The Constant Rabbit

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?’

‘Oh,’ he said in a friendly tone, ‘that’s easily explained: never duel with automatic weapons. Now: Mr Jorkins specifically allocated me to your case as he thought I might be able to offer a unique insight.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘and can you?’

‘Can I what?’

‘Offer a unique insight into my case?’

‘Frankly, no,’ he admitted, ‘this is my first case.’

‘First murder case?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean my first criminal case. I graduated only last week from Stanford Law School.’

‘Stanford? That’s impressive,’ I said, feeling relieved despite his lack of experience. ‘How did you get to travel to the States to attend?’

‘You misunderstand me,’ he said apologetically, ‘not the Stanford Law School, but an online law school based out of Stanford, a small village in Bedfordshire. The course was easier than I expected. It didn’t really require much study at all.’

‘How long and how much?’

‘Two weeks and two hundred pounds. Look.’

And from his briefcase he withdrew a framed certificate that seemed quite badly spelled.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said, ‘but I think I might need a more experienced lawyer.’

‘Not possible. The Attorney General herself asked for a rabbit lawyer to defend you. Said it would be fitting and just given the circumstances and would also give rabbits in the legal profession a “chance to shine”.’

I sighed inwardly. The establishment was taking no chances on ensuring I was banged up for this, and as a bonus feature would be able to discredit rabbit lawyers at the same time.

‘OK, then,’ I said, ‘where do we go from here?’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a few pointers. Have you ever been arrested in connection with murder before?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a shame,’ he said, somewhat crestfallen, ‘as it might have helped us figure out procedure. But never mind,’ he added, ‘this is only the interview process, and I’ve seen a couple of episodes of 24hrs in Police Custody and Banged Up Abroad, so I think you should be saying “no comment” a lot and figuring out who to bribe.’

‘I’m not handing out bribes, Mr deBlackberry.’

‘It’s Lancelot,’ he said, ‘but you can call me Lance.’

I was interviewed by a non-Taskforce officer, a friendly detective inspector named Stanton, and, ignoring Lance’s advice, I denied nothing, and admitted everything. Yes, I had been having an affair with Mrs Rabbit, whom I had known for many years, yes, I did know there was a gun in the house, yes, Doc had earlier shown me where he kept the powder and ball and percussion caps, and yes, I pulled the trigger when Mr Ffoxe threatened to kill Constance.

‘So you admit to killing Mr Ffoxe?’ said DI Stanton.

‘Since I was defending Constance Rabbit against Mr Ffoxe when I shot him,’ I explained, ‘it should be classed as self-defence.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Lance out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Well done.’

But DI Stanton put me right on that point.

‘A fox is legally permitted to kill a rabbit, so the self-defence plea doesn’t work unless you felt that Mr Ffoxe was going to attack you.’

He asked me whether I had felt my life was in danger, and I had to admit that I hadn’t.

‘If Mrs Rabbit was your property,’ said Lance, looking up from a book entitled Your Rights and the Law, ‘then your actions could be seen as using force to “protect your property”.’

‘But your response would have to be proportionate,’ said DI Stanton, ‘and I’m not sure the courts would see murder as a proportionate response to someone who threatened to kill your pet rabbit.’

‘Constance wasn’t anyone’s property,’ I said.

I dictated a confession, signed it and was charged with murder three hours later.

The news about Much Hemlock and Doc and Connie came to me on the morning of the second day, via a newspaper brought to me by Lance. The conflagration that gutted Hemlock Towers was reportedly the ‘tragic outcome of a series of misunderstandings’, and most papers took the angle of it being ‘a spectacular loss for the architectural preservation lobby’, who, it seemed, had belatedly regarded Hemlock Towers as an unspoiled rarity.

