"Have I safe passage up the lane here, er…?"

"Jim Rogers. Stay to the left of the tape there. Can you see it?"

Minogue drew out a penlight from his jacket pocket. The battery was dead. Rogers turned the lamp toward the laneway. Minogue's eyes followed the taut yellow tape running to the house.

"We've done the lane once. We'll do it proper in the morning. The conditions are bad. Tire treads is all so far. It's all stones around here. Peeping up through the grass even."

Minogue started up the lane. He smelled the heather from the hills. He passed a gap in the hedge, stone posts anchoring a gate. A horse shook its head over the gate at him. Minogue started. The horse moved off. the limit of a rope tethered to the gate.

"Don't be trying to frighten me like that, mister," he muttered after the horse. He stopped and looked back down the lane, his heart still pounding from the fright. The night was heavy and still around him. He wondered if the deadness in the air was here all the time.

Hoey was wearing a polo shirt under his jacket. He raised his eyebrows in greeting. Hoey's face was too long-mark of the Irish-the eyes too gentle, set in ruddy features: farmer's boy, a face peering over stone-walled Galway fields. The stakes and plastic ribbons had been erected all around the house. Minogue heard another generator grumbling out of sight. One of the lamps lit up the whole gable end of the house like a film set. Hoey stood behind Minogue in the doorway, both looking over the whitened destruction of the kitchen.

"Did that stuff help us at all, Shea?"

"The flour, with footprints? No. Some settled on the body. So the killer went on wrecking the place after killing the old man. The bag of flour burst over there against the wall."

"Well. Who's here?"