‘Oh, yeah, dude’d have to be a pro. Like I told him.’ A nod at Sellitto. ‘Or was at some point. That level of skill? He could open his own shop in a blind second. And probably he’s a real artist too – I mean like with paint and pen and ink and everything. And I don’t think he’s from here. For one thing, I probably would’ve heard. Not from the tristate area, either. Doing this in fifteen minutes? Man, that’s lightning. His name’d get around. Then, look at the typeface.’

Rhyme’s, and everyone else’s, eyes slipped to the screen.

‘It’s Old English, or some Gothic variation. You don’t see that much now around here. I’d guess he’s got rural roots: redneck, shit kicker, biker, meth cooker. On the other hand, maybe born-again, righteous, upstanding. But definitely a country boy.’

‘The typeface tells you that?’ Sachs asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Here, if somebody wants words, they’ll go for some kind of flowery script or thick sans serif. At least that’s current now. Man, for a few years everybody wanted this Elvish crap.’

‘Elvis Presley?’ Sellitto asked.

‘No, Elvish. Lord of the Rings.’

‘So country,’ Rhyme said. ‘Any particular region?’

‘Not really. There’s city inking and country inking. All I can say is this smells like country. Now, look at the border. The scallops. The technique is scarification. Or cicatrization is the official name for it. That’s important.’

He looked up and tapped the scallops surrounding the words ‘the second’.

‘What’s significant is that usually people scar to draw attention to an image. It’s important for this dude to make that design more prominent. It would’ve been easier just to ink a border. But, no, he wanted cicatrization. There’s a reason for it, I’m guessing. No clue what. But there it is.

‘Now, there’s one other thing. I was thinking about it. I brought show-and-tell.’ Gordon reached into his canvas shoulder bag and lifted out a plastic sack containing a number of metal parts. Rhyme recognized the transparent container as the sort in which surgical and forensic instruments are sterilized in an autoclave. ‘These are part of a tattoo machine – you don’t call them guns, by the way.’ Gordon smiled. ‘Whatever you hear on TV.’

He took a small Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut open the bag. In a moment he’d assembled a tattoo gun – well, machine. ‘Here’s what it looks like put together and ready to ink.’ The tattoo artist walked closer to the others. ‘These’re the coils that move the needle up and down. This’s the tube for the ink and here’s the needle itself, coming out the end.’

Rhyme could see it, very small.

‘Needles have to go into the dermis – the layer of skin just below the outermost layer.’

‘Which is the epidermis,’ Rhyme said.