Then one night he was cooking dinner — frying a hamburger on the rust-pocked stove’s one working burner, Steve Earle good and loud on the iPod speaker, Cal adding in the occasional crash of air drums — when the back of his neck flared.
-- Narrator (Chapter 1)

Importance: Cal moved to Ireland in hopes of living a peaceful life in which he did not have to worry about being watched. He realizes one night while he is cooking dinner that he is being watched. The narrator says that Cal’s neck flared, a response he developed to trouble while he was in the police department. He trusts this reaction.

Listen to this. Night before last, something kilt one of Bobby’s sheep. Took out its throat, its tongue, its eyes and its arse; left the rest.
-- Senan (Chapter 3)

Importance: While Cal is in the pub, Senan describes to him the way Bobby’s sheep was killed. The local...