The Constant Rabbit

He said nothing, so I logged in and began work, sifting through all the Labstocks on the database that were male, had no duelling scars and were six foot or taller.²⁷ I’d been quite close to the white rabbit in the church, and even though I was five foot ten, I barely came up to his shoulder. I’d made a rough sketch of the squashed Tudor rose pattern I’d seen in his ears and we’d dutifully shared it with other departments, but even the two probables they sent me were way off the mark.

Today I would be going through Labstocks who had died in case he’d faked his own death in order to avoid detection. There were several hundred of these, and since rabbits die frequently, on-colony deaths are not usually corroborated by sight, or pictures taken. After that, I’d have to start on the Labstocks based at the other colonies, which might, I estimated, take the best part of a month. And if he was unregistered – as would be likely – all my work would be for nothing. To be honest, if I were running the Rabbit Underground, I’d use unregistered Labstock rabbit as couriers for precisely this reason: a low to nil chance of identification.

‘Any luck on the Flopsy?’ asked Lugless, the ‘7770’ suffix now redundant as he was all I’d been looking for these past weeks.

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘but there are plenty more bunshots for me to go through.’

‘We really need a name, Knox.’

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I go the speed I can go.’

The day wound tediously around until lunch when I wandered off towards the Old Market precinct to buy some socks from TK-Maxx.

The air was warm but not sultry, the shoppers in a good temper, the town quiet as befits a Monday. As I walked past the car park outside the Odeon I noticed the Rabbits’ Dodge Monaco. I knew it was theirs as, firstly, Monacos are not a frequent sight in Hereford, and secondly, there was a Playboy Bunny sticker on the back, something which was both iconic and ironic: iconic as the logo was the unofficial emblem of Rabbit Equality, and ironic because the Playboy Club had never permitted any real rabbits to ever be bunny girls.²⁸ I didn’t know whether it meant Clifford was in town or Connie, but as I looked around I saw Connie hurrying into Waitrose, and Clifford nowhere in sight. All thoughts of birthday presents vanished from my head as I trotted into the store, grabbed a basket, hastily chucked five or six random objects inside for plausibility, then went to find her while wondering which ‘accidental meeting’ strategy would work best: to just bump into her, or amble past until she noticed me?

I found her in the magazine section, deep in conversation on her mobile. I nipped back into the next aisle and paused for thought, my heart thumping. I’d not seen her for over thirty years, and even way back then nothing had happened between us, nothing could have happened between us. What was I doing? I began to walk away but my quick exit was abruptly thwarted.

‘So how did it go during dinner?’ came a voice behind me, and I jumped. It was Victor Mallett. He always did his shopping in Waitrose, as it was ‘a positive British experience generally unsullied by the presence of foreigners’.

‘That’s not until tonight,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Victor, ‘jolly good. The leaving fund is now up to twenty grand, but start low and haggle hard, yes? Make them think seven is our limit. Look,’ he added, having another thought, ‘we’d rather not spend the cash if we don’t have to. The church roof isn’t going to repair itself, and a financial hit of this size could impact on the next Royal Baby street party – so is there anyone at the Taskforce you could ask to pressure them into moving on?’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘Really? I thought that was precisely how it works. You’re at RabCoT, for Christ’s sake – hardly the bunny’s best friend.’

‘I’m only an accountant.’

It was the first time I think I realised how much of a massive lie it was. Victor Mallett, annoyingly, was right. If I’d been honest with myself, I could have easily seen that the Ministry of Rabbit Affairs – who oversaw the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce – were anything but congenial to rabbits. They had, up until we left the EU, been cited seven hundred and twenty-eight times by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They’d ruled that since we were treating rabbits like humans – that they paid taxes, held employment, demonstrated free will, understood mortality and their place within society and the world – they were ipso facto human enough to be classed as such, with all the rights and privileges that went with it.