Vote at Toad Hall

by Eddie Saint

  Later, as they strolled away from Tufty Tail Street, Weasel, high on Data, whipped out his phone to see if the polls had seen any more movement while they had been with Pincer. His eye was caught by a news flash that slid down from the top of his screen.

  RADICALISED SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS FORTY TWO LOCALS AT LITTLE MEADOW SHOPPING CENTRE

  Well, well, well. Either this is a BIG coincidence, or it’s one of our ‘friends in high places’ making a move. I wonder…

  He linked arms with Stoat and they walked briskly, almost skipping, back to The Stump for another round.

  Chapter Eight

  SOMETHING NAGGED AT Ivan’s brain, so he headed to the Library to check it out. Taking a copy of the Cadet’s Handbook off the shelf he settled down to read up on the ‘Knob Head Protocol’, to be sure he had got it right.

  His delivery method had been very cunning, he thought. He had liberally smeared the poison on to the doorknob then rung the bell, leaving a glittery toy star shining in the hedge by the garden gate as he scarpered. The Mole had come out, seen there was no one there, and had been about to go back in when his gaze fell upon the shiny object. He had walked down the path to take a look, just as Ivan had predicted, and had then gone back inside, using the door handle to let himself back in to his flat.

  It…was…textbook!

  Ivan sat in the Library and began to feel the weight of his underground home lifting off his shoulders. He had done his time down in the basement. Now he had completed his first proper mission. Things could only go uphill from here.

  But something still didn’t feel quite right.

  He re-read ‘Protocol 421(b) Nerve agent delivery – Internal door’. He ran his finger down the list of items required and the most effective way to apply the poison to the doorknob. He checked for footnotes. There were none. He closed the book. He had done everything correctly.

  For ‘Protocol 421 (b)’.

  A creeping sense of pessimism overtook him.

  With trepidation, he reopened the book. Surely the Protocol for External doors was similar, if not identical. With relief, he realised it was.

  Ant then he saw the footnote. It read: ‘When applying to an external door be aware that the power of the dose is dramatically reduced in damp conditions.’

  He tried to remember back to the night before. It hadn’t been raining, had it? No, he was fairly certain it had not been. But it had been damp, like a low cloud, or a mist coming in off the river. He remembered having to wipe the dampness off his eyebrows, taking care not to get any of the nerve agent on himself as he did so. And he had towelled himself off when he had come home.

  He stopped and stared at the footnote again.

  It had worked, hadn’t it?

  He realised there was only one thing to do: go back and check that the target had been ‘neutralised’.

  He waited until darkness fell. There was no way the Commander would give a ‘Basement Boris’ like him a Daylight Pass without a full explanation, and although Ivan knew that he had done everything properly, he really wanted to check before coming clean with the Commander. So, a standard Night Pass it had to be.

  He limped down the same streets as the night before, in the dim orange glow of the streetlights. As he approached the target’s address he had to turn the collar up on his jacket, to keep out the damp in the air. He remembered having done that the night before, and a sense of foreboding overtook him.

  When he reached the flat he headed straight for the front door. It was closed but, to his relief, there was still a gel-like substance clearly visible on the doorknob, if you knew to look for it.

  ‘What was I worried for?’ he said to himself. ‘Mission accomplished!’

  However, just to be on the safe side, and since he was now ‘moving through the ranks’, he decided to double check. If the ‘Protocol’ had worked then there should be one dead target inside. All he had to do was gain entry, verify the body and sneak away in the night, back to his underground barracks for a good night’s sleep.

  He obviously wasn’t going the use the front door, with its poisoned doorknob, so he headed around the back, through a rotten wooden gate and past three bins, until he found himself at the back door. It was locked.

