Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

So long as he had a bright light behind him.

Because of their dislike of obsolescence, rabbits only chose domestic appliances that would last a minimum of half a century. Dualit toasters were favoured, as were Hoovermatic washing machines, vintage Kenwood Chef food mixers, seventies push-button phones, treadle sewing machines and large-format cameras. They loved wet-chemistry photography; the older the process the better.

‘How was work?’ asked Pippa when I got home after the debriefing. Even to my own daughter I had always maintained I was a low-level payroll accountant. I told someone I was a Spotter once, and there had been consequences. I didn’t want that again.

So I couldn’t tell her that of the three Labstock we’d arrested, all had cover stories and plausible IDs and no amount of coaxing would change their story. I couldn’t tell her that their briefcases had contained sandwiches, nine yoyos, sachets of raspberry-flavoured Angel Delight and copies of Rabbit Vogue ; couldn’t tell her that Lugless had applied to the Senior Group Leader to use ‘firmer methods’ to get them to talk, but had been overruled on the grounds of operational secrecy. I couldn’t tell her that my sighting was now the only possible method of identification of Flopsy 7770, couldn’t tell her that tomorrow I would be staring at the bunshot of every Labstock we possessed until I found the one they were looking for, couldn’t tell her the reason I’d been delayed was because the person who had come to pick up the whippet had been late. I had to sit with it for an hour while it quivered and stared at me with its sad bulging eyes, like some thinned-down canine version of Peter Lorre. 20 20. Most notably, he played Ugarte in Casablanca . One of the now-forgotten stars of the silver screen.

I could tell her only one thing:

‘Work was … mundane, as usual,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

‘I was doing a day course entitled “Why Spreadsheets Are Not Boring”, so same as you, I guess.’

Pippa made supper after that, and, true to form, Victor Mallett dropped round to see whether I’d found out where ‘that rabbit’ had come from. I told him that as far as I could see, she was just passing through.

‘Doubtless a scam,’ said Victor with a grunt. ‘Rabbits are always on the make.’

‘Was any of that true?’ asked Pippa once Victor had gone.

‘No – she lives in Leominster with her third husband. Not a word to Toby.’

‘Right you are.’

Over the next two weeks I spent all my office time trying to ID John Flopsy 7770, and by the end of a fortnight I had got precisely nowhere, and had exhausted only thirty-five per cent of the male Labstocks on record.

‘7770 might not even be on the books,’ said Flemming, eager to have me back on normal spotting duties, but Lugless spoke to the Senior Group Leader and had me continue going through the bunshots, and only rejecting those I was seventy-six per cent certain weren’t him. Lugless took being hoodwinked by his own kind as a deeply personal affront, especially as, to add insult to injury, someone had tied two knee-length grey socks to the rear bumper of his Eldorado – an obvious jab at his earless state, and making a mockery of his attempt to disguise himself, although personally, I thought the eyepatch and tam-o’-shanter just bizarrely random enough to have worked.

At the Buchblitz that weekend we gave Mr Beeton a twenty-seconds pause, as befitted his status as a generally reliable member of the team. Norman and Victor Mallett kept a eager eye out for Connie’s return while we were Speed Librarying, but she didn’t turn up, so the brothers concluded I was right: just passing through.

While I spent another fruitless week searching for a hint of the squashed Tudor rose capillary ear pattern, Hemlock Towers opposite was being cleared of Mr Beeton’s effects. The good stuff was taken by his closest relatives, his library sold to Addyman’s in Hay-on-Wye. His arguably worthless knick-knacks were picked through for value by his lesser relatives, and his meticulously researched twenty-year project on the development of Medium Density Fibreboard was taken away in a skip to be recycled, ironically enough, into Medium Density Fibreboard.

Hemlock Towers then stood empty once more, and gossip soon turned to who might become the new tenants. There were several false leads, of course – an Argentinian couple on the run from the police; someone who looked a lot like Rick Astley; a National Geographic photographer; a barrister convicted of embezzlement; a retired trapeze artist; someone else who looked like Rick Astley but did, in fact, turn out to be Rick Astley; another National Geographic photographer, unrelated to the first in an improbable coincidence. All came to nought, and it wasn’t for another fortnight that word of the new tenants came to me by way of Mrs Griswold, who when she wasn’t being a supremely lacklustre Stanley Baldwin ran the corner shop and post office. She was the village gossip but didn’t relinquish her skilfully wrought intelligence for free, and had her own unique exchange rate. Something seriously juicy offered up to her altar of tittle-tattle could keep you in credit for weeks, but tired gossip already heard had no value at all. Luckily, I was in credit; I had overheard details of Mr Beeton’s last will and testament, and it appeared that Mrs Silver the housekeeper was due for a considerable sum, something that gave rise to suspicion that her long-standing employment might have involved something more significant than just warm milk and dusting.

Once this piece of information was taken, digested, tutted about and then mentally filed, Mrs Griswold beckoned me closer and hissed: ‘They’re coming!’ in a particularly unsubtle manner.

I looked out of the window to see whether the danger was imminent, but there was nothing to be seen. I concluded that the implied sense of threat was vague and intangible. The most dangerous kind, to my mind.

‘Who?’

‘Them,’ she added, no more helpfully.

‘Vegans?’

‘No, not vegans,’ she said, eyes opening wide, ‘worse than that.’

‘Foreigners?’ I asked, catching sight of that morning’s copy of The Actual Truth , whose leader column’s outrage du jour was that unwashed foreign beggars were taking much-needed panhandling jobs from their hard-working British counterparts.

‘Worse.’

‘Vegan foreigners who are also … socialist?’

‘No,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘rabbits!’

This startled Mr Wainwright, who was leafing through the magazine display, part of his one-man quest to read an eighteen-year run of Champion Marrow Monthly without once paying for a copy.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘Rabbits,’ repeated Mrs Griswold, ‘in the village.’

Mr Wainwright looked shocked and, I think, a little afraid.

‘Better not be some of those modern, bolshie, in-your-face rabbits who like to cause trouble and have unrealistic views on equality.’

Actually, I thought to myself, any rabbit – even compliant, easygoing ones who kept themselves to themselves and didn’t overbreed – would not find an easy home in Much Hemlock.

‘They’re off-colony legals,’ said Mrs Griswold. ‘Major Rabbit is retired ex-army. There are two children but I didn’t hear what Mrs Rabbit did. I’m not sure she even speaks English, to be honest – they were speaking in Rabbity when they walked in.’

‘What does this Rabbity sound like?’ asked Mr Wainwright.

‘Hnfffy noises, mostly,’ said Mrs Griswold, ‘hniff-niff-nfhhf-niffh, that sort of thing – and a lot of nose and whisker movements.’