‘I’ve no say in it but every cunt that knows me does call me Bubbles.’

Bubbles looked to be in his early thirties. He was stocky, his head shaved close. He was in a faded grey ­T-­shirt with QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, ERA VULGARIS printed on it in a disintegrating white script. There were dark wet daubs of blood flecking his forearms like tracks left by a bird.

‘We hear there’s been a spot of bother,’ Noonan said.

‘There has.’

‘That knock to the head part of the bother?’

‘A little bit, all right,’ Bubbles said and lifted the towel away from his temple to let them see. There was an open gash above his eyebrow.

Noonan whistled.

‘I wager that needs stitching. I understand there’s another man in a bad way here too, is that right?’

‘There is, yeah.’

‘That his blood on you?’

‘Some of it, yeah.’

‘Can you take us to him?’

‘I can.’

‘Get the emergency kit,’ Noonan said to Swift. Swift popped the boot, took out a bulky, ­multi-­pocketed bag and handed it over to Noonan.

‘Lead the way,’ she said, sliding the kit’s strap over her shoulder.

Bubbles cleared his throat.

‘This situation here. You have to understand, my father was in fear for our lives.’

‘We’ll be sure to take that into account.’

Bubbles led Noonan and Swift down a short dirt track into the yard at the back of the property. The yard was covered in matted, ­trampled-­down straw. Noonan watched Bubbles step indifferently into a cowpat the size of a dinner plate, his boot heel leaving an oozing ­bite-­mark in the pat’s crust. The air was thick with the heavy, ­grainy-­sweet redolence of fodder and shit. Through a window cut out of the galvanised facade of a shed cows blinked their stark, ­red-­rimmed eyes as if roused from sleep.

‘That’s where we caught him, brazen as you like,’ Bubbles said, gesturing at the large, cylindrical oil tank mounted on a bed of brick next to the cowshed.

‘He was thieving oil?’ Noonan asked.

‘Such a stupid thing to be at,’ Bubbles said. ‘There’s nothing left from the winter gone and it won’t be filled again for months. Who’s going to have a full tank of oil in the middle of summer?’

They passed a final row of sheds and came out into an open field. Fifty feet ahead of them a short man was standing over a second man lying on his back on the ground. On the horizon Noonan could make out the low, blunted serrations of the Ox Mountains.

‘Bertie Creedon?’ Noonan called out to the standing man.

‘Aye,’ Creedon said, not taking his eyes off the man on the ground, his shotgun tucked at an idle diagonal under his arm.