‘Ah, Jesus. I never saw nothing like it. I tried chucking dirt over it, but it was like pissing in the wind, do you know what I mean?’

‘Did you see it go up?’ asked Garda Phelan.

‘I didn’t, no. I was on my way up to that field yonder to pick up some bales of hay and that’s when I heard it. Badoom! like. I drove back down the hill as fast as I could but by that time it was raging away already. I could see that there was a feller sitting behind the wheel but he was flames all over and I couldn’t get nearly close enough to pull him out of there. I just pray to God that he didn’t suffer too much.’

The farmer crossed himself and shook his head. In the distance – over the snapping and popping of the burning car – they could hear a siren. Ballyvolane fire station was only five minutes away, and there was always an engine there on standby, twenty-four hours a day. At least one more engine would probably be sent up from Cork city centre.

By the time the fire engine appeared, with its blue lights flashing, the flames had begun to die down, although the tyres were still smouldering and smoke was billowing out of the passenger compartment even thicker than before. Garda O’Connor tugged at Garda Phelan’s sleeve and said, ‘Look, Micky. You can just about see the driver. Mother of God, he’s burned to a cinder.’

‘Could be a she, like.’

‘Not in a car like this. I doubt it. It’s a Jaguar XJ6, isn’t it, an old one? That’s probably why we heard two explosions. It has the twin petrol tanks, one in each wing.’

‘Okay, if you say so. You know a whole lot more about cars than I do, Neasa, but then my da didn’t run a garage like yours did.’

Three firefighters had started spraying the car with copious streams of white foam, which rolled in puffballs across the road and clung to the hedges on either side. Noel Hogan, the station officer, strode over to Garda Phelan and Garda O’Connor, chunky and broken-nosed like a middleweight boxer and brusque as ever, with no time at all for ‘what’s the story?’ or ‘how’re ye going on?’

‘Totally gutted,’ he said. ‘Any notion how it happened?’

‘Not a clue, Noel. Neasa and me were busy at The Bridle, slinging out this langered knacker who’d gawked all over the shop and then had the gall to call out for another pint of Murphy’s. We heard it, though. One fecking great bang, and then another, but the second one not so loud. Neasa here reckons it has two fuel tanks, this car, and so maybe one went up after the other. Hard to say for sure, looking at the state of it now.’