The Constant Rabbit

Cordiality Collapse

… Even after eight years, I am still undecided whether the rabbit were the instigators of the Event, victims of it or simply part of a larger plan laid by a higher power. Even now, there are more questions than answers …

The sun had long sunk below the horizon when we stepped out of Hemlock Towers, and the skies were a deep navy blue, the stars bright, the air clear – a perfect summer’s night. We walked down the lane in silence, took a left and then a right into the main street. Doc chatted amiably about how when in the forces he was always popular on forward operations as he could bounce vertically upwards about twenty feet, good for reconnaissance, although not without mishap as it made him a target – albeit a brief one – for enemy snipers.

‘See that one here?’ he asked, pointing at a bullet hole in his ear that was smaller than the others.

‘Tikrit?’

‘Kidderminster. Saturday nights can get pretty insane. Hang on.’

His mobile phone had just rung.

‘That’s odd,’ he said, staring at the screen, then putting the mobile to his ear. ‘Yes, Honeybounce?’

He listened intently for a while, looked at me, then hung up.

‘You go ahead,’ he said, ‘mine’s a pint of Rancid Bishop,58 and get me some Tyrrells – sea salt flavour.’

And he bounced back off in the direction of his house. I stood there for a moment, hesitant, but carried on since I’d come this far already. A few minutes later and I was in the lounge bar of the Unicorn, all seventies decor, beer-stained carpets and Constable prints on the walls faded to pallid variations of the colour green.

Worryingly, it all went quiet as I walked in. If someone had been playing the piano, it would have stopped. There were about a dozen people present. Victor Mallett was sitting with his brother and a couple of others I only vaguely recognised. The room was staring at me silently. The recent entente cordiale seemed to have evaporated as swiftly as it had arrived.

I walked up to the bar.

‘A half of Guinness and a pint of Rancid Bishop, please, Janice.’

‘Right-o.’

She began the slow pour of the Guinness and then started to pull the Rancid Bishop.

‘Who’s the Bishop for, Peter?’ asked Norman from the other end of the bar.

‘Your new parish councillor,’ I replied.

‘That post was rescinded eight minutes ago,’ said Victor, ‘as was minding the bottle stall at the village fete.’

‘We negotiated up from bottle stall to judging the vegetables,’ I pointed out.

‘Whatever. It doesn’t matter, Peter old chap. I could have promised her the tombola and the opening ceremony – she was never going to do any of it.’

I felt the chill in the room. Villagers stuck together; it was what they did. That would have been all well and good if it was about the church roof fund appeal or the Spick & Span awards, but not if you were the recipient of their combined outrage. I took the bugged Parker pen out of my pocket and placed it on the counter.

‘Major Rabbit won’t be joining you,’ said Norman. ‘Pour the ale away, Janice.’

Janice looked at me. She and I went back a long way. I’d let her copy my schoolwork when we were nine, because I knew she was having a rotten home life.

‘Pour it, Janice.’

Janice continued to pour the ale, and a dull, portentous silence filled the room.

‘Look here, Peter,’ said Victor, ‘we were once good friends and we’ll be good friends again. There’ll be a place in the village for you, once everything’s back to normal. Sit down and drink your Guinness, and … take your time.’

I didn’t at first understand what he was trying to say, but then my eyes fell upon the table in the far corner, the one where Dicky the drunk had sat before his life hobby finally caught up with him. There was an unfinished glass of whisky on the table, a smouldering Sobranie in the ashtray and a folded-up copy of Fox and Friends.

I stood up, but so did Victor.

‘Peter,’ he said more seriously and, oddly, it was about the only time he had shown me a shred of empathy or concern, ‘don’t get involved. Not with this. You can look the other way.’

I headed towards the door but found my way blocked by Norman, who pushed me hard in the chest. He was a heavy man, and while tall, I’m not that weighty, and he easily put me off balance and I found myself sprawled on the floor, to several shocked intakes of breath from the people in the bar. Bullying coercion was one thing, physical violence quite another.

