‘You can’t just be grabbing people for no reason,’ he said.

Noonan looked at Swift, the boy’s friends. She stepped up to the boy.

‘You know well what you did,’ she said. ‘And you know I know. Have some fucking respect for yourself.’

She put her cap back on, nodded at Swift and turned on her heel.

‘What the hell was that about?’ Swift asked when they were back in the car.

‘Let’s get this done,’ she said, putting the car into gear.

There was a large oval green at the centre of the Glen Gardens estate. Several teenagers were punting a ball around beneath the lunar glow of the park lamps, and a couple more were sprawled in the grass spectating, a little nest of bags and ­soft-­drink bottles next to them.

‘See that,’ Noonan said. ‘Any money there’s drink in them bottles.’

‘Want to go ruin their night?’ Swift asked.

‘Tonight, they’re off the hook.’ Once they’d persuaded Amy Mullally to let them come in, Noonan got a glimpse inside the sitting room as they passed down the hall. It was bathed in the glow of a TV, and the little girl, longer-limbed now, was curled in a chair staring at an iPad. Mullally brought them through to the kitchen. She was still perilously skinny, her hair up in a pineapple, the tendons in her neck flexing like high-tension wires when she spoke. Noonan gave a careful, broad outline of the events at the farm: Judge’s apparent scheme to rob the oil tank, the residents confronting him. She said he had been shot and was not any more explicit about his injuries beyond describing them as extremely serious. This time, Amy Mullally did not shout or rant. She absorbed what Noonan told her without interruption. She did not debate or refute the narrative Noonan laid out. All she asked was if Dylan was going to die. Noonan reiterated that he had been taken to Castlebar General, and that that was all they could tell her as of right now.

Noonan and Swift stayed put while Mullally rang her mother, who came over to look after the daughter. ­Mullally agreed to let Swift accompany her to the hospital.

Back at the station the inspectors’ unmarked Focus was parked out front. Noonan picked up the cafetière from her desk and brought it into the station’s poky little kitchen. Crean was in there, mugs laid out on the counter, meditatively watching the kettle rattle to a boil.

‘Castlebar’s finest in with those two?’ Noonan asked.

Crean came out of his thoughts, cracked a faint smile.

‘They have me fetching the tea while they work their magic,’ he said, pouring the water from the kettle into the mugs. ‘Did you talk to the family?’

‘The girlfriend. Swift is gone with her to Castlebar General.’

‘The two will want your report the second it’s done.’