When they went back after tea, it was already getting dark.

But the policemen had put up searchlights all around, and a big white tent, and sticks in the ground with yards and yards of plastic tape saying Do Not Cross. Spookie and Dyspepsia knew it didn’t mean them, so they lifted up the tape and crept under it.

When they went in the tent they saw the hole had turned into a trench and the council was thinking of getting a digger along.

Bones were lined up along the edge of the trench. It wasn’t somebody’s body after all. It was just a line of bones, which were getting bigger and bigger.

The first two bones had only been like a broken pencil, but the next bone was like a frankfurter, and the one after that like a fat pork sausage. Then there was one like a beer can, then a log, then a bigger log, and so on.

By the time they got to Ryhope Road, the bones were as wide as beer barrels and needed four strong men to lift them out of the trench.

That’s where the council stopped digging. They were going no further, they said, because they had more important things to do.

Spookie guessed it was really because they didn’t want to shut Ryhope Road while they dug across it. Also it would cost a lot and they didn’t have the money to spend on things like that.

Dyspepsia and Spookie took the two smallest bones to Sunderland Museum, where a man told them they were dinosaur bones. Not just any dinosaur bones, but from the Biggest Dinosaur Ever!

A Monstosaurus.

Dyspepsia and Spookie were so excited.

But if the council didn’t have the money to dig them up, who had?

Dyspepsia knew Mummy and Daddy didn’t have the money either, so she got a form from the post office to apply for an EU grant. They got the form home and read out the first question. “What do you want the money for?”

Well, that was easy to answer.