‘That is some incarnation of sun,’ Noonan said, talking just to talk, to draw Swift out of his introversion and back into the here and now. ‘Haven’t seen a sun like that since Guadalajara. You know where Guadalajara is, Pronsius?’

‘Is it the far side of Belmullet?’

Noonan smiled.

‘Technically it is. Visited there a few years back. Unreal how beautiful it was. The light just lands different.’

‘The world is different everywhere, I suppose.’

‘We went there for an anniversary. It was Trevor’s idea. Trevor’s the traveller,’ Noonan continued. Trevor was her husband. ‘Enjoying the place you get to is one thing. But Trevor has this thing for the travel itself; the luggage and the security lines, the time zones, the little trays of food with the foil lids you peel back they give you onboard, and these days having to drag a pair of mewling teenage boys everywhere with us. Trevor gets giddy at all of it, somehow. Me, I could live a long happy life never going through a metal detector again. You ever been anywhere exotic, Pronsius?’

‘I been the far side of Belmullet.’

‘Good man.’

‘Ah,’ Swift sighed, ‘I’ve no interest, really. Wherever I am, that’s where I like.’

‘A man after my own heart.’

Presently they found the residence, a low bungalow off a gravel lane, the red galvanised roofs of farm buildings visible at the rear of the property. An enormous, rickety white motorhome was stranded in the grass out front.

‘Now we’ll see what’s what,’ Noonan said.

She cut the siren and turned through the concrete posts of the gateless gate. The squad car bounced and lurched as it passed over the rattling bars of a cattle grid. Next to the motorhome there were pieces of outdoor furniture and what looked like a little fire pit dug out of the ground, empty wine bottles planted in the moat of ash ringing the pit. Scattered elsewhere in the grass were bags of feed, a ­stripped-­down, ­rusted-­out engine block, scraps of tarp, scraps of lumber, metal piping, plastic piping, bits and bits and bits.

‘Look at all this shit,’ Noonan said.

‘Steady on,’ Swift said with a nod.

A man had come around the side of the house. He was holding something to his head and his other arm was raised, palm forward.

Noonan killed the engine and got out of the squad car, keeping her body behind the door. Swift followed her lead on the other side.

‘This the Creedon residence?’ Noonan asked.

‘It is, surely,’ the man said.

He was pressing a stained tea towel of blue and white check to his temple. The stains looked like blood.

‘I’m Sergeant Noonan out of Ballina Garda Station. This is Garda Swift. You Bertie Creedon?’

‘Christ, no.’

‘You’d be the son, then?’

‘That’s more like it.’

‘What’s your name?’