Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

In my short time with the Rabbits I think I understood in the tiniest fashion what a real taste of oppression means. The decision was a no-brainer: a thousand or more rabbits torn limb from limb, or me doing some time for murder.

‘You outfoxed the fox,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Connie, ‘ we outfoxed the fox,’ and she placed the leather lanyard with the fox-claw around my neck, and tucked it beneath my shirt.

‘There,’ she said, ‘you’ll never have to buy a round of dandelion brandy ever again. Kent? Bring in the owl.’

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Kent appeared with the owl – the same one that Finkle had delivered to my house.

‘Why is the owl here?’ I asked.

‘You brought it with you,’ said Connie. ‘Repeat it so you understand that.’

‘I brought the owl with me.’

‘All right, then. Good luck.’

There was a screech of tyres outside the house, car doors slamming and the sound of footsteps. Doc, Connie and Kent were suddenly on the ground, three terrified balls of brown fur, sobbing uncontrollably, hearts thumping wildly, ears flat on their backs.

Whizelle was first through the door. He found me standing there, still holding the duelling pistol, Senior Group Leader Torquil Ffoxe dead on his knees, arms still up in the air, a pool of blood slowly congealing beneath him. I didn’t notice it at the time, but I had one of Mr Ffoxe’s ears stuck to my jacket.

‘Oh, Peter,’ said the weasel, surveying the scene with a sad shake of his head, ‘you silly, silly bastard.’

Flemming ran in the door and stopped when she saw what remained of the Senior Group Leader.

‘Shit,’ she said, ‘oh … shit. ’ She glared at me. ‘Knox? What in hell’s name are you playing at?’

‘I brought the owl,’ I blurted out, stupidly.

‘Good for you,’ said Whizelle. ‘Flemming? Search the house.’

Flemming, still staring at Mr Ffoxe’s body, issued a curt message on her radio and more Taskforce officers entered, then, upon her direction, vanished to all points around the house – upstairs, into the cellar, living room, kitchen, snooker room. My hands were cuffed and the pistol dropped into an evidence bag. In an unusual move – I would find out why soon enough – a photographer was on hand to make a rapid and comprehensive survey of the crime scene while the Rabbits looked dumb and sheepish and forlorn, their ears drooped, their shoulders hunched. It was an impressive performance.

‘All clear,’ said Flemming as the agents concluded their search and were then ordered to depart, taking all the Rabbits’ mobile phones and laptops with them. Agent Whizelle then told Flemming to escort me to the car and hold me there, adding that ‘I needed to learn that actions have consequences’. I was moved out of the building as Whizelle and another agent started to take statements from the Rabbits.

‘Mind your head,’ said Flemming as she helped me into the back of the Range Rover.

‘What was that about actions and consequences?’ I asked once she’d climbed in herself.

‘Search me,’ she said. ‘This is the weasel’s show. Why did you do it, Peter? I mean, I can understand how you could be so easily bunnytrapped, but from there to taking a gun to a fox? And the Senior Group Leader to boot? That takes a lot more cojones than I’d ever credit you with.’

‘Is that a compliment?’

She stared at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘It’s an observation.’

I sighed and gazed at Hemlock Towers. I’d lived in the house next door my entire life and seen the Towers almost every day for the past half-century. Been inside it about two dozen times under various ownerships, but the visit that ended with a dead fox would be my last.

‘He said what he was going to do with her before he killed her,’ I said simply. ‘I couldn’t let that happen.’

‘You should have walked the other way,’ said Flemming, unimpressed by my reasoning. ‘Mr Ffoxe was a vital kingpin. You’ll be lucky to get out of the clink this side of your seventieth birthday.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘and it will be justice.’

We stayed parked outside for about three hours, and watched as various Taskforce personnel came and went. The fox was carried out in a lumpy body bag after one hour and forty-five minutes, and I half expected Mr Smethwick to make an appearance to view for himself where his loyal engineer of the Rehoming was killed, but he didn’t. Finally, after much activity, the remainder of the Taskforce staff filed out and departed. Last of all came Whizelle, and I briefly caught a glimpse of Connie as she closed the door behind him. There was a brief pause, and then the door opened again and Doc placed the owl on the doorstep; it looked around for a moment, blinked, then flew off.

Whizelle took out his mobile and spoke for a couple of seconds, then climbed into the car. Flemming made to start the engine, but he stopped her with a wave of his paw.

‘Are we waiting for something?’ I asked.

The weasel didn’t reply, and instead just sat silently in the passenger seat, his rear paws on the dash, claws scratching the vinyl annoyingly. After about twenty minutes, cars began to arrive. The sort of cars sensible people own. Passats, Corollas, a few Audis, people carriers – some even with child seats in the back and nuclear disarmament stickers on the bumper. The cars stopped, parked up and the people climbed out. Their faces were obscured by the pig masks of TwoLegsGood and they positioned themselves around Hemlock Towers in a slow and deliberate fashion.

‘I don’t mind rabbits coming to grief,’ said Flemming as soon as she realised what was going on, ‘but when we start letting thugs do our dirty wo—’

‘Just relax,’ said the weasel, ‘it’s what he would have wanted.’

He patted her arm in a soothing manner, his meaning clear. He wasn’t just going to allow this, he had engineered it. There weren’t going to be any reprisals, but the Rabbits weren’t going to be given the benefit of the doubt, either. He turned and fixed me with his small black eyes.

‘These are the consequences of your actions, Knox,’ he said. ‘This one’s on you.’

He then nodded to Flemming, who shook her head again, started the car and drove out past the growing throngs of pig-masked Hominid Supremacists carrying glass bottles with rags stuffed in the top. I think I even saw Victor Mallett, who looked pretty much the same with a pig mask as without.

‘You’re making a big mistake,’ I said as the car, once away from the small crowd, picked up speed.

‘You’re the one who made the big mistake,’ he said, ‘you and the Rabbits.’

He lapsed into silence, but he had mistaken the meaning of my comment. The mistake he made was taking on someone like Constance Rabbit. If they hadn’t already escaped through Kent’s tunnel – likely temporarily hidden by the stacked bricks in the basement – then they would do soon enough. If Connie could outfox a fox, outweaselling a weasel would be child’s play.

TV Prison Trope incarceration was a natural progression from the pioneering Seventies Sitcom Hospitals, where the patients never seemed that ill and the nurses were all ridiculously buxom and spoke only in double entendres. They were, in turn, all romantically involved with the doctors, who were unfailingly handsome, witty, urbane and charming. And male.

I was taken to the Hereford Police Department’s central station. Whizelle left it up to Flemming to oversee my processing, probably because the weasel was not well liked by the local police as he was arrested quite often for being drunk, and managed to be offensively obnoxious to all and sundry when he was.