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Miss Trimble was watching from her bedroom window again. God he hated the old bat with her corrugated iron perm and thick glasses always peering behind her net curtains. He loathed her nasal query.

"Mrs Scot still away?"

The same question every day as she watched him dig a six foot hole by the rose garden.

Her security light came on as he dragged the sack down the path knowing she was watching. Now he was out of her line of vision. She must be choking to know he was there but unable to see what he was up to.

Three hours digging before he could pitch the sack into the grave, another hour to fill it in. He straightened his back and returned to bed.

The police came, did a brief search. He told them 'Elspeth took everything with her when she left.'

They examined the grave and found the cocker he had buried there. His neighbour, he intimated, was suffering from dementia and needed care.

He returned from holidaying in Spain to find the old bat had been rehoused.

The new tenant, a retired DI, had a Jack Russell. It scrabbled itself into the grave. The DI dug down to free it. A six foot grave for a cocker aroused his suspicion If I had been at home I could have bluffed it out told him it was a joke played on my neighbour.

He called a mate with a tracker dog it sniffed out the second grave.

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