Minogue had an image of Maura Kilmartin with her overpowering perfume and her huge hands. She was from Leitrim and her flat drag-out-the-word-and-then-beat-it-over-the-head accent came through stronger after a sherry. Minogue had last met her at a retirement do for a Superintendent. He remembered her big, red farm-girl's face, the plump fiftyish body distending the sybaritic designs of her silky dress. She had whispered a dirty joke to Minogue. He was too distracted to get it straightaway, but she slapped her knees and almost dislodged her top set of teeth with laughter.

He remembered Kilmartin's sober face contorting in the kind of smile you'd see on a donkey chewing barbed wire. When Kilmartin said that he'd like Minogue to stand in for him and would it be all right to recommend him for a secondment for the six weeks, Minogue privately assigned a large percentage of at-fault-as regards Kilmartin's complaint-to Maura Kilmartin: Jimmy's shame, a farmyard wife too real for Dublin politesse.

"Ah, I feel sorry for the young people these days," Kilmartin drawled expansively from the bed. "So much pressure."

"You have hit the nail on the head," Minogue said.

Kilmartin warmed to the role of bedridden philosopher. He leveled a finger at the television set across the room.

"I blame that bloody idiot-box for a lot of it. You could watch that thing for a whole day, from early morning to late at night, and there wouldn't be ten minutes of it that'd be worth talking about. The rest of it you can throw your hat at."

"You're right, Jimmy, you're right."

Minogue wondered how much Kilmartin actually watched.

"Did you see the news?" Kilmartin asked.

"I heard it on the radio," Minogue replied.

"About that business up in… where is it?"

"Kilternan."

"That's the place. Do you know," Kilmartin leaned forward for emphasis, "but nobody tells me a damn thing here?"