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until it turned off past Newtown and headed west toward Roundwood.
    Pine and fir trees flanked the road like troops massing for battle as we drove into the low winter sun’s glare. I kept my distance, and when the white van took a right up a small track with a makeshift signpost reading CHRISTMAS TREES, about a mile or so from the Vartry Reservoir, I kept going until I came to a lay-by maybe three hundred yards farther up the road but still in sight of the turn. I got out of the car, produced a notebook and a pair of Meade 10 x 25 compact binoculars and made a moderate show of casting about as if I were interested in the wildlife, although nothing wheeled across the skies but magpies and sparrows.
    About twenty minutes later the van piled out of the turn and I caught a brief glimpse of Vinnie Butler: burly, weathered complexion, tiny eyes, close-cropped brown hair. He tossed a fast-food carton and a soft-drink container and the colorful bag they’d come in out the window, flicked a cigarette butt after, anointed the lot with a gob of spit and hauled the Ford Transit back in the direction it had come.
    My phone bleeped: Tommy had left a voice mail. He said, "The Butlers eat their young. They’re a tribe of savages, Ed: cross one and ten’ll come after you. The women are worse than the men, but it’s not always easy to tell them apart. Vinnie is thick as shit, but he’s vicious with it. They’re caught up in any number of feuds over horses, cars, you name it. They sorted the last one out by burning a young one’s face with acid. No amount of money is worth messing with the Butlers. Just walk the fuck away."
    After that, I had little option but to check out what Vinnie Butler had been up to in the woods. The track he had exited led up to the edge of another encampment of fir trees, their serried ranks deepening in hue with the fading winter light, and then weaved back and down toward an old corrugated barn and a set of outbuildings; I couldn’t see a farmhouse, but the fields ahead were fenced and cows and sheep were grazing; I breathed a tumult of manure and aging hay and fermenting compost; in the nearest field, an old blood bay was munching steadily on damp grass. A half-dozen freshly cut fir trees were propped up by the barn. Maybe Vinnie Butler hadn’t come to dump his trash; maybe he had had legitimate business with the farmer; maybe he had come to buy a Christmas tree; after all, he had waited until he got back to the road before he tossed his lunch bag.
    I turned and drove slowly back around, stopping when I reached a five-bar gate that opened onto a clearing wide enough to let a van drive through the forest; it was recessed at a sharp angle from the track and concealed by a modest platoon of pines; I had missed it completely on my way up, and I spotted it now only because I was looking for it—and because a white refuse sack clung to one of the trees. I tucked the Volvo behind the pines and climbed over the gate, which was padlocked and chained.
    Well-worn tire tracks sparkled bright as metal in the hard earth as I walked through the forest. Pine resin initially chased away the farmyard aroma; after about ten minutes the fresh smell receded; by the time I reached the dump, I’d’ve cheerfully stuck my head in a compost heap rather than breathe the rank air that surrounded it. A hole about thirty feet in diameter had been dug and the earth banked up the sides; piled high within were bags of domestic waste: rotting food, soiled nappies, detergent and bleach and paint. A halo of flies hovered above the garbage, humming, and there was the rustle and snap of foraging birds and rats; great crows hung in the nearby trees.
    On the far side, I could see the gleam of the reservoir water, and was drawn toward it. The edge of the dump was no more than fifteen feet from the shore. The reservoir supplied a substantial portion of the city’s water. At least I’d have something for Joe Leonard that no council official or