Andy barked and ran on.

‘I know you must be angry,’ I puffed, ‘about being locked-up in the lunatic asylum and blamed for stealing this equipment. Are you intending to hand it all over to the authorities when you find it and clear your name? Is that it, Andy, is it?’

Andy stopped and turned and sat down in the snow. ‘No,’ said he. ‘It isn’t. I’m not angry and I don’t want to hand the equipment over to any authorities. I want you to have it back.’

‘You do?’ I said. And Andy nodded. And then he scratched at the back of his head. With his foot, as a dog might do, which I found most impressive. If just a tad creepy.

‘On one condition,’ said Andy.

‘Just name it, my brother.’

‘I want to be in your band.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Oh what?’

‘Oh, dear brother,’ I said. ‘It would be an honour and a pleasure.’

‘You see, I have certain musical ideas of my own that I would like to realise. They’re very meaningful and I think that the pop medium might-’

But he didn’t say any more just then as we both had to leap out of the road to avoid being run down by a 207 bus.

‘I think we’d better press on,’ said Andy, rising from the pavement and shaking the snow from his back in a dog-like fashion. ‘Before the trail grows cold. Well, colder anyway.’

And we were off once more. And thankfully now for the very last time.

I didn’t know Hanwell particularly well. It had a High Street with Jim Marshall’s shop in it. And St Bernard’s Loony Bin, which was opposite the bus station. And there were the three bridges – a train bridge, a road bridge and a bridge with the Grand Union Canal in it, all crossing each other in the same place.

Although perhaps I just dreamed the last bit about the bridges. It does seem rather unlikely.

Andy stopped and sniffed at oil. ‘I’m getting the scent really strongly now,’ he said. ‘From up ahead there, just past the three bridges.’

‘Is there anything beyond Hanwell?’ I asked of Andy. ‘I sort of thought that the world probably ended somewhere about here.’

Andy straightened up and brushed the snow from his paws. ‘Is that true?’ he asked of me.

And I sort of nodded that it was.

‘Silly, silly sod,’ said Andy. ‘Come on, let’s get this finished.’

And he was off once more, but this time at a more sedate pace. A lady in a straw hat watched us mooching by and I could just imagine what she was thinking:

Look at that stylish-looking private eye, taking his pedigree dog for a walk, would be what she was thinking.

So I have no idea why she screamed and ran off the way she did.

Andy stopped and, like a pointer, pointed with a paw. And did a bit of doggy-panting, which more than captured the mood.

‘In there?’ I asked Andy.

And Andy barked in the affirmative.

‘In there? Are you sure?’

Andy’s head bobbed up and down.

‘But that’s a cemetery,’ I said. ‘Dead people live in there.’

Andy’s head went bob-bob-bob some more. And I peeped through the cemetery gates. They were big gates, of iron, all gothic traceries and curlicues with much in the way of funerary embellishment. Skulls and crossed bones, angels in flight. And things of that nature, generally. And beyond these a most picturesque-looking graveyard. The snow took the edge off its grimness and painted it up to a nicety.

‘In there and you’re absolutely sure?’

But Andy was off once more. Not through one of the big iron gates – those were for the hearses to drive through – but through the pedestrians’ entrance to the left-hand side (looking from the road, of course). And we were soon into the snow-covered land of the dead.

And Andy padded along, moving this way and that, following the avenues that led between the tombstones before finally stopping at an impressive-looking marble mausoleum. It was one of those grand Victorian affairs, all fluted columns and angelic ornamentation.

‘Here?’ I said.

And Andy barked that we were.

I looked up at the marvellous structure, then stepped forward and dusted snow from the engraved brass plaque upon it.

I read from this, aloud to my brother.

Here Lies Count Otto Black

Bavarian Nobleman and Philanthropist

Moved On From this Plane of Existence

31.12.1899

‘The stolen equipment is in here?’ I said to Andy. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Andy, and he removed his dog-mask. ‘And it all falls rather neatly into place, as it happens.’

‘Does it?’ I asked. ‘How so?’

‘Because, as I told you, those who stole the equipment were dressed as women. But they weren’t women. But neither were they men. That’s why I couldn’t identify the smell, and pondered, in all foolish frivolousness, the possibility that space aliens might be involved. Nothing of the sort, it appears.’ And Andy sniffed again and said, ‘It’s clear as clear and my nose doesn’t lie. The gear wasn’t stolen by living beings. The gear was stolen by the dead.’

Well, all right and fair enough, I wasn’t expecting that!

‘Dead people?’ I said to Andy. ‘Dead men stole my Strat?’

Andy did some further sniffings. ‘That’s how it’s smelling,’ said he.

‘You mean zombies,’ I said to Andy. ‘The living dead. Slaves to their voodoo master.’

‘That is the popular consensus opinion,’ agreed Andy. ‘Reanimated corpses controlled by evil puppet-master magicians.’

‘But here? In Hanwell?’

‘Zombism was bound to reach here eventually,’ reasoned Andy. ‘I read recently the term “global village” being used to describe the world.’

‘Did you read it in Teenage She-Male Today?’ I asked.

But Andy said no, he had not.

‘So what do we do?’ I now asked. ‘Get shovels and dig? Fetch a priest? Employ an exorcist? I am a little out of my depth here. And, if I am altogether honest, rather frightened also.’

‘Have no fear,’ said Andy. ‘Your big brother is with you.’

‘I’ll go to a phone box and call Mr Ishmael,’ I said.

‘Mr Ishmael?’ said Andy. ‘Who he?’

‘The manager of the band,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to clear it with him about you joining, of course, but I’m sure it will be nothing but a formality.’ And I tried to make a convincing face as I said this.

‘All right,’ said Andy. ‘You find a phone box and call him. Tell him to bring a lot of villagers, with flaming torches.’

‘Villagers with flaming torches are more your Frankenstein’s monster than your zombie,’ I said.

‘Well, tell him to get them here before dark.’

‘And isn’t “after dark” for vampires and werewolves? Zombies are all-day-rounders, I think.’

‘You appear to know an awful lot about this sort of thing,’ said Andy.

‘Not really,’ I said and I shrugged. ‘I just go to a lot of horror movies, don’t you-’

And then I cut that line of conversation short. They probably didn’t get to watch too many horror movies in the lunatic asylum.

‘I’ll go and make the phone call,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should come with me.’

‘No way,’ said Andy. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

Andy shrugged and replaced his mask. ‘I’m a dog,’ he said. ‘It’s safe for me. And think of this place from a dog’s perspective – all those buried bones.’

And I took off to find a phone box. Fast.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say to Mr Ishmael. I didn’t think I would broach the subject of zombies. It would be better, I considered, simply to pass on the location of the stolen goods, as he had instructed me to do, and leave the actual recovery of them to him.

So, case solved, really.

I walked tall on my way to the phone box. My first case as a private eye and I had breezed through it. I was a natural, there was no mistake about that. I’d rent an office. There was one up for rent above Uncle Ted the greengrocer’s. I could almost visualise the name, engraved into the frosted-glass panel of the door: ‘PRIVATE-TYLER’, like