Before I knew it I was on my feet and made a wild sprint towards Norman. I put out a fist where I thought his face might be and placed my full weight behind the blow. I surprised myself by actually connecting with his chin in a quite forceful manner – fluke, I think, as I’d never fought anyone, not ever – and we both went rolling out of the door into the street. I picked myself up and made off towards Hemlock Towers, the sound of Victor saying ‘Let the silly sod go, Norm’ echoing in my ears as I ran.

I took a leaf from the Rabbits’ book and ran straight into the house without knocking, reasoning to myself that Mr Ffoxe’s actions might be postponed or at least softened into mere threats by my presence. I stumbled into the oak-panelled hall to find Doc and Connie standing there, seemingly unconcerned. Of Mr Ffoxe, there was no sign.

‘Hello,’ said Doc with a smile. ‘What do I owe you for the Rancid Bishop?’

‘Mr Ffoxe is in the village,’ I said, breathless after the run.

‘D’you know, I thought I could smell Old Spice on the air,’ said Doc, apparently with little concern.

‘You’re not worried?’

‘Constance told me everything. She’s a member of the Underground, y’know.’

There was a hint of pride in his voice.

‘And Bobby and Harvey,’ I said, ‘and now probably Pippa, too. Look, I saw some unfamiliar cars parked up on the way here. I think there might be other Taskforce officers about, and the faces I didn’t recognise in the Unicorn looked blandly middle-class enough to be members of TwoLegsGood. You’re in a lot of danger and you need to get out. I never thought they’d act this fast.’

‘We’re not running,’ said Connie. ‘It all ends here and now. He’ll ask me what I know of the Venerable Bunty’s greater plans and movements, I’ll tell him nothing, and that will be it.’

‘You don’t have a chance,’ I said, ‘he’s a fox, for Christ’s sake, a four-legged multi-fanged rabbit-killing machine.’

Doc and Connie’s ears popped up as a rapid series of thumps were heard on the upstairs floor.

‘In the back garden between the runner beans and cabbages,’ said Doc, reading Kent’s lookout thumps perfectly. ‘They like to sneak up in an unannounced assault so they can paralyse us with fear before they pounce. I think it excites them. The vixens too,’ he added. ‘In fact, I think they’re worse.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to leave. He’ll kill you all. Kent and Bobby and everyone you ever knew.’

There was another series of rapid thumps on the floor upstairs, and Doc and Connie moved so they were with me, at the far end of the hall facing the door to the kitchen. Connie’s hind leg quivered anxiously. As we watched, the door to the kitchen opened a crack and a whiskery snout sniffed the air cautiously. We were about twenty feet away, with Doc taking up a defensive position a couple of yards in front of us and to the right.

‘Hello, Doc,’ said Mr Ffoxe.

‘Hello, Torquil.’

‘Been a while.’

‘Never long enough. Haven’t seen you at any regimental get-togethers.’

‘I’ve moved on,’ said Mr Ffoxe. ‘Dwell in the past and you’re stuck in the past. Your wife has some intel about the Bunty that I want, and she’s going to give it to me. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the exceptionally unpleasant way.’

‘Far as I recall there’s only ever an unpleasant way between your kind and mine.’

Doc’s voice sounded confident. I guess he’d faced dangers as great or greater than this in the armed forces. But I don’t think he’d seen the speed at which Mr Ffoxe could move. The fox could be across the room, snap both their necks and have them half buried behind the compost heap before they’d even realised he was through the door.

I could feel Connie trembling as she moved closer in behind me and wrapped one arm around my waist. I could smell her earthy scent once again, her whiskers tickling the back of my neck.

‘Mr Smethwick says the whole ripping-to-pieces thing is bad PR,’ said Mr Ffoxe, still with only his snout showing through the kitchen door, ‘so I’m willing to forgo the good sport that is my right and simply give you a deal: I get to question Constance at my leisure, and you and the boy upstairs go free.’

‘I’ve a better deal,’ said Doc. ‘You take your mangy ginger butt out of our house right now, and we’ll forget this ever happened.’

Mr Ffoxe gave out a raspy chuckle.

‘There’s only one deal on the table,’ he said. ‘Mr Knox, are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ I said.

