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Dr Vimes was making his fourth cup of tea of the night. The window was lashed with rain that attacked the hospital as if it had a grudge against it. The building was filled with damp and dripping people, covering all the floors with slowly drying leaves and footprints. The night was entirely appropriate for a certain type of melancholy musing.
Sam knew there were fathers who played football and ran around with you after work. Fathers who came home every day at half five and who spent all day Saturday helping you fix your bike. Fathers who had nice normal jobs, rather than ones where they came home at all hours of the night. Fathers who didn’t have days when they went into this dark place, and people stopped talking when Sam walked into rooms.
He also knew that there were fathers who stopped living at home and started living with Auntie Cheryl who used to be his secretary. At his school there was a boy who got wheezy and whose father used to make his run five miles every day, ‘to toughen him up’. He knew that there were fathers who went to work every day, and came back talking about how they had made an economy drive, which meant that he had just given five hundred men the sack, and felt up a couple of the maids.
He knew very deeply about the fathers who beat their kids when they were ‘in drink’. Who had wives who stopped going outside so the neighbours wouldn’t see her bruises. Who had daughters with blank eyes, and associated with the non-guild seamstresses. He had sewed enough people back together to be under any illusions that he was very lucky.
Still, he was a fucking infuriating, self-important, misanthropic old bugger wasn’t he? There had never been anyone so totally arrogant, “I’ve lived long enough to know what’s wrong and what’s right, Sam”. As if somehow he had the authority of being moral and just and everyone else just followed in his footsteps, grateful that they had been shown the one true path.
Honestly.
Well, he knew what was right and what was wrong. And he wasn’t going to sit around brooding and not getting drunk in such a purposeful way that he might as well be getting drunk.
Sam was, unfortunately for him, blessed with a degree of self-awareness. He looked round the dark staff room in which he was sitting, totally alone, except for a bottle of whiskey that glared at him from across the room. He chuckled. Sam was twenty three years old, and his dad could still make him furious and happy and miserable and laughing out loud.
The reason he was feeling so bloody grim was probably more to do with the five year old boy whose life was in his hands; literally in his hands a few hours earlier.
“Doctor.”
“Yep, coming.”
“Mrs Siggle?”
There was a long pause. Sam was about to get up and check if this was the right waiting room. Then a young woman in damp clothes said, “Yes. That’s me.”
She did not faint when she heard that her boy had died. But her body slackened in her chair, as if she no longer had the energy to stay upright.
She sat as Sam said things about condolences, tissues, cups of tea, viewing the body, help with funeral expenses.
The only time she looked up was when the Watch’s investigation was mentioned. Sam hated her for that, although he would have hated anyone else, anyone who wasn’t a doctor, for judging a mother’s grief.
The deaths don’t get easier, not exactly, but you develop rituals, routines. Dad had said that “Tragic things begin to sit more comfortably in your mind. You’re supposed to get more efficient when you do things over and over. And dealing with death or illness or cruelty is just like anything else. Your mind streamlines. That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Sam got home, had a bath, and then lay on his bed crying for thirty minutes. After this he went for a drink and got arseholed, shitfaced and snotnostrolled (which is a special Ank-Morpork type of drunkenness which involves lots of swearing, yogurt and a dance called the bloody flux).
He awoke the next morning with the entirely normal feelings of shame, regret and despair.
This unhappy healthy normality lasted until he got a clacks telling him to come into the hospital immediately. No mention of if he’d get another day off this week. He managed to get there in under an hour and a half, with the occasional discrete lean against a wall to have a wee rest.
It was always awkward meeting the watch. The power of narrative pushed for Sam to be a criminal ner’dowell, desperately craving his father’s love and respect, or some sort of pampered fop. He had avoided all of these fates, but he could feel their ghosts as he talked to the young corporal.
Sam pushed across the admittance report and the death report to Corporal Goldsmith. She looked up at him when she had finished. “How was the mother?”
“Well, people are never at their best when their child is dying.”
He hadn’t meant to come across as sarcastic: he was tired and he had wanted to explain that it was really tricky to accurately judge the behaviour of the bereaved.
Goldsmith, however, took it entirely the wrong way. “Doctor, I’m just doing my job-”
“Of course, sorry.” He was too tired to try and justify himself. “The mother was very quiet and distant throughout the majority of the treatment. And she looked worried when I mentioned the watch.”
At this Goldsmith began scribbling in his notebook.
“Doctor Vimes, in your professional opinion, do you think that the beating which caused the injuries and eventual death of-” he checked the file “-James Siggle was perpetrated by his mother?”
“Well, I … I have no idea. It’s possible. But gut instinct says no.”
“Thanks for your help. Good morning.”
The day went on it usual rushing, struggling paperwork-filled way, and he had almost forgotten about the death of the little boy, except that he noticed he walked a little more slowly, and didn’t want to talk to anyone at lunch. So he felt more than usual guilt when he saw Mrs Siggle in the mortuary waiting room sitting next to very familiar figure.
