, but some times I do feel he must be just a little suicidal. He just relies on the fact that it would be bad for the everyone in city if he were killed."
"So you think it was personal?"
"It could be. I don't know. But who in Ankh-Morpork doesn't hold some kind of grudge against him? Right now everyone is a suspect. Um, you said, not much blood? He better not be dead, I don't think my desk could take the weight of the paper work that would be involved."
And that was all they said. In the damp passage, the sound of their breathing and the scraping of their feet on the floor was muffled. And yet, Susan felt, the sounds they were making were almost deafening. There was nothing else to listen to, as no one spoke. It seemed like hours until Susan noticed a change. The sound of their footsteps was now being joined by that of dulled voices. Lots of them. When they grew louder and the full range of city sounds filtered down into the passageway Angua spoke: "I am pretty sure they went up here. The general smells of the city coming from up there seem quite strong though."
Susan was the last to climb to the surface. The noise was almost deafening. They appeared to be inside a large, glass-roofed warehouse. All around box towers and piles of sacks seemed to block the view. Through a gap in the container wall she could see people standing on upturned carts shouting out numbers in quick succession. It was Ankh-Morpork's fruit and vegetable auction house, Susan realised. Before she had started working for the Contandis she had never paid much attention to how the fruit and veg ended up in the shops. Lord Contandi owned the auction house though. Thus she had learnt that all the fresh produce from the fields outside the city came through this auction warehouse at some point or other. Here it was auctioned off in large quantities to the highest bidder, who then distributed it further to other smaller shops or market stalls. This was where the price of apples was determined.
"This is 'Greens and Perishable' warehouse, isn't it?" Angua said.
A heavy stone seemed to have materialised out of nowhere and decided to take up residence in Susan's stomach.
"Yeah, almost certainly. Never been inside before, mind you. Although I think I remember some complaints a while back about some 'killer tomatoes'. Apparently its proximity to the Unreal Estate was causing the problem." Vimes answered.
"We're in a small deserted part of the warehouse, amongst small carts, sacks and wheelbarrows of vegetables. Someone could easily have smuggled a body out of here," Angua said as she picked up a half empty sack of vegetables and placed it on a wheelbarrow to demonstrate her point.
"And then where did they take him? Can you pick up the scent in here?" Vimes cut in.
"No, I don't think I'll have any luck in here. There are far too many people here everyday. Even with a wolf's nose I think I would find it impossible."
"Let's get back to Pseudopolis Yard. At least we can try and find out who might have been stocking this part of the warehouse last night."
Even if Vimes' words appeared to contain a hint of optimism, just one look at his face was enough to confirm that that was merely a clever illusion. His jaw was busy destroying the rest of an already frayed cigar stub and his eyes were burning with some deep rage. He must have been the angriest man Susan had ever met.
Well, the investigation had cost a lot of time and she still didn't know how all this tied together, but staying with Vimes seemed the best choice at the moment. The fact that she now found herself in Lord Contandi's warehouse in the middle of an investigation into the disappearance of the Patrician of Anhk-Morpork at least made it possible this incidence might be connected to little Katerina's death. So Susan clenched her jaw and walked behind the two watch officers on their way to the watch headquarters.
"Sir! Sir! Trouble at the University!" a small, dirty man shouted at them ... no, wait, if she called him dirty, then she'd have to call the pavement under her feet spotless by comparison.
"What's up Nobby? What's going on at the University?" Vimes groaned.
"Some nutter's locked himself up in the library. Claim's he's got the Patrician tied to a chair an' says he'll kill him."
"What does he want? Ransom money?"
"I don't know, sir, came straight here to fetch you, sir. Um, sir, I should tell you. The wizards are worried this'll be the end of the world."
Susan decided to take a step back from Vimes, just in case he exploded.
Scene 2:
Ponder had his hands over his eyes. This was not because he was worried for their safety, he just couldn't bare to watch his superiors make even greater fools of themselves by trying to break down the library door using magic yet again. The large double door was built from magic wood in order to withstand that kind of magical assault, otherwise it wouldn't have lasted even five seconds in this environment and it was, in fact, several hundred years old.
"Yes, Dean, but I do not beileve that was the correct spell to open a door as fine as this one. Your spell was the kind of spell I would use to open a small outside privy's door."
"Oh, well if you think you know so much more about magic, then you give it a try."
"I will. Just you all watch."
"We will." That is of course, all except poor Ponder Stibbons. When the hiss of the spell, the bright light, the loud crack of magic, the scream of the wizard the spell had backfired onto, the subsequent chaos and laughter of the other wizards had died down, he opened his eyes again.
"Your Lordship!" Ponder ran forward and knocked on the door. "Are you alright?"
"I am perfectly fine for the time being. Just a little tied up here" came the reply. "However I am concerned that this is all going to end in tentacles."
Ponder stepped back from the door and into the circle of wizards, who promptly blamed him for the whole situation.
"It's all your fault, Stibbons. What were you thinking, making a magical weapon?"
"One that, it would seem, can be used by just about anyone, wizard or not."
"How did it get out of the university? Were you not keeping it safe?"
"It wasn't meant to be a weapon." Stibbons stammered. "I didn't even know what it was capable of until now. I was just tinkering with a dis-organiser someone had thrown over the wall into the university grounds."
He turned to Munstrum Ridcully.
"Archchancellor, we need to find another way into the library. I have heard the city watch employ trolls nowadays. Maybe we should consider a slightly more unconventional method of opening the door?"
Ridcully obviously didn't judge that suggestion worthy of a reply. He simply glared at the young wizard as he walked past him, already rolling up his sleeves.
"Seriously, do I have to do everything myself nowadays?"
Death stood in a dark corner and watched all this. He pulled out a rather large hour glass. The name on it read 'Discworld'. Death turned it upside down and then looked at it sideways before finally shaking his head. He still wasn't sure whether the world was going to end or not, but the fact that it might did rather disturb him.