“When’s the last time you saw him?”

Terry had to think hard. “I don’t know. A while now. Two or three years? I only come when I’m called. He never calls.”

“I understand you do have a key to Mr. Franks’s flat?” said Atkinson. “But you haven’t been inside to check on him since the leak?”

Terry looked pointedly down at the bucket that stood between them on the concrete floor. “I didn’t know what I might find. I’m not good with stuff like that. Sight of blood. You’d need another ambulance—for me when I hit the floor.”

After they’d climbed the stairs to the seventh floor and Jo tried it in the lock, the key didn’t work. Franks must have had it changed. Joanna knocked, then knocked again, and shouted for Gregor to open up, but even as she did so, Atkinson dumped the heavy hold-all he carried on to the floor and unzipped it, readying the Enforcer to break it down.

Inside the flat, Joanna led the way. With only the leak to go on, and the occupant not known to police, they were keeping an open mind. With that amount of blood, there could have been anything happening in the apartment: multiple casualties, dangerous suspects still on scene, a terrible accident. Equally, they might find nothing at all. When Jo was sent to the job, the duty Sergeant could only speculate. “Might not even be blood, could be wood stain or paint, or rust. And if it’s blood, could be a domestic accident, where the person has taken themselves off to hospital but left the tap on by mistake.”

“Or it could be a ritual sacrifice, and the blood belongs to a sheep or something?”

Murray’s voice on the radio was without mirth. “Jo, all we have is a bucket of what is apparently bloody water. No other reports of anything unusual, no body, no one reported at risk or missing or injured. Just go with Steve and check it out for me. If you find anything, I’ll divert resources immediately.”

“I’m assuming you’re asking me because you don’t have anyone else?”

“You’d be right to assume that. I’ve got so many immediate response jobs on, they’re stacking up as we speak. Firearms are at a stabbing in the city center, and all of my other units are out with higher priority stuff. Ambulance will attend, but they’ve stated that the police need to clear the scene before they go in.”

“Understood.”

This close to Christmas, the service always got overloaded. Every year it got worse. A lot of staff took holiday, so that often all they had on duty were a skeleton selection of response officers, half the Control team and a few sergeants, like Murray and Joanna.

“Oh, and Jo? Take a stab vest.”