‘O.K. We will be there in fifteen minutes, Mr Creedon. Just heed what I said about the gun. Let’s just take the gun out of the equation ­altogether—’ Noonan said, but the quenched noise of the disconnected line was already in her ear.

Noonan dropped the handset on her desk.

‘Did you catch all that?’ she asked Swift.

‘Ambulance is dispatched,’ Swift said.

‘Let’s beat them to the draw,’ Noonan said.

Noonan and Swift were on the road when they got Crean on the ­squad-­car radio.

‘Shots fired, man down, firearm still in play,’ Crean summarised after Noonan had given him a rundown of the situation.

‘That’s the size of it,’ Noonan said.

‘I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just put a shout in now to the Special Response Unit,’ Crean suggested.

‘Fella’s done the shooting rang us of his own volition. I asked him questions, he answered them. He’s not lost his reason.’

‘You can’t rely on reason with a firearm in play.’

‘Just let us put our feet on the ground out there, get the lay of the land. No cause to escalate yet.’

‘I’m the other side of Ballina and I’ll be out to you as soon as I can. But, Noonan, ye get out there and there’s a hint of anything off I need ye to withdraw and hold tight.’

‘I hear you.’

‘Good luck,’ Crean said and signed off.

They were a couple of miles out from Mills Turn when they ranged into the wake of a tractor towing a trailer full of sheep. Noonan got right up the trailer’s arse, siren ­wapwapping, but the stretch of road they were on was not wide enough for the tractor to let them pass.

‘Come on to fuck,’ Noonan said as the trailer weaved from side to side ahead of them. Sheep were packed thick into the trailer’s confines, stamps of red dye smudged on their coats like bloody handprints, their snouts nudging in anxious query between the gaps in the bars. Once the road opened out, Noonan gunned the engine and streaked by the tractor.

As instructed, they took the third left after Mills Turn and found themselves on the Rathreedane road. Rathreedane was nothing but flat acres of farmland, well-spaced houses set off the road at the ends of long lanes, and cows sitting like shelves of rock in the middle of the fields, absorbing the last of the day’s declining rays. Where the ditches dropped low those same rays, crazed with motes and still piercingly bright, blazed across Noonan’s sightline. She flipped down the visor. She considered the gosling. Swift had gone quieter than usual, his gaze trained out the window and one knee frantically joggling.