‘What, and have him croak in the back of the car? He’s probably had a heart attack or multiple organ failure. Jesus Christ, Neasa – he smelled bad enough when he was alive!’

Macklin Delaney was standing well back, his arms folded, looking glum and impatient. Garda Phelan went up to him and said, ‘So, like, how did you find him?’

‘It was a young lad who found him first. I was planting my poppies and he came up to me and said there’s a feen lying sick or dead by the side of the road. But the second I went into the house to fetch my coat the lad ran off. By the look of him and the way he spoke I’d say he was a Pavee from the halting site down there. He had a brown mongrel with him. A pure sorry apology of a dog. It looked like some manky old fireside rug had decided to grow itself legs.’

‘A dog like that shouldn’t be too hard to find,’ said Garda O’Connor. ‘You don’t happen to know this dead fellow, do you? Or ever seen him before?’

‘Never seen him before in my life, and I hope to God I never see him again. Is it okay if I go now? The auld doll’s not well and I don’t like to leave her for long. I live only up the boreen there.’

‘You can of course. Just give us your name and address and your phone number because we’ll be needing to talk to you again.’

An ambulance arrived, silently, but with its blue lights flashing. Almost immediately afterwards a black van from the Technical Bureau pulled up behind it, followed by two SUVs carrying technical experts, two Garda squad cars and a Garda van. Five uniformed gardaí climbed out, and once they had peered with wrinkled-up noses at Timbo Coffey’s body lying half-hidden in the blackthorn bushes, they set up a barrier of cones and tapes.

Two technical experts in white Tyvek suits took photographs of the body from every angle. They also scrutinized the grass verge for footprints and broken twigs and the surrounding blackthorn bushes for any scraps of fabric in case Timbo had been forced into the bushes by an assailant. Then they knelt beside the body and bowed down as if they were praying. They were looking for any indication that he might have been beaten or stabbed or struck by a passing vehicle and flung into the bushes by the impact.

All the while this was going on, the hooded crows were watching from the trees, occasionally thrashing their wings impatiently and letting out a sinister chorus of soft death rattles.

After less than twenty minutes, a forensic expert came up to Gardaí Phelan and O’Connor, pulling down her face mask and pushing back the hood of her Tyvek suit so that her tight chestnut curls sprang out.