TWO miles west of the small village of Bawnboy, and up a narrow country road, is the edge of the gardai's outer cordon. The besieged house is just visible in the distance, a small building with no obvious signs of life.
Inside is a man, ex-German army trained, a weapons expert who loves his mother, and who shot three people on Wednesday as she lay indoors dying of cancer.
In the fields between here and there is the inner cordon of the Garda's special armed units, whose presence has been betrayed only by their brand new dark Land Rovers.
A short climb to a nearby hilltop brings a better view, and through a long camera lens the man can be seen walking up and down in front of the house, a rifle in his hands and binoculars around his neck. But he is watching too, and a short time later gardai are clearing the hilltop in response to his urgent demands.
He apparently believes any gathering of observers is a prelude to a storming of the building.
Supt RJ. Browne comes down the road every couple of hours to juggle variations on the words "optimistic" and "positive" into radio microphones, knowing Mr Gerrit Isenborger is listening on his radio in the house. "Confidence is building," he says, showing no sign of it on his face. "I am quite happy to deal with us and we're quite happy to deal with him. Rapport is building all the time."
Early in the morning, the man requested a newspaper, cigarettes and Coca Cola. He got Diet Coke, and sent it back, asking for regular Coke.
In the absence of hard information, speculation as to Mr Isenborger's talents spirals. He is an archer, a circus knife thrower, a crack shot who has written an SAS style survival handbook (which no one would publish). One or two locals who seemed to know little of him the day before now assert as fact his target shooting sessions in the fields around his home.
By the end of the day, with two rifles, a bayonet and baa ammunition handed over, Supt Browne finally has evidence for optimism.
Mr Isenborger appears always to have felt isolated, and when speaking with other Germans in the area his conversations centred only on his continuing legal wrangle with his employer and landlord, the Austrian businessman Mr Michael Hehle.
Mr Isenborger's closest friend appears to have been his mother, and if she has died, the gardai's efforts to end the siege without more violence appear to have become all the more difficult.