Single-Handed

Eilish Burke's two-year-old son Conal is abducted, apparently by her ex-husband Padraig, though her family are unpopular locally as they are travellers with form and Jack's lazy superior has already given the child up as dead. Gerry, Jack's corrupt father, is subject to a tribunal for past misdemeanours when he was a Garda sergeant and Jack's girlfriend Maggie, the local doctor, supports Eilish and is concerned for Gerry's health. However, she has kept quiet about Padraig's drug addiction, to Jack's annoyance. Having prevented Gerry from doctoring evidence he traces Padraig through his drug-dealer but Conal is not with him.

Padraig is well and truly out of it,due to the drugs, and Jack roughs him up in order to get news of Conal but Eilish admits that she is now uncertain that Padraig took him as she never got a good look at the abductor and made a supposition. Gerry points Jack towards Malachy Doran, a retired school-teacher who worked with Jack's mother Eithne and is now ringing her up. Malachy was once suspected of being a paedophile but released through lack of evidence. Malachy has indeed got his own agenda for returning to the area, as Gerry finds to his cost. Conal is eventually found alive.