Gardaí in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, and the PSNI in Derry are looking for the motive behind the abduction of a couple in Mullingar on Monday night which resulted in the man being shot in both ankles 225km (140 miles) away in Derry city.
Two men arrested in Derry yesterday morning were still being questioned late last night by police. The men were arrested in the Brandywell area.
The couple - who have not been named by gardaí - lived in rented accommodation in Mullingar for the past year, but they are not originally from the area.
No robbery was carried out at the house, and one avenue that gardaí are exploring is that the abduction and shooting may relate to financial dealings that went sour.
Chief Supt Pádraig Rattigan said the man (42) and woman (38) were abducted from the house by four armed and masked men in what gardaí believe may have been a white Ford Transit van, sometime between 8pm and 9pm on Monday.
"They were transported to Derry where the man was shot in both ankles, and he was left outside a housing estate.
"His injuries required surgery at Altnagelvin hospital, Derry. The woman was assaulted but she did not require hospital treatment."
Officers from the PSNI interviewed the couple yesterday and also arrested two men who are believed to have paramilitary links.
The abduction took place at Newbrook Road, Clonmore, Mullingar. The couple are reasonably well known in the Mullingar area, and they were said yesterday to frequent a number of public houses in the town.
"You would see them around the place, along with another couple," said a neighbour who did not wish to be named. "They would often go to various pubs around Mullingar."
Meanwhile, a resident of High Park in Derry, who also did not wish to be identified, said the distraught and injured woman, who was dressed in a white boiler-type suit, called at his home immediately after her boyfriend had been shot.
"It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was saying because you don't associate shooting incidents with this area. There was a lot of blood pouring out from a wound she had on the back of her head.
"She told me she and her boyfriend had been dragged from their home by a gang of four men, bundled into a Ford Transit van, driven to Derry, assaulted and then when they were thrown out of the van at the alleyway beside my home the gang shot her boyfriend in the legs.
"I ran down the square. I found him sitting up in a neighbour's garden. He said he had been shot in both legs but he didn't think the bullets had broken any bones. He asked me for a cigarette and I gave him a smoke before I phoned the police.
"There was a lot of blood coming from his legs and from his head but he said he was okay. Then the police came and I went home," the man said.
The injured man, who is believed to have an address in Downpatrick, worked in the building industry but neighbours said his work seemed to be focused on the Dublin area.
He was dressed only in boxer shorts and wrapped in a quilt when he was shot in the alleyway near High Park estate in Derry's Creggan estate.
A local resident called the emergency services at about 4.15am, when he was alerted to the man's presence in the alleyway.
Gardaí believe the couple were held for a number of hours at a location somewhere between Mullingar and Derry.