  Now, how did they teach us to do this? he thought. He remembered doing basic training, but since he thought he would only be working in the Computer Room he hadn’t paid full attention to the practical skills. He did remember being told, ‘If in doubt, punch your way out’. Was that to do with getting through locked doors? Or was it when you were cornered in an alley? He couldn’t remember, but he tried it anyway. He picked up a large stone that was conveniently placed beside the back door and held it in his paw as he punched through the glass. The stone certainly gave his punch momentum. The glass shattered dramatically, almost exhilaratingly, and Ivan felt more alive than he had done at any time since joining the Army.

  Then he felt the pain. And regret. His fist hurt, and when he looked at it he could see that a large gash from knuckles to wrist was the main cause of the pain. He dropped the stone, not registering that he had dropped it on his good foot because the pain in is hand was still so intense. He wasn’t sure how best to stop the flow of blood, but he opted for taking off his jacket and wrapping in tightly around his fist, then cradling it in his other arm, like it was a new born cub.

  ‘Finish the mission,’ was a mantra that had been drilled into them in basic training. His mission, the one he had chosen for himself that night, was to make sure the target was toast. He steeled himself for action.

  ‘In we go!’ he said boldly, trying to raise his shaken spirits with a bit of bravado.

  Then he remembered that the door, with its gloriously shattered window, was still locked.

  He reached through the gaping hole, the jagged teeth of glass scratching through his fur, and tried the lock. It was a mortice, and try as he might to find a hook or a string or anything near the back door that might contain a key, or lead him to a key, there was nothing. He sat down on the back doorstep, his spine to the door, and cursed.

  Ivan the Whys had something to say about situations similar to the one his namesake now found himself in. He had written, ‘Sometimes the solution is much easier than you imagine, but your own efforts push it away like a lost ball floating on a pond. Be still, and let the ripples bring the ball to you.’

  Ivan stopped cuddling his bloody-fist-cub-jacket-wrap and placed his good hand on the floor…onto a key! (…that, had he inspected it more closely, he would have noticed was resting on a dry patch of concrete, a patch precisely the same size and shape as the stone he had picked up to help him smash the window.)

  ‘Ivan be Praised!’ he intoned, looking at the key with almost mystical delight.

  He tried it in the lock and such was his joy when the key opened the door that he barely notice the fresh cuts he got to his good foot as he stepped in the glass on the kitchen floor.

  He padded through to the living room and there, lying face down, was the target.

  ‘Long Live the President!’ he said delightedly, relieved that he had had nothing to worry about after all.

  And then he noticed the pain in his foot.

  It was while he was in the bathroom, trying to clean up his many cuts and stop the worst flows of blood from his paw and foot, that he heard a fresh tinkle of glass that stopped him in his tracks. He carefully closed the bathroom door over, leaving it just a paw’s width ajar, and listened carefully. Someone else was in the flat!

  IT WAS WOLF-LIGHT by the time I set out for the address Mother had given me. Tommy Roo had offered to walk me there, but I had tried my best to put the big guy off. I had pointed out, tactfully, that his undoubted skills as a bouncer were outweighed by the inability of any fully grown male Kangaroo to sneak around unnoticed. In the end he took me most of the way, then stepped back into a shadows and all but disappeared.

  ‘I’ve got your back,’ he said, in his surprisingly high pitched, effeminate voice that
was often the last thing a rogue animal heard before hearing a more familiar voice, several days later, saying, ‘Ooh look, nurse, I think he’s coming around.’

  My whiskers were twitching like crazy when I got to the corner of Mole’s street. If I was right, and something had happened to him, then I knew there was more than an outside chance I might have been walking into a trap.

  The flat was on the ground floor of an end terrace, on the corner of a side street. One orange streetlight stood on the opposite side of the road, giving the only light, now that the sun had fully set. There was a dampness to the air, not rain, more like a low cloud, and it began to settle on my fur. I hate that, the way it grows into droplets. They tickle as they run off. Still, I’d rather be safe than dry, so I hunkered down in a doorway six doors away from Mole’s house and waited to see if I could spot any signs of life around the property.

