Stuck On You 2:
The second unedifying episode of my Zombie Romantic Comedy. Or "ZomRomCom". Thank you for the good reviews and a general message that you want more. Here it is, in which Ethel joins the Watch and Reg Shoe frets about, er, practical matters. This might be seen as a spin-off from "The Civilian Assistant", so two for the price of one, here.
Six weeks later. Ankh-Morpork.
The group of Watchmen in the alley looked down at the corpse and adopted positions of resigned stoicism. They'd all seen dead bodies before, after all. One of the Watchmen was used to seeing her own dead body in the mirror every morning. It was nothing new to her. So other peoples' dead bodies lacked the usual sense of the morbid and macabre, even though this was the first time she'd seen one up close. She suspected this was another of Commander Vimes' little tests for a new recruit; she had a feeling that were she to have done a Reg Shoe and harangued the corpse, telling it to shake off the prejudices of ignorant vitalism, to get up and walk and embrace Undead status, she'd only be fulfilling some sort of expectation and she'd lose marks for it. (1)
Nobby Nobbs straightened up, or at least adopted a more vertical slouch, as he finished the mandatory chalk outline.
"Definitely deceased, sir." he reported. Vimes grunted. He'd tagged along with a couple of the new recruits to see how they were shaping up on the streets. A murder victim in an alley had been too good to pass over.
"Right." Vimes said, indicating the corpse. "We have a strangely dressed cadaver lying here. By the look of it, he's been not only savagely beaten, but also stabbed, shot with several arrows, by both a conventional bow and also a pistol crossbow, and by the smell of things doused in lamp oil. There is a spilled box of matches over here. Which indicates?"
One of the other recruits tentatively lifted a hand. Vimes nodded.
"They wanted to set fire to the body, but a Watch patrol happened by and the killers were scared off?"
"Good." Vimes said. "And the modus operandi tells us...?"
His stony gaze took in the other new recruit.
"Somebody really wanted to make sure, sir?" she ventured. Vimes nodded again.
"Evidently somebody who didn't make friends easily." he said. "And what does the mode of dress tell us? Probationary Lance-Constable Mercaptan?"
Ethel Mercaptan would have swallowed nervously if she were still alive. But she stepped up and failed to take a deep breath.
"Er. The deceased is dressed in an outlandish glossy-white suit. It has an unfeasibly large collar and the bottoms of the trousers are cut into a strange flaring effect. In white, very impractical on these streets. You can tell. The front of the tunic is cut to the waist revealing his bare chest. Everything is ornated with Ankhstones. Very gaudy. Very tasteless. His hair is dyed black and oiled, shaped into something looking like a duck has perched on his head. A sign of insanity? Impractical high-heeled boots. Leather ornately tooled. I'm surprised they haven't been stolen. Over there, broken spectacles, but with obsidian lenses."
"And your conclusion, Probationary Lance-Constable Mercaptan?" Vimes probed, still impassive. He took a draw on his cigar.
"Errrm... it's an elvish impersonator, sir?"
Vimes smiled slightly.
"Right! Silly sod. So the suspects we're looking for?"
Ethel relaxed into the home straight.
"Trolls? Dwarfs? That looks like a mattock imprint. Gargoyles? Feegle? Lancrastrians?" she ventured.
"Or Assassins, inhuming an offence against taste? Monks of Cool hitsquad, even?" Vimes prompted. "So that's a good three hundred thousand suspects. Good spotting on the mattock, by the way. All Dwarf mining tools are personalised, so if we had the inclination - and the manpower - we could trace it back. But somebody's also beaten him repeatedly over the head with his own guitar."
"They really wanted him dead, sir." Nobbs said, eager to make a contribution.
Vimes smiled, grimly. There was absolutely no humour in it.
"And your report will state, Probationary Lance-Constable Mercaptan?"
Ethel floundered. Vimes, who knew where to let off a promising recruit, supplied the answer.
"No further action required. This is a clear-cut case of suicide. In this case, suicide by being bloody stupid. Being an Elvish impersonator in a town full of dwarfs, trolls, and Lancre emigrants? This blow here could have been done by a Morris dancing stick, do you notice? Well done, let's wait for the wagon, leave those boots alone, Nobby! , then back to the Yard."
