Kenny would have liked to mourn, but in truth he was too excited. His run-in with the tall man who’d called himself Detective Inspector Me and the teenage girl had convinced him that something bigger was going on. Suddenly this article on modern urban legends had started to spiral into territories he would never have anticipated. What did the tall man and the teenage girl have to do with Lynch’s murder? Had they killed him? His stomach churned with happy nerves. This was a story now. A proper story.

If his car hadn’t died on him, he would have tried to find Bernadette Maguire’s cottage and asked her what exactly Lynch had told her. There was the faint possibility that her life was in danger now that Lynch was dead, but he doubted it. Such things only happened in movies, unfortunately.

Which meant that Kenny now had only one lead left to him – and that was the tattooist he’d heard about.

It was a glorious Tuesday afternoon in Temple Bar. Kenny walked up cobbled streets until he found the brightly coloured building. Music played above. He climbed the wooden stairs, passing the photographs of tattoos and piercings and other works of body art. He had never been tempted to get a tattoo himself. It all seemed like a little too much pain.

There was a skinny man in a Thin Lizzy T-shirt, his arms inked, a ring in his lips and his head shaved. He turned down the music when he saw Kenny. Damien Dempsey was playing – ‘Negative Vibes’.

“Are you Finbar?” Kenny asked.

“I am indeed,” said the skinny man. “Are you looking for a tattoo?”

Kenny hesitated, then smiled. “Actually, no.”

“A piercing, then? No need to be embarrassed. Just tell me what you want pierced and we’ll pierce it. I’ll pierce anything, me.”

“Actually, I was hoping we could just talk.”

“Oh,” Finbar said. “Oh, right. Well, I’m flattered, I am, but before you go getting your hopes up, I have to tell you – I’m married.”

“Uh, that’s not what I meant.”

“My wife’s in the other room, if you want to meet her. I’d call her in, but she’s not really speaking to me right now. Don’t know why. She was in a cult, you see, and she had to shave all her hair off. She left eventually, like, and came back to me, and we’re a family again, but her head’s having a little bit of trouble re-growing all that hair. She says I’m unsympathetic. I say she looks like a tufty bowling ball. Maybe if you see her, you can decide who’s right.”

“I wouldn’t really be comfortable doing that.”

“Ah, fair enough, I suppose.”

“I heard you’re a psychic.”