The ‘peaceful and well-intended’ rally began quietly, it was reported, when a pro-fox group arrived at the house to hold a candlelit vigil for a much-respected member of the Vulpes vulpes community, who had done so much to find a workable solution to the rabbit issue. It was likely, their spokesperson said, that the sight of all those candles must have frightened the Rabbits, who responded with ‘many hostile acts’ which caused those on the vigil to withdraw to safety, after which an ‘unfortunate set of circumstances’ took place in which the house was accidentally set on fire. ‘We have credible information that the source of ignition could be attributed to the Rabbits themselves,’ an unnamed source within TwoLegsGood reported. ‘They may have been filling Molotov cocktails and had an accident with the matches. It’s impossible to say.’

Despite no evidence to corroborate this and quite a lot to refute it, the news was not strenuously challenged. Reports of people in plastic pig masks were also furiously denied, and it seemed that a series of unfortunate car breakdowns had blocked all access to the house, which meant that the fire brigade were late to the scene, and could only control a fire that was so fully ablaze that it even set fire to the house next door, despite there being a gap of forty yards. Corroboration from villagers as to the circumstances of the fire was limited as most people, it seemed, had been watching the season finale of Holby City and either didn’t know the fire had happened, or had seen it from a distance, or thought it was kids ‘mucking around with a bonfire’.

I wasn’t so annoyed about the factual discrepancies and the loss of my house, it was more that no one seemed to care. The Smugleftie reported it on page six, but with few facts to go on and the Rehoming filling most of the rabbit column inches, the attack on Hemlock Towers story was dead in under twenty-four hours.

My story, however, was emphatically not. Mr Ffoxe had been described as ‘a much-loved and respected civil servant and decorated war hero’ by The Daily Fencesitter, and ‘a fox of considerable drive and resolve who had tirelessly committed himself to species integration’ by The Actual Truth. The Briton went a step farther in describing him as ‘a true British patriot cruelly snatched from us by a lowly degenerate’, and ‘a tireless champion of rabbit causes’ was trumpeted by The Ludlow Bugle.

‘The Rehoming,’ said Nigel Smethwick in a speech at Mr Ffoxe’s memorial service, ‘will not be derailed by the tragic death of a good friend and loyal servant of the Crown, whose sole purpose was to assist rabbits in their quest to find a way to a joyous and workable homeland. In memory of Mr Ffoxe’s good work, we will be accelerating the MegaWarren project: rabbits will start being forcibly rehomed in a month’s time if they have not volunteered. Their level of compliance will dictate the level of force.’

I was driven across the road on the afternoon of the second day to make a brief appearance at Hereford magistrate’s court. There was a heavy police presence as the slaying of the Senior Group Leader had angered many people who were either partly or overtly leporiphobic. I think the least offensive chant I heard was ‘Poxie Knoxie’, but there were others, based mostly around the graffito previously sprayed on my garage door.

My plea of guilty to murder and a secondary charge of intimate association was entered and my hearing set for a month’s time in order to give an opportunity for both prosecution and defence to prepare arguments regarding sentencing. I had to go over the proceedings twice for Lance, who said we should try to get some rabbits on the jury, but I explained to him that since I’d already submitted a plea, there didn’t need to be a jury – and rabbits, not being human, were ineligible to serve anyway.

‘Yes, I get that,’ said Lance, ‘but I still think it would be a good idea. Can I yell “Objection”? I’ve always wanted to do that.’

‘Do you have anything to object to?’ I asked.

Lance thought for a moment.

‘The breakfast at the hotel this morning wasn’t very good.’

After an hour of paperwork I was driven to HMP Leominster in a small van with only one window high up and heavily tinted. I could see the top of articulated lorries, telegraph poles and bridges as we drove along, but not much else.

Once I had been processed again, given my kit and watched the prison’s theatrical society perform a short but amusing play about the best way to avoid being stabbed in the showers, the governor himself turned up.

‘Hello!’ he said in a jovial manner. ‘Quentin Pratts, the prison governor. You can call me “Guv”. Take it from me that all inmates here are treated with respect and dignity, and utterly without prejudgement. It’s Peter “Bunnyshagger” Knox, isn’t it?’

