The Constant Rabbit

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.

Lapin Flambé & HMP Leominster

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.

I was handed over to the custody sergeant, who confirmed with me that I was Peter Knox; that I wasn’t drunk or deranged; that I could be reasonably believed to be wanted in questioning with a crime; that I understood what was being said to me; that the crime required me to be held in custody; that I was unlikely to harm myself.

Pictures, fingerprints, details, then all my clothes were placed in a large evidence bag, signed and sealed. I was given some freshly laundered clothes to wear – a pair of jogging trousers, a T-shirt and a sweat top. On the whole, the officers were considerate and polite, but then I wasn’t causing any trouble and I was human, like them. They even offered me something to eat, but I declined. I wasn’t hungry. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I did, and quite well.

After a breakfast of cereal and tea, I was taken upstairs to meet the lawyer who had been allocated to my case.

‘You’re in luck,’ the custody sergeant told me, ‘Spenlow & Jorkins have agreed to supply counsel.’

‘Oh?’ I said, as the law firm were well known, not just in Hereford, but Shropshire and Gloucestershire, too. On numerous occasions they had defended defendants who had clearly been guilty, and while not always getting their clients acquitted, they had certainly managed to achieve a reduction in sentence.

It was a surprise when I met my lawyer, but thinking about it afterwards, I should not have been surprised at the surprise. A small Petstock rabbit dressed in a suit and tie was waiting for me, nervously clutching a briefcase and peering at me owlishly through round, steel-rimmed spectacles. He was white and brown, and his left ear was missing the top third.

‘Hello!’ he said cheerfully, clasping my hand in his two. ‘Lance deBlackberry of Spenlow & Jorkins.’

‘Hello,’ I said, noting that his missing ear ended in the sort of pattern perforations make once torn. ‘What happened to your ear?’