The Constant Rabbit

I was allowed a shower without supervision and driven the following morning to the Nigel Smethwick Centre and given some breakfast in the canteen, again supervised, then told to wait in one of the interview rooms. It didn’t occur to me until later that Connie would have been hauled in for questioning too, but she was.

I sat there for maybe an hour, conscious of not only my predicament here, but also that the clock was ticking – the Mallett brothers had given Pippa, myself and the Rabbits until this evening at ten to leave Much Hemlock – and they’d probably worked out none of us were playing ball. Tonight would be the night I made a stand – and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

The spartan interview room was clean and warm but otherwise unremarkable. The table was bolted to the floor, but the plastic chairs could be moved. In the centre of the table was a large brass ring for potential restraint, but it seemed little used. When it came down to it, rabbits just weren’t violent unless pushed into a corner, and even then were far more likely to use reasoned debate than tooth and claw.

The door opened at a little after eleven, and Whizelle walked in accompanied by Flemming. They sat down opposite me and placed a mug of coffee on the table. It was the good stuff, not RabCoT canteen or chain muck. I was being schmoozed.

‘How are you feeling, Peter?’ asked Flemming.

‘Bruised, but OK, thanks.’

‘We’re glad of that,’ said Whizelle. ‘The loss of Douglas AY-002 is a serious annoyance as he was one of only three rabbits the Taskforce implicitly trusted, and “tragic car accidents” always need to be viewed with a degree of suspicion, especially on clear roads, in good weather.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘We think it might have been a hit,’ said Flemming, ‘on him, you – or both of you. Following on from Toby Mallett’s unexpected resignation and utter failure to give a plausible account of why he did, we’re inclined to think that the Spotters’ office here in Hereford has been targeted by either rabbits, rabbit sympathisers or rabbit sympathiser-sympathisers.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘So before we even begin to talk about the allegations regarding you and your next-door neighbour, tell us about the accident.’

I told them everything I knew, and tried to stick as much to the truth as I could. I’d be questioned about this again, and if I was inconsistent over my story, I’d be more stuffed than I was already. I told them Lugless steered purposely off the road, no other car was involved, and that I scrambled out of the burning car when I came to. Lugless, I told them, was either dead in the crash or unconscious. Either way, I couldn’t get to him.

‘So you have no idea why he swerved off the road?’ asked Whizelle.

‘None. One moment we’re driving along the road, the next I’m waking up in a blazing car.’

Whizelle looked at Flemming, who nodded, and the weasel opened a file and placed a picture of a white rabbit on the table. Now I’d seen him up close, I could recognise him better and the name on the picture confirmed it – he was Harvey Augustus McButtercup, aged twenty-six, a RabCab driver, resident in Colony One. I also knew he was now earless, a prominent member of the Rabbit Underground, had successfully infiltrated the Taskforce – and was in love with, and loved by, my daughter.

‘Have you seen this rabbit before?’ he asked.

‘No. Spotting isn’t an exact science. Who is he?’

‘We think he’s Flopsy 7770,’ said Whizelle. ‘Lugless looked him up on the Rabbit Employment Database before he died. But he didn’t tell anyone. You and he were in the office alone that morning – did he share with you?’

‘Lugless shared little with me,’ I said, now extremely glad I had searched for Harvey’s details on Lugless’s computer, but realising that I had led them directly to Harvey’s identity. I thought momentarily of asking whether I was detained and requesting a solicitor, but I got the feeling that this would only increase suspicions, not allay them.

They moved on to the allegations I had been suspended about, and the mood in the room seemed to darken. Flemming and Whizelle had been work colleagues for many years and we’d got on OK, but right now that counted for nothing. There followed a long and very detailed account of what ‘four plausible witnesses’ had seen outside my house the night before last. Unlike the Harvey/Lugless issue, where I had to lie convincingly several times, this was a testimony I could actually give from start to finish fairly truthfully – from when the Rabbits moved in, to the incident in All Saints with Mr Ffoxe, and then to the evening when we ran through her lines, the farcical hiding in the cupboards with the Dumas novel, and Connie and Doc’s argument in the hallway.

‘Nothing happened,’ I said.

‘Let me spell this out for you,’ said Whizelle in a more serious voice. ‘Right now we can charge you and Constance Rabbit with offences contrary to the Unnatural Associations Section of the Anthropomorphised Animals Limited Rights Act of 1996.’