I knew enough about Molloy to stay out of the way, so I watched from the squad car with Maeve. Harry stood for a few seconds, hands on his hips, looking around him as if taking in the scene, then he knelt, gently removing the tarpaulin. There was a sharp intake of breath from Maeve when the man’s face came partially into view, though it was just for a second. Though difficult to tell in the harsh glow of the squad car’s lights, it looked as if it was smeared with mud. We watched silently as Harry lifted the man’s wrist to check for a pulse and then moved to his chest, pushing aside the collar of what looked like a red waterproof golfing jacket and placing his finger and thumb on the man’s neck. Necessary formalities, though it was obvious the man was dead if he’d fallen on Maeve’s windscreen.

Then something unexpected: Harry lifted the man’s wrist again, but this time it was the hand he examined, turning it carefully to the left and right. He touched the skin with his gloved fingers, peering curiously.

“What’s he doing?” Maeve said, echoing my thoughts.

“I don’t know. Is there something on his hand?”

Maeve was beginning to look decidedly queasy. “I wonder how he died.”

I shrugged. “Heart attack? With no one here to help him, he’d have probably died very quickly.”

I was trying to make her feel better, but the truth was I hadn’t a clue, and there was no fooling the vet. She shot me a sceptical look. “He was hardly out for a stroll in this kind of weather. It’s barely stopped raining since yesterday.”

“True.”

“And he was in the pub last night so he must have ended up here after that. I don’t know about you but a midnight stroll along Mamore Gap in the bucketing rain wouldn’t be my idea of a post-prandial constitutional.”

“No, fair enough.” Of course, she was right. “So how did he get up here then?” I asked. “You said you hadn’t met another car for an hour. There’s nothing parked here, is there?”

She shook her head. “Not on the road anyway. And the banks are too high and rocky to drive up so he couldn’t have gone off road.”

“So, he was dumped here?” I said. “Someone drove him out here and left him?”

“That seems the only possibility to me,” Maeve said darkly. “Before or after he died, I wonder?”

I shivered. Dead or alive, to be left on this bleak hill in this relentless rain seemed brutal and personal.

Half an hour later I was back at my cottage, having been dispatched there by McFadden on Molloy’s orders. McFadden had needed to return to Glendara anyway to collect evidence bags and a tent from the Garda Station, so he’d dropped me on his way.