Ethel relaxed. It could have been worse.
"What do you reckon to the new batch of recruits, Carrot?" Vimes asked, up in the office.
"Well, sir, Probationary Lance-Constables N'Goyen and N'Dubitabl are shaping up very well, although we're likely to lose them soon when they go back to Howondaland. If I may advise, sir, we could put them on a rural beat out in the Shires, as it's the nearest thing to the sort of policing they'll be doing at home? Besides, the Rimwards Howondalandians have complained to the Patrician about their policing a beat near their Embassy."
Vimes grunted. He'd vectored the two black constables to that beat to make a point.
"Shame we don't have any White Howondalandians among the recruits we can put on the Brookless Lane beat." he remarked. Vimes had a specialised appreciation of the diplomatic niceties. Specifically, how to make a point to foreign nationals with what to him were irrational and obnoxious prejudices. Lord Vetinari sanctioned this, in most cases, as his thoughts often concurred with Vimes with regard to foreign policy. And keeping foreign diplomats annoyed meant they weren't thinking too clearly and thus tended to reveal useful things.
Carrot ignored this, tactfully.
"Miss Mercaptan's shaping up nicely, sir." he said. "I remembered you did say we could use a few more Zombie officers. So when Reg brought her to the Yard to check out the application forms, I took the decision to fast- track her."
"Oh, yes." Vimes said, thoughtfully. "Probationary Lance-Constable Mercaptan. A good officer in the making, I thought. And let's face facts, Carrot. She knew she was finished as a stripper. At least, it would have to be a very specialised audience. So she came to us." He paused. "And she and Reg. They're... err, still?"
"Very definitely err, sir. Walking out together."
"Or at least, lurching out together." Vimes reflected. He shook his head. Zombies in love took some getting used to.
"Miss Maccalariat thinks it's quite sweet, sir." Carrot said. "She was doing the "let me be your kindly aunt" thing to Reg the other day. Giving him good advice as to how to court a lady and be romantic."
Vimes shook his head. Reg Shoe getting well-meaning romantic advice from a Maccalariat just compounded the essential strangeness of it all. He pulled up a memory.
"You know, Carrot, I knew Reg from before he became a zombie." he said.(3) He thought of the young and hopelessly gauche Reg Shoe, just before his death.
"I really don't mind betting he didn't have much experience with young women even before he died. And perhaps not a great deal afterwards, come to think."
Carrot shrugged. "Nor did I, sir. There was Minty Rocksmacker, of course. And if truth be told, I had a bit of affection for our village witch, but I never plucked up the courage. She's Queen of Lancre now. Did well for herself. Reet, for a while. But it all worked out when I met Angua."
Vimes understood: prior to Sybil, practically the sum total of his romantic life had been Mavis Trouncer. He shuddered. But it had all worked out with Sybil. Maybe it would for Reg Shoe and Ethel Mercaptan. But how the Hells were they going to get around the till Death us do part bit? And he cursed his vivid imagination. There were surely other, more practical, problems, if they ever got round to sharing a marital coffin... Vimes returned to the present, with a mighty effort. He got round to routine policing matters again.
"Find me Detritus, would you, Carrot? I need to talk to him about this Troll applicant's intelligence test."
He read from the document.
Question many-lots and two. What am Rabies and how would you ree-cog-nize it? What you do?
Answer: raBies are a sortta priest. Dey are human, dey wear der clerikaL collar. I traet them like a troLl shaman, give dem lotsa resPeckt and do what I can for dem. (4)
He looked up from the paper. Carrot kept an absolutely poker face.
"I'll go and get Detritus, sir." he offered.
Just a short interim chapter – more to follow!
(1) These days, Reg (aided by a tolerant Igor) waited until the corpse arrived in the Watch mortuary before nipping down to the cellar and slipping a Fresh Start Club card into its hand as it laid on the slab.(2)
(2) Or in the case of Bertram Figginborough, a former steelworker pushed into the rolling mill by the jealous husband of his mistress, laid out over several slabs. Even Igor thought there wasn't much point in giving that corpse an FSC card to raise his consciousness.
(3) See Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett.
(4) Yes. I've lifted this from the LAPD Sergeant's exam paper quoted by Joseph Wambaugh in the Choirboys. It's too good to waste.