Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Finally, he took hold of the handles and Henry’s lead, turned the wheelchair in a sharp one-eighty, and marched off, back stiff as an ironing board.

Joseph raised one eyebrow. ‘DI Morrow seems rather tense to me. I fear he bears some degree of ill-feeling towards Francis and myself as a result of that somewhat unhappy incident involving Mrs Kerrigan.’

‘What do I owe you for finding the dog?’

A quick look left and right, then Joseph dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Just between us, we rather enjoyed the experience, didn’t we, Francis?’

That got him a short upward jerk of the chin.

‘It’s so nice to be involved in a commission that doesn’t involve breaking anything or anyone, and the look on the good doctor’s face when she was reunited with her boon companion... Ah.’ He placed a hand over his heart. ‘That, my dear Mr Henderson, is reward enough for us.’

Dear God, Joseph and Francis were human after all.

‘Thank you.’

‘It is, indeed, our pleasure, Mr Henderson.’ A small bow, then he climbed back into the Range Rover. ‘Francis?’

The big man nodded at me again. ‘’Spector.’ He got in behind the wheel and the huge car drove off, the wrong way up a bus lane, before cutting the corner and heading away towards Logansferry.

So it wasn’t just other people’s physical wellbeing they had a laissez-faire attitude to — it was the Highway Code, too.

By the time I caught up with them, Alice and Shifty were in a patch of green, flanked on two sides by the maternity hospital and the old Victorian sanatorium. Henry charging round and round the wheelchair, legs and tail going like the clappers, mouth hanging open in small-dog joy.

Our small dysfunctional family, back together again.

Now all we had to do was break into Wee Free McFee’s scrapyard and liberate a buried security van full of stolen artwork — without getting hacked to pieces and fed to the psychotic maniac’s dogs — find a reliable fence to sell the stuff, launder the money so no one could trace it, buy a small hotel on the west coast, and retire to a life in the hospitality industry.

How hard could it be...?