‘Just “Knox” will suit me fine, Guv.’

We walked off in the direction of the wings, a prison guard walking behind, but at a discreet distance.

‘I run a peaceful prison,’ said the governor, ‘and since your stay here was precipitated by a certain fondness for rabbits I have to ask if you feel you need to be segregated for your own safety?’

I had thought long and hard about this, and although it might be safer, I wasn’t too happy about the company I would have to keep. It was mostly bankers in the segregation block, talking fondly about collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps. In a turnabout that no one expected after the 2008 crash, the second-largest group in prison after rabbits was now sociopathic investment bankers, corrupt representatives of ratings companies and dodgy corporate accountants.59 It wasn’t company I relished. I’d take my chances on the wings.

‘No, sir.’

‘Good man. We have some Hominid Supremacists doing time for some harmless high jinks that have been deemed illegal for some reason, and given your history you’d be wise to avoid them. We also have about six dozen rabbits,’ he added, ‘troublemakers, every one of them. I don’t want to see any cross-species fraternisation of any sort. The bunnies keep to themselves, and that’s the way we like it. Get it?’

‘Got it.’

‘Good.’

We stepped on to ‘D’ wing, where the central area was taken over by a seating arrangement, the kitchen and several ping-pong tables. There were two tiers of cells, and on the upper-tier balcony I could see prison guards leaning on the rail, twirling their keys and watching us carefully.

‘This is the first in an experimental Media Tropes prison,’ said the governor, ‘designed in order to make inmates feel that they are not being brutalised by a barbaric and outdated system of incarceration, but involved in something more along the lines of a reality TV show.’

‘I’ve heard of this,’ I said, looking around curiously.

‘The layout on the wings is just one of the many TV Prison Tropes that are promoted here at HMP Leominster,’ said the governor. ‘You’ll find the prison is pretty much as you’d expect: the guards are generally mean and unpleasant – except one who is meek and easy to manipulate. The prisoners, instead of being those with a shaky grasp on the notion of consequences, mental health issues or having the misfortune to belong to a marginalised minority, are mostly pastiches of socio-economic groups mixed with regional stereotypes. And rather than fume about the vagaries of providence that got them here before descending in a downward spiral of depression and drug addiction, they prefer to philosophise about life in an amusing and intelligent manner.’

‘Does it work?’

‘Recidivism has dropped eighty-six per cent,’ he said, ‘so yes, it seems so. It’s certainly a lot easier on the prisoners unless you get caught up in Gritty Realism Month when it all gets dark and dangerous and we have riots and people end up getting shivved. That’s just been, so you’re fairly safe for another ten months.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Don’t count your chickens. Understated violence that counterpoints a wider issue in society can break out at any time, and we have the biennial Prison Break Weekend in eight weeks, so if you want to be part of that, you have to prove yourself with the right crowd.’

‘Thanks for the tip.’

‘My pleasure. The rabbits are over in “R” wing and you’ll mix at outdoor break – mostly serial burrowers,60 which offers us a unique set of challenges. They’ll probably want to make friends, but the rabbits in here are different to the rabbits out there. They’ll pretend to be your friend over the whole fox-killing issue, but don’t get mixed up with them and never accept any carrots. Once you owe them a carrot, you’re in their pocket, and you don’t want to be in a rabbit’s pocket. Well, cheerio.’

I had been carrying my things all this time – blanket, tin cup, roll of loo paper – and the prison guard who had been tailing us showed me into my cell.

I was relieved to find that I wouldn’t have to share it with anyone.

I arranged all my stuff, had a pee then lay down on my bunk, expecting to feel anxious. That I didn’t was probably due to my attendance at a terrible public school which I now realised had furnished me with useful transferable skills.

