But unless Tania Willows's rapist/killer had a tattoo of his full name with middle initial, it probably wasn't going to be distinctive enough to help Glitsky identify him. But the woman, Christina, was going on.

'I don't know why I didn't think of it this morning, when we were talking.' She touched her head. 'It just wasn't here. There were a lot of other things going on. And then I was thinking about Tania, what had happened – waiting for the bus, and I saw this guy in an ad with a tattoo…'

'Okay.'

She paused a minute, swallowed. 'It was on his penis.'

Glitsky pulled himself back up to the desk, sat up straighten Okay, this might be something.

'On his penis?'

She nodded. 'He asked her if she wanted to see his tattoo, and she said sure, thinking it was… I mean, you know. Not there. She never thought that.'

Glitsky broke a rare smile. 'The old "come up and see my etchings" trick, updated for the romantic nineties. Did Tania happen to notice what it said?'

Christina shook her head no. 'I'm sure she didn't. She would have…' She trailed off, but the pretty head kept shaking, looking down – embarrassed, Glitsky surmised, by the topic. Her eyes came up to his, and he saw that in fact she was trying to control herself, her laughter.

He knew exactly what she was thinking.

'Not Wendy then?'

'It's not funny,' she said. 'I don't mean to laugh. No, it wasn't Wendy, I don't think.'

The Wendy joke: when the man got an erection, the tattoo read: Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day.

Suddenly, Glitsky, whose professional life was a litany of violent deaths, who hadn't slept more than four hours any night in the past month, who had little money, three young children, and whose thirty-nine-year-old wife was dying of cancer – suddenly something broke in him, as it had done in Christina that morning, and he couldn't stop himself from laughing. Out loud.