A wave of tiredness washed over me and I had a flashback to the night before, imagining the fear Maeve must have felt, here on her own late at night. It occurred to me that I should give her a call and see how she was doing. Once I was out of this car and back in my own space, I’d do it.

In the meantime, I looked over at Derek whose eyes were spilling tears.

Chapter Eleven

A STRANGE SHEEN glinted off the soaking heather. The light was eerie, almost falsely bright as if someone had turned on a fluorescent lamp whose beam was directly on us, while black and purple clouds surrounded. The rocks glittered with the wet and on the road, I saw the fallen stones and soil that Molloy had mentioned. Maeve was lucky they hadn’t fallen on her windscreen too; some looked sharp enough to do some serious damage. Although lucky was probably stretching it.

The light darkened suddenly when we got out of the car, as if that same someone had turned off the electrics. It started to drizzle and we pulled up our hoods. I walked up the saturated road to where Maeve’s jeep had been when we’d arrived last night. Derek followed me without a word. Everything had been removed now, the cordon, Maeve’s jeep, the tarpaulin. You’d never have known that anything untoward had happened. I supposed there would be little to be gained by marking off the bog in torrential rain. At least Molloy had been able to carry out a short search while it was relatively dry this morning.

Our gaze was drawn upwards, to the sheep on the slopes, their wool sopping, their blue and red markings the only bit of bright color around. The hill was a burned-looking yellowy grey, patched with grey shale as if from a quarry of cut stone. Whatever evidence the rain hadn’t washed away the sheep would soon trample, I thought.

Derek stood in the middle of the road, with his hands on his hips, adopting the same posture I’d seen outside Phyllis’s shop. I wondered what it was he suffered from? It was the left leg that seemed to give him bother.

“So this is it,” he said. “This was where it happened. You’re sure?”

I nodded and looked at the ground where I’d seen the tarp the night before. “I was here,” I said quietly.

He turned, his head snapping round in my direction. “You were here? But I thought the vet found him.”

“She did but I was here shortly afterwards. She’s my friend – the vet. She called me.”