I ventured out of my cell an hour later for dinner, and after fetching my tray sat on my own. I was not alone for long, however, as two men approached my table. They looked utterly respectable and were chatting in educated accents about how they missed their Agas and their Volvos and badminton and the opera. They also had ‘shallow and extremely transparent’ tattooed on their forearms, which related to a much-repeated quote that Beatrix Potter had made about rabbits. It didn’t occur to them that it might have been self-referential. In any event, the tattoos marked them out as TwoLegsGood.

‘You’re Peter Knox, aren’t you?’ said the first as they sat down either side of me.

‘Nope.’

‘Sure you are. The one who killed Mr Ffoxe, right?’

‘Look, I don’t want any trouble.’

‘Understandable,’ he replied, leaning closer, ‘but we don’t like people who side with rabbits. Humans have been improving themselves in a continuously unbroken chain of evolutionary advancements from the moment life first flickered into being, and are now the high point of evolutionary perfection. That achievement was hard won, and we will defend that struggle against all comers.’

I didn’t think it was the right time to point out the fatal logistical flaw in his argument, but instead repeated something that Pippa’s friend Sally had once said:

‘All life is one, and there is no objective truth that suggests we have a greater right to life than a lichen.’

They both stared at me and blinked a couple of times.

‘That’s bullshit, Mr Knox. This is our planet, and we’ll do with it what we wish. You’re just an … apostate of your species.’

‘I’m not sure that word works outside a religious context, you unbelievable twat.’

I’d have liked to boast that I’d said that last line, but I hadn’t. It was said by the larger of two other prisoners who’d just turned up. They were muscly, bald, bearded, and both looked as though they could comfortably strangle a tractor. Their tattoos – of which they had many – were not Elmer Fudd-related or anti-rabbit slogans, but normal sort of stuff: Celtic thingummies, skulls and the dates of their children’s births. Significantly, they were both staring at the fox sympathisers in a way I emphatically would not like them to be staring at me.

‘Another time, Knox,’ said one of the supremacists, and they left, grumbling about how they never served quinoa in the canteen, and how much they missed the GQ lifestyle awards.

‘Upper-middle-class entitled parasites,’ said the first new arrival as he sat down. ‘Tristran Reeves there is doing six years for rebadging Rayburns as Agas and flogging them off to unsuspected buyers, and his associate, Jeremy Fink-Grottle, had been forging National Trust membership cards.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘middle-class crime.’

In another inversion of generally accepted stereotypes, the heavily tattooed prisoners with what would be termed back in Much Hemlock ‘a rough manner of speech’ had no issue with my friendship with rabbits at all.

‘My sister was seeing a rabbit until they rescinded his work permit,’ continued the prisoner, whose name I learned was ‘Razors’ McKay, on account of his hobby of collecting seashells. ‘Nice lad and looked after our Stacey well. Don’t see the harm in it myself – love is love – and to be honest, anything that knob Smethwick is against is totally fine by me.’

‘Yeah,’ said his friend in a Liverpudlian accent, ‘we’ll see youse all right, man. Friend o’ the rabbit is a friend of ours.’

His name, I learned, was ‘Bonecrusher’ Malloy, which related to his previous employment making bonemeal for the pet food industry. They were both inside for employing undocumented rabbit labour, and then illegally paying them above the maximum wage. They’d both been warned six or seven times, and prosecuted twice each. They’d carried on regardless and eventually were given custodial sentences.

After I found all that out, we got on really well. For the most part they were curious about what had happened to me, agreed that, yes, twenty years was likely for murder and intimate association, then asked me what it had been like.

‘Killing a fox?’ I asked.

‘No,’ they said, ‘the other thing.’

The first three days were relatively uneventful, but on the fourth I lost both my thumbs to Reeves and Fink-Grottle, who came to my cell, gagged me with a towel and then removed both thumbs with a bolt-cutter. I only remembered them cutting off the first; I was unconscious by the time they took the second. I was found an hour later in a pool of blood and rushed to hospital.