milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The building work outside seems to be going well. Guppy is currently sifting through the lost property they've dug up out there.

So far they've found:

1. A spade with tooth marks in the handle
2. A dwarf bread roll (intact)
3. A plastic halloween skull (which made Guppy jump when it appeared under his spade).
4. A piece of paper with a pin in it, stuck in some long grass, reading 'Tayer is a wonker'.
5. 20p, an old british sixpence, an Ankh-Morpork elim, and a fake pound coin.

Anyone want to claim some junk? Otherwise it's going in the bar's lost property.

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"I'd like to help," Urquhart says, turning up with his dog; but the dog tamely lies down beside the back door, where he is told to stay, before Urquhart comes up to Guppy.

"What is that?"

"Thanks." Guppy says. "I'm just taking a break, but we'll be back out there soon. This is just some lost property."

He holds up the piece of paper, pulls out the pin, and puts it in his pocket to give to Teja later.

"I think some of it might have been planted to wind us up."

"The fake skull?" Urquhart guesses.

"Yeah. It was left in there overnight." Guppy says. "It's clearly plastic though. Even if it had been realistic, real skulls inevitably have an ethmoid bone fracture."

"A what?" Urquhart asks.

"The bone inside the nose." Guppy says. "It breaks in nearly all cases after death."

"Why is that?" Urquhart says, very fascinated.

This is the sort of little fact that inevitably comes in handy sooner or later.

"Because it's fragile. In life, the soft tissue protects it. After death, when the body decays, it's easily destroyed."

"But nobody routinely hits decaying corpses in the face," Urquhart says.

"No, but if you were to move a skull or hang it up in a model, it would break then."

"If it's so fragile," Urquhart muses, "then I can imagine that the decaying brain might get it to burst, just like a decaying gut can burst a corpse's belly."

"Possibly." Guppy says. "But this is just plastic."

"Hence, no broken ethmoid bone," Urquhart says. "Got it."

Guppy holds the skull up, and taps the nostril.

"Do you want a drink?"

"From the skull?" Urquhart says. "How Viking!"

"No! It's been in the dirty ground..."

"Ah," Urquhart says. "So, what else should I drink?"

"Out of a cup or glass, whatever you fancy?"

Urquhart chuckles.

"And what will be inside?"

"Like I said, whatever you fancy within reason. But if you're doing building work, not too much booze."

"I'd like that stuff from the future they call coke," Urquhart says, "but not the sort with sugar."

"One Coke Zero it is then." Guppy says.

"Thanks," Urquhart says, grinning.

Guppy gets himself a full fat coke.

"I see you've trained the dog not to worry me."

"I've trained him not to worry anyone, and stay when I tell him," Urquhart says.