Captain Carrot sprang to his feet and saluted. “'morning, sir! Has Lady—”

“No, Carrot. She has not. What's been happening overnight?”

Carrot's gaze went to the sprig of lilac, and back to Vimes's face. “Nothing good, sir,” he said. “Another officer killed.”

Vimes stopped dead. “Who?” he demanded.

“Sergeant Stronginthearm, sir. Killed in Treacle Mine Road. Carcer again.”

Vimes glanced at his watch. They had ten minutes to get to the palace. But time suddenly wasn't important any more.

He sat down at his desk. “Witnesses?”

“Three this time, sir.”

“That many?”

“All dwarfs. Stronginthearm wasn't even on duty, sir. He'd signed off and was picking up a rat pie and chips from a shop and walked out straight into Carcer. The devil stabbed him in the neck and ran for it. He must've thought we'd found him.”

“We've been looking for the man for weeks! And he bumped into poor old Stronginthearm when all the dwarf was thinking of was his breakfast? Is Angua on the trail?”

“Up to a point, sir,” said Carrot awkwardly.

“Why only up to a point?”

“He—well, we assume it was Carcer—dropped an aniseed bomb in Sator Square. Almost pure oil.”

Vimes sighed. It was amazing how people adapted. The Watch had a werewolf. That news had got around, in an underground kind of way. And so the criminals had evolved to survive in a society where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn't have to be that dramatic. You just dropped a little flask of pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a lot of people would walk over it, and suddenly Sergeant Angua was facing a hundred, a thousand criss-crossing trails, and went to bed with a terrible headache.

He listened glumly as Carrot reported on men brought off leave or put on double shift, on informers pumped, pigeons stooled, grasses rustled, fingers held to the wind, ears put on the street. And he knew how little it all added up to. They still had fewer than a hundred men in the Watch, and that was including the canteen lady. There were a million people in the city, and a billion places to hide. Ankh-Morpork was built of bolt-holes. Besides, Carcer was a nightmare.