Once they got there, Dyspepsia threw a ball for Spookie to fetch.

But it wasn’t long before they both got puffed out doing that, so they decided to wander around and look at the crocuses. Spookie tried to think of other things dogs did.

Of course!—they looked for bones.

Well, would you believe it, on the very first try she found one.

A little bone, like a pencil stub, sticking up out of the ground. Dyspepsia pulled it and it came out, and she put her finger in the hole and felt around. There was another bone behind it, and with a lot of effort tearing at grassroots and turf they got it out.

Then Dyspepsia had an awful thought. What if it was someone’s finger? Maybe there was a whole body down there, and they ought to tell the police?

If you find a body you should always tell the police, unless it is a very old body, in which case everyone will have forgotten his name. If he ever had a name and didn’t just grunt.

So Spookie stayed by the hole, so as not to lose it, and Dyspepsia went off to find a policeman.

She was lucky. By the side of Ryhope Road she found not one policeman but two, sitting in their police car doing nothing.

They seemed glad of something to do, for they both got out and followed her back to where Spookie was standing by the hole.

The policemen looked at the bones; then they looked at each other; then they looked at the bones again. One got his police phone out and called for a council workman to come along with a spade and start digging. The other went back for some traffic cones.

They put the cones round the hole to stop anyone falling in. Not that it was big enough for anyone to fall in just yet.

But very soon it would be.

Dyspepsia and Spookie went home and thought they’d come back after tea to see how the workmen were getting on. They wanted to take the two smallest bones home with them, but the policemen said “leave them here please”, so they had to do that.

…to be continued.