‘Sooby, come away from there, boy!’ Patrin snapped at him. He could smell Timbo’s decomposing body from more than three metres away. It was sweet and putrid, like the dead goat that had once been caught by its horns in the cables underneath their caravan. They had thought it was a blocked toilet and it had been almost a week before they had discovered where the stink was really coming from.

Sooblik kept nosing and nudging at Timbo’s back, but Patrin took hold of his tail and dragged him away.

‘Come on, you munikin! You’ll catch a dose, you will, sniffing at that!’

He wasn’t sure what to do. He thought of flagging down the driver of a passing car, but then he was worried that the driver would make him stay there while he called for the guards, and that the guards might think that he had something to do with Timbo being dead and ask him a whole rake of questions. His pa had always impressed on him that he should never say a word to the guards. He shouldn’t even tell them his name.

He carried on walking as far as the first side road, which led up to a small housing estate. He could see a man digging in the garden of the second house, and so he went up to his fence and stood there for a while, wondering what he ought to say to him. Eventually, the man noticed him standing there with Sooblik, and stopped digging, and said, ‘What’s the story, boy? Something you wanted, was there?’

‘No,’ said Patrin. ‘But there’s a feen lying by the road back up towards The Bridle and he’s looking fierce shook, like.’

‘What, is he langered?’

‘I don’t think so. I think he might be sick, like. Or maybe he was runded over.’

The man hesitated for a moment, but then he chopped his spade into the soil and said, ‘Okay. Let me fetch my coat from indoors and then you can show me where this fellow is.’

He went into his house, leaving the kitchen door open behind him. As soon as he had disappeared inside, though, Patrin started to run down the side road, with Sooblik clumsily bounding along beside him. He reached the Ballyhooly Road and carried on running, until the side road was out of sight.

It was only when he reached the entrance to the Water Lane halting site that he stopped running, screeching for breath. Sooblik had fallen behind, but caught up with him at last, his tongue flapping out like a long grey scarf.