  After twenty minutes I was fairly certain there was no one else doing what I was doing, watching and waiting in the shadows. I guess a long stretch living in The Ends will heighten your senses for creatures lurking in shady places. I did the full shake and wiped my fur down to get rid of the worst of the damp, then plucked up the courage to go and investigate the flat. I knew the only way through the mess of Tony’s e-mail and Wildheart was to take it head on, but it still gave me shivers. It’s easy to be fearless when you’re on your laptop digging through someone’s digital bins, but real life dangers take it to a whole new level. Something deep in my Rabbit brain flashed images of sharp teeth and powerful claws, and I don’t mind admitting that right there in that damp doorway I was not feeling like a brave bunny. I shrank into my damp fur, swallowed hard and stepped out of the shadows.

  Mole had gone silent.

  Buck was on my tail.

  I had no choice.

  Immediately I jumped right back in to my hiding place. Mole’s front door had opened! I pushed myself as deep into the shadows as I could and watched. There was someone standing at the door, inside the flat. They were mostly hidden from me but if I looked really hard I reckoned I could just make out a paw, or maybe a claw, holding the door. Oh, my heart! It was beating like a woodpecker! I was worried the noise of it might carry across the street.

  It didn’t.

  After what was probably only twenty seconds, but felt like an hour, the door closed. Looking back at the flat it all seemed quiet again, although there was something different about the door that I couldn’t quite tell from my hiding place six doors away.

  I waited three minutes, calming my breathing and running more droplets off my fur. I waited another three. Nothing happened.

  After six minutes I made a decision.

  Keeping close to the hedgerow that marked the boundary between the pavement and the front gardens I found myself at the garden gate that led to Mole’s flat. I listened. Rabbits are good at listening. Check the ears, right? I heard several sounds but none of them were coming from the flat, so I gathered as much courage as I could muster and sneaked down the path to the front door… only to find it had a plastic bag covering the door knob!

  I did a double take and jumped back away from it, as if it was about to bite me. Hey, I was jumpy, ok? I found myself in front of the living room window so I ducked down, hoping I hadn’t been seen. As I crouched I tried to reassemble the snapshot of the darkened room I had just glimpsed: an orange glow from the street light; a bed; an armchair; and was there a body on the floor?

  I really couldn’t be sure what I had seen, fleetingly, in the dim light. But I knew that a body on the floor would fit with my reason for being there, so I plucked up the courage to have a better look.

  Pulling my ears down flat to my head I slowly raised myself and looked through the window. I had been right. In the centre of the floor was a body, lying still.

  It was either Tony Mole, or he kept a body in his living room. Either way things were not looking good for him.

  I had a decision to make, and running away wasn’t an option. Not if that was Mole, because that would mean he was the guy who, for whatever reason, had reached out to me with his Carrington 5ive e-mail. Aside from still having to pin down what ‘Hornworm’ was, I kind of felt responsible for finishing Mole’s story.

  I decided against the front door. Whenever I go looking for things online, I always have most joy by finding a back entrance. It’s usually less well guarded. So why not in real life?

  I crawled around the side of the flat and found an old, rotten gate leading to an untidy back yard. Picking my way between the bins I made it up to the back door… and found it open. I did the full shake once more, just to give me an extra bit of courage, and to get the worst of the droplets off me.

  The broken glass on the floor spoke eloquently of how the door had come to be open, despite the key that still poked out from the lock. I only hoped that whoever had broken in, the shadowy character I’d seen at the front door, had already got what they wanted and had cleared off the same way they had arrived.

  I crept as carefully and as silently as I could, over the sharp shards on the floor and, taking my courage in both paws, pushed on into the living room. Seeing the body close up was quite a shock, I don’t mind telling you. It’s not the sort of thing I see every day. But then, as I looked at his prone body on the floor even I could see something odd about it: it had fallen perfectly into the recovery position.

