She thought about what Bubbles had said in the yard: that summer was the stupidest possible time to try and rob oil out of an oil tank. Noonan had grown up in the countryside. There had been a tank out the back of the house that was filled every autumn, just before the cold weather set in. Although there was always a ­sitting-­room fire going, use of the radiators was strictly rationed. The goal was to try and have the single tank of oil last the whole winter. And so Jackie Noonan’s house had been a cold house. Noonan remembered her mother roaring at her and her siblings to put on a jumper whenever one of them dared voice a complaint about the cold. She remembered the ­single-­glaze window above her headboard in the bedroom she shared with her sisters Maureen and Patricia, the ­brown-­putty smell of the fly-specked sill and the clear ache in the tips of her fingers when she touched her hand to the thin glass on winter mornings.

She was holding Judge’s arm, two fingers pressed to his wrist. His arm was an alienly cold weight. He was still breathing but she wanted to feel the tick of his pulse under the skin to assure herself it was there. With her other hand, she was keeping a towel pressed against the worst of the bleeding. Beneath his head she could still hear the tiny, tinny ttt ttt ttt of his headphones. The miasmic smell of human shit seemed to be getting stronger. She felt as if it were working itself into her pores, coating the back of her throat. Noonan believed Dylan Judge was going to die if the ambulance did not arrive very soon, and probably anyway.

‘Here come the cavalry,’ Swift said.

Noonan looked up and saw three figures jogging across the field. Sergeant Dennis Crean led the way followed by two paramedics toting a scoop stretcher. Just as he was about to reach them, Crean stumbled and his jog turned into a sudden hobble.

‘Shite!’ he exclaimed.

‘You OK?’ Noonan asked.

‘I’m after going over my ankle.’

The paramedics dropped down into the grass next to Noonan and Judge.

‘We have it now,’ one of them said.

Noonan got to her feet and stepped back. She brushed her brow with her gloved hand and felt the cold slickness of blood on her forehead.

‘That’s Dylan Judge,’ she said to Crean, who was grim­acing and testing the weight on his foot.

‘Are you kidding me,’ Crean said, squinting coolly at Judge’s white, unconscious face.