Free The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

out the window as it makes its way to the depot at Fishersgate. Bunny doesn’t even blink.
    Instead Bunny punches the radio and a bombast of classical music pours out and Bunny hits it again – this radio with a mind of its own – and lucks out on a commercial station and wondrously, miraculously, there, pouring from the speakers in all its thrilling optimism and sexual emancipation and gold hotpants comes that song – and all the aggrieving rage hisses out of Bunny like a leaky valve, the boiling heat drains from his face and he turns to his son, knuckles his head and says, ‘Whoever said that there isn’t a God is full of shit!’
    ‘Full of craperoo!’ says the boy, smiling, and rubbing his eyes.
    ‘Full of about ten tons of steaming manure!’ says Bunny. ‘I mean, what a song!’
    ‘Full of a big bucket of faeces!’ says the boy.
    Bunny thrusts his hips forward in the seat and jerks back and forth to that joyous techno beat and feels the music reach purposefully down to the base of his spine and then mushroom outwards with a warmth that makes him feel like he has pissed himself or given birth or come in his pants or something.
    ‘Oh, man,’ says Bunny, and he presses the heel of his hand into his crotch and the day’s images of murderous grandmothers and scornful cripples and poncey vicars and gaggles of sneering fucking bitches evaporate into the ether and he says, ‘It’s a bloody wonder this song is legal!’

9
    Bunny opens the front door. He has removed his jacket and now wears a cornflower blue shirt with a design that looks like polka dots but is actually, on more careful inspection, antique Roman coins that have, if you get right up close, tiny and varied vignettes of copulating couples printed on them. By some miracle Libby missed this item of clothing when she decided to redesign Bunny’s wardrobe with a kitchen knife and a bottle of Indian ink. She did, however, do irrevocable damage to the famous ‘Greek’ shirt that Poodle had given Bunny for his wedding anniversary. Poodle had picked this up on the Internet on a site for modern-day Lotharios, cocksmen and bedroom-hoppers called seducer.com. It had a not-so-discreet pattern involving a Grecian sex god or something – a dude with an olive wreath around his head and an appendage so impressive it had to be supported in a sling by two plump-cheeked cherubim. Bunny found this particular shirt stuffed down the waste-disposal unit and he had sat down on the floor of the kitchen and wept into its shredded remains.
    ‘Hey, fuck-face,’ said Poodle, entering the flat with a canine grin and a drugged sheen to his eyes.
    ‘Jesus, Poo. Mind your manners,’ says the leggy blonde hanging on to Poodle’s arm, and kicks him in the shin.
    ‘Wo! Steady, girl!’ says Poodle, and hops up and down on one stonewashed leg while Bunny notices, with an electrical libidinous stirring, that the purple birthmark on the blonde’s top lip is shaped a bit like a rabbit.
    Raymond, jacketless, moves around Poodle with a carton of lager cradled in his arms and an imitation smile on his face. Through a miasma of alcohol fumes that Bunny finds vaguely comforting, Raymond says, blandly, ‘All right, Bun?’
    Raymond’s girlfriend, who is almost certainly called Barbara, pops her head up from behind Raymond like an idea-free think-bubble and says, ‘Hi, Bun.’
    Bunny says, ‘Hi … um …’ and thinks maybe her name isn’t Barbara after all and Raymond says, in a stage whisper, ‘Barbara’ and Bunny says, ‘OK, yeah, Barbara … sorry, Barbara.’
    Whatever Barbara says by way of a reply is lost in the clamorous and stentorian advent of Geoffrey, who bursts through the door, a litre of Scotch poking from each pocket of his vast linen jacket. Wheezing frighteningly from his trip up the stairs, he waves his ever-present handkerchief in the air and bellows, ‘Bunny … Bunny … Bunny’ and follows this with a perfect landslide of sweating flesh and not so