  Have you ever been walking alone in the woods minding your own business and then you hear a twig snap, or a rifle bolt slam home, or a deep, low growl? Well, that’s just how I felt when I heard a noise come from behind my left shoulder. I totally froze. Like, ‘block-of-ice’ froze. I couldn’t turn around, even if I’d wanted to.

  The door from the hall that I had just come through was closing. Soft footsteps came up close behind me…

  But no teeth.

  Not yet, I thought. I guess baddies tend to like to play with their food first.

  Slowly, as if not wanting to set off a hairpin trigger, I managed to turn my head, just an inch. Not enough to see what was behind me.

  Then it spoke.

  ‘Cottontail,’ the voice at my ear whispered. ‘Well isn’t this a coincidence?’

  WHOEVER THE NEWCOMER was it sounded to Ivan as though they had headed straight for the living room. The layout of the flat was quite simple. A hall ran from the front door to the kitchen, with the living room and then the bathroom off the hall to the left. The bathroom door opened inwards, and was hinged to afford him a view of the hall heading towards the front door.

  He kept the light off in the bathroom and weighed up his options. He quickly realised he had no more than three. Fight his way out; sneak his way out; or wait until the visitor left.

  Almost immediately it seemed like the decision might have been taken for him. He heard footsteps in the hallway and caught sight of a solid looking creature heading for the front door. Just beyond his sight he heard the front door open.

  Oh, thank the President! he thought, gratefully, as he heard the door close again.

  But then he heard more footsteps, heading back into the living room.

  Bother! Still here!

  He silently wrapped towels around his cuts like makeshift bandages and looked at his options again. With his club foot he had never been the best at running anywhere, so if he wasn’t going to make a run for it he was going to have to find a way to get his unwelcome visitor to leave.

  Make that ‘both’ unwelcome visitors, because as he was making up his mind a second set of footprints, lighter than the first, padded past his hiding place and into the front room.

  ‘That does it,’ he told himself. ‘I definitely can’t outrun two chaps.’

  With his uninjured paw he took out his phone and switched it on, hoping he had remembered to leave it on silent.

  He had! Maybe his luck was changing…

  He heard voices from the other room. Quiet whispering, nothing he could make out, but certainly enough to tell him that the two visitors were not fightin
g.

  Crouching down he put the phone on the floor and, using his good paw, dialled for the police. A tinny voice responded after two rings.

  Ivan then realised that, yet again, he was in a pickle. If he told the police where he was he would give his presence away to the two unwanted visitors next door. However, if he didn’t tell them where he was then no one would come to frighten his visitors away.

  The angel on the end of the line saved him.

  ‘Caller, because you have not spoken for five seconds but are still on the line I have triggered an emergency protocol. We have your location. A response team will be with you shortly. Sit tight.’

  With that the angelic voice hung up.

  All Ivan had to do now was wait…

  ‘DON’T MAKE A sound!’ said the voice, softly, right behind my ear.

  There was something odd about that voice. It didn’t seem to go with a set of sharp teeth that had me in their sights.

  I continued my slow turn to see by whom I had been accosted. (Ok, Confession Number Five: Even when frightened - no, especially when frightened - I have a keen sense of grammatical accuracy.)

  An elderly Badger smiled at me and held her arms wide.

  ‘What the flip…?’ was all I could manage.

  ‘Melody,’ the Badger whispered. ‘Higgins. I’ve been looking for you for some time.’

  She looked at me over a pair of half-moon specs and held out a paw.

  I just gaped and slowly offered a paw of my own.

  ‘I know. So many questions, eh?’ she said kindly. ‘And there will be time but first we have to work quickly.’

  She began to rummage in Mole’s pockets, and came up with a purple envelope and a smooth white memory stick.

  ‘Sorry, Tony,’ she said softly to Mole’s body. ‘Help will be along soon. You did good.’

  That was a bit odd, I thought. I looked at Mole, then at the Badger. She must have seen the question in my eyes because she smiled back at me.