I went to the body of the deer, held a hand flat to its belly and checked that it was definitely dead. It had suffered already and I didn’t want it to suffer any more. Once I was sure, I grabbed it by the legs and started dragging it in the direction of the grass bank. Normal procedure was to call the police, so that someone could come and retrieve the body, but that would create the same problems as taking Healy to hospital, so I made sure the deer was as far from the road as possible and then returned to the car and fired it up again. It spat, the chassis kicking, rocking from the front, but then it gently began to idle. It didn’t sound right – something was ticking loudly in the engine – and when I put it into reverse and tried to pull back from the bank, the front wheels spun on the gravel.

I asked Healy if he could get into the driver’s seat and try to reverse the Audi while I gave it a push from the front. It took a long time, both of us becoming frustrated, but finally it worked: gravel ricocheted off the car, mud flecked my trousers, then the wheels gripped.

We swapped seats, I turned the car around and we headed towards the village again. I’d noticed a first-aid kit in the farmhouse, and there were blankets, flannels and hand towels in the airing cupboards at all four homes.

Five minutes later, we were back at Black Gale.

We drove all the way down the track, pulling up outside the farm. Helping Healy out, I opened the property and we headed inside, and then I left him on one of the chairs in the kitchen as I went searching for the first-aid kit. I found it in the utility room. The box of plasters was a little under half full and, as I looked at them, I wondered when they were last used. Months before the Gibbses disappeared? Weeks? The night they went missing? I grabbed the plasters and then a dressing, tearing it out of its packet and returning to Healy, telling him to press it to the cuts while I went to fetch water.

‘Where are you going to get water from?’

He was right: the taps hadn’t run here for two and a half years.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got some in the car.’

Once I’d grabbed a bottle I kept in the boot, I returned to the house, told Healy to lean over the sink and started to empty the water over his cuts. They’d begun to clot already and most probably only required the plasters, but the gash at his eye was pretty deep.

‘You need to learn to drive straight, Raker.’

It broke the charged atmosphere.

‘But that grass bank came out of nowhere,’ I said.

He returned my smile.