“Er … hello?” He flashed Dad with the family clacks sign for what the hell are you doing here with his eyebrows. Dad tactfully* tried to stay away from the hospital after the unfortunate incident when he told Sam to sit up straight and take his hands out of his pocket in front of the head of surgery.
“Good morning Doctor,” Vimes said with the required professional stiffness.
“Good morning.” Sam nodded to Mrs Siggle. “They should be ready for you in a minute.”
They were ready in twenty seconds and a young Igor (or was it an Igorina, he could never tell these days) took her arm and gently led her into a room.
Vimes stood. “Would you like me-?”
Mrs Siggle shook her head and focused on moving one foot in front of the other.
“Sam, we need to have a chat about this.” They went to an office and both sat down heavily.
“Corporal Biffo Siggle,” Vimes answered to the unasked question. “Disappeared when he found out. Probably drunk somewhere.” Vimes turned away abruptly.
“Probably.” Neither of them said what another very likely option was. “I don’t … this doesn’t feel like the time to say it, but it’s domestic violence isn’t.”
It wasn’t a question but Vimes nodded anyway. “The mother, do you think-?”
“She doesn’t look like she could carve a chicken; she couldn’t do that to the boy.” Sam felt a surge of anger. “We both know who the most likely candidate is.”
“We have to explore all the options, Sam.” Sam made a sceptical sound. “We’re not discounting anything. You know that.”
“Dad, I’m just saying, it’s natural to side with your own. When I was interviewed by one of your corporals they seemed quite keen to accuse the mother-”
“Are you making a complaint about the conduct of one of my officers?”
“Gods save us, no. I’m giving my perspective on watch investigation as a professional. Why d’you always have to take everything so bloody personally!” Deep breath. “Sorry. Just het up.”
“S’alright. I’ve got go; I’ll keep you informed.” Vimes stood. “Come round on the weekend, Sammy. Mum’s got some new dragon.”
Sam rolled his eyes, but smiled; it was their shared mum is metal isn’t she smile.
The next night shift was met with a notice that Biffo Siggle was under investigation for child mistreatment and manslaughter and the watch were to be called if he came into the hospital.
It was such a grim night that Sam was able to push that thought out of his mind by the sight of an old woman who had rats in her hair, a spectacularly unpleasant emergency enema and a honey-wagon load of paperwork.
He was just in the middle of trying to persuade a drunk to sit still while Sam sewed up his hand when nurse told him that there was an emergency on [dragon’s name] ward. Sam hastened down the long corridors spurred on by the sound of shouting.
I was awful. They worked in grim silence, punctuated by barked discoiveries and orders. The man, sweating and struggling and swearing didn’t want to live and it was quite difficult to work up all that much enthusiasm for saving him. But. You worked and worked and you did the best you could possibly. Even if it was just to spite the patient. Especially if it was to spite the patient.
It was the Igor who called it. Out of respect for the situation he only lisped a little as he called it at “free firty eight” and the doctors left, leaving the nurses to mop up lost souls.
It was only when he left the room that he realised there was Watch Guard. “Was that Siggle Corporal?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Gods.”
It was after Sunday lunch. He done his duty of disapproving son about mum’s new pet dragon (and managed to pet him when she wasn’t looking) and eaten enough distressed pudding to feel his arteries move a little slower than usual. Mum was off arguing with the housekeeper about the washing up** and dad was scowling at The Times. Just like always.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“D’you think Siggle killed his little boy?”
Vimes sat up and ran his hands down his face.
“Yes. Maybe not deliberately, but yes.”
“Do you think it was because he’s a policeman?”
Vimes looked straight at Sam now. “There are lots of policemen who manage not to beat their kids black and blue.”
“Well yes, dad, I do know that. But you have to work, don’t you, to keep out the dark. Perhaps he just wasn’t good enough at it.”
Vimes got up to worry at the fire. “Need more coal.” The rain, which had been a thrumming background to their afternoon, now stepped up and began to clatter against the windows. “Everyone’s got some spark of darkness and wickedness; even mum, very deep down. And shit things in your life, and shit things you see – well I think so, but what does your old man know – they sort of water it and it grows. But then I suppose a lot of people also think that it makes you stronger.”
Sam began to speak, and the stopped.
“No, go on Sam.”
“I disagree. I think that everything that is good about, morally I mean, is because of well good things that have happened to me. Because of you and mum and stuff. Having kind parents and a good education and warm clothes.”
“Well, I definitely know I’m a better man because of your mother. In contrertable fact. And there is nothing like having a son who dedicates his life to helping others to force you to be more moral.”
At this point they both realised they didn’t talk about their feelings and got horrendously embarrassed.
“I’ll help mum with the tea.” And Sam hurried out. But he felt a small weight lifted.
*Like all instances of Samuel Vimes Snr showing tact, it had been spelt out to him very explicitly by Sybil.
** There are very few occasions on which Lady Sybil is aggressive: when someone threatens her two Sams and when someone tries to do the washing up or pay a bill for her.