As soon as she got out of the door, Angua called out to Vimes' back as he set off down the street.
"Sir, what-"
"Go follow the knife lead Sergeant" was the gruff reply shot back at her, without even a glance.
Standing in the street she looked after him as he stalked his way through the crowds, a mixture of angered insult and deep concern furrowing her brow.
It wasn't a copper's normal stride he eased into. Instead Vimes was pounding through the streets like a man on a mission. He was blind to everything and everyone around him, and nobody was going to interrupt the thoughts of anyone with such an awful grim face as Commander Vimes held right now. Within minutes he was streets away from where he'd left Angua, his steps hard, his heart beating with far more than bodily exertion. He passed two lance-corporals stopping for a sly doughnut in the middle of their patrol. They clumsily stood to attention muttering profanities under their breath, but the youngest and palest of the two youths had the misfortune to look into his commander's eyes. He was still shaking even as Vimes disappeared off into the crowds without the slightest acknowledgment of their presence.
Vimes was elsewhere. He'd been thrown into a spiralling pit of anger and fear and the past. Everything in the past 24 hours, the blood, the chase, the deaths, the moments of feeling something more , the bitter scintillating taste of a mystery, the threat of conspiracy…it was all because of this…
She was back.
Lit de Nuit, lit de Nuit, the sound resonated round in his head. Those words in that boutique, the sight of that tiny insignificant bottle in Angua's hand…a scent that had woken him a long long time ago on soft satin sheets. A scent that he had watched oh so sparingly dabbed on the palest of wrists, on the smoothest skin…a scent that She had been so so proud of.
"Its unique Sam" she'd laughed with a voice like soft raindrops on crystal. "I wear it and I feel unique, amongst all the women in this city. It makes me feel special."
"You don't need it." He'd said back quietly, his head resting on the pillow as he'd watched her. And she'd turned and smiled.
In a blocked off doorway down an empty narrow alley Sam Vimes' legs collapsed under him and he silently wept as he stared at her name, written in a delicate hand on what was, unknown to its writer, a list of suspects.
TBC
and quickly, away from (to a safer distance)