He had driven through Dundrum to Sandyford and followed the signs for the Scalp. The road could now be called the Enniskerry Road. It corkscrewed its way through Stepaside and widened again before it reached Kilternan. The Scalp, a cleft in the hills which marked the border between Counties Dublin and Wicklow, was still three miles from where Minogue finally stopped.

Hoey had told him to take the turn up to Glencullen but to stop off to the right where he'd meet the first bad bend in the road. Combs' house was up the lane there. The hills above Kilternan were forested with spruce and pine, Minogue remembered, and high up over Glencullen, some miles into the mountains, the mountainsides were bog, carpeted with heather and ferns.

He parked between an unmarked police van and a Toyota Corolla squad-car. Twenty yards further up the road was another car, a Renault, illuminated by stalk lamps which Minogue recognised as forensic site equipment. A generator puttered in the near distance. He stopped by the Toyota. Smoke issued from the open window of the squad-car. The yellow interior light showed two Gardai pushed back in their seats.

"Minogue," he said to the two figures in the Toyota. "Off the Murder Squad. Are ye the first shift looking after the site until morning, is it?"

The driver, a young Garda with a puffy face patterned by acne scars, nodded.

"That's us, sir. We're due a relief about eleven."

Minogue stared up at the faintly milky sky behind the mountains before walking slowly toward the Renault. A scenes-of-the-crime technician squatted on the ditch side of the car. His tongue moved slowly across his bottom lip, his eyebrows silver in the lamp's glare. Minogue had forgotten the technician's name.

"Whose car?"

"Victim's," said the technician without looking up from the plastic bags he was sealing. He paused then and squinted up at Minogue, blinking. Widow's peak, bird eyes, Minogue thought: Rogers? McMahon? An old hand anyway.