‘You’ve been a fool, Mr Knox, but at least you’ve got to see rabbits for what they truly are: vermin, eager only to invade, dominate and then assimilate us all to their ways. I will spare you, Knox, but you should leave unless you’ve got a strong stomach, which I doubt.’

‘I’m staying,’ I said, not quite in the brave voice I’d intended.

Mr Ffoxe’s snout sniffed the air again.

‘You were warned. When the orange mist comes down I rarely show restraint. Final offer, Doc: give up the wife or I’ll take out every last one of your friends and relatives. There’ll be no rabbit left alive who even knew you.’

I looked at Doc, who was swaying on the spot, readying himself for the attack. He was the biggest and most powerful – Mr Ffoxe would kill him first. Connie was still behind me, holding on tight. I could feel the warmth of her body, her heart thumping rapidly beneath her soft fur.

‘You want to know my answer, Torquil?’ said Doc. ‘Here it is: your wife, mother, sister, aunt and grandmother … all mate out of season.’

There was a shocked intake of breath from Connie.

‘Is that an insult?’ I whispered.

‘The worst,’ she whispered back.

Several things then seemed to happen at once. The door was kicked open to reveal Mr Ffoxe, who seemed to have transformed. His eyes were large and bloodshot and his mouth was wide open, revealing sharply pointed teeth wet with saliva. He gave out a dark and forbidding noise from the back of his throat and with his hair rising stiffly on his neck looked about as terrifying as I had ever seen him before – and that included the time when he nearly took out my eye. That fear, I realised, was just a taster. A cold lump of bile rose in my throat, and Doc’s ears went flat on his back.

There was a brief pause as Mr Ffoxe savoured the moment of our terror and then I saw Connie’s arm in front of me holding Doc’s lark-decorated duelling pistol in her gloved hand. I only had time to register this for a split second as there was a flash, a sharp detonation and Mr Ffoxe’s head vanished off his shoulders in an explosion of blood and fur. A fragmented part of his skull actually stuck to the wall opposite, just next to the light switch, and a single yellow eye bounced on the carpet before rolling to a stop near the coal scuttle. The fox then dropped to his knees but didn’t fall forward. Rigor mortis, unusually fast in anthropomorphised foxes, kept him on his knees, his arms still upright, making him look not threatening, but imploring – and without a head.

‘Sic semper tyrannis, you contemptible shit,’ said Connie.

I stared blankly for a moment at Mr Ffoxe’s corpse, the blood bubbling weakly out of his severed neck and running on to his tweed jacket. Connie released her hold on me, and lowered the pistol.

‘That was seriously risky,’ said Doc. ‘You should never go for the head shot with only one up the spout.’

‘I hear you,’ said Connie, ‘but it was truly satisfying, and at that range I couldn’t really miss.’

I took my first breath after the pistol was discharged and breathed in the sharp odour of cordite in the room. Doc, Connie and I stared at the headless body of Mr Ffoxe in silence until I found my voice.

‘Think of the reprisals,’ I said. ‘What have you done?’

‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Connie, and she handed me the duelling pistol. ‘It’s a crime of passion. We were having an affair and you defended me against an aggressor. Your prints are on the weapon, and you’re covered in gunshot residue and bits of fox. My husband, eternally grateful, forgives us both.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Doc, ‘so you were having an affair?’

Constance stared at him for a moment.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I get it now. I’m to pretend you were having an affair.’

And that was when the penny dropped.

‘Wait, this is the intervention?’ I asked. ‘This is how I make good?’

‘As I told you,’ replied Constance, ‘everyone’s repairable. One bad act shouldn’t define a person for life, if there is an opportunity to find absolution.’

She smiled.

‘And I’m so in love with you right now, Pete. If you get out of this jam you can make a play for me.’

‘I knew it,’ said Doc triumphantly, ‘we do get to duel.’

‘If I get out of it,’ I said.

‘True,’ said Connie, and she opened her flick-knife, stepped forward and cut off one of Mr Ffoxe’s claws. ‘Torquil Ffoxe was the true architect of the Rehoming plan, and with him gone, we may have bought some renegotiation time. The Taskforce will be here presently,’ she added, threading the fox-claw on to a leather lanyard, ‘so the next part of this is really up to you.’

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.