The entrance still had a line of police tape across it when they pulled up, but there was no one guarding the front door. Porter guessed that now Will Leonard had filed a completed report, it would be deemed that any and all relevant evidence had been gathered, leaving the rest of the interior and its contents as not relevant to the investigation.

Styles was closer to the entrance when they parked up, and stooped under the tape, lifting it with his index finger as he did. It looked almost comical to Porter. Styles, with his height, would have been just as comfortable stepping over it like a slow-motion hurdler, but he followed him in without comment or wisecrack.

It was as if Porter was seeing the inside of the building for the first time. He closed his eyes and tried to picture it from his previous visit.

Simmons, mask covering her face, a blur on a stretcher. Gibson, facing away, stretched out like a toppled mannequin.

He silently cursed his own inattention to detail. Sure, he’d seen the crime scene photographs, but they were taken after the story had unfolded. He operated best on the sensory overload that came with a fresh scene. It worked with the adrenaline as a catalyst, fuelled him, made him sharp. He’d been distracted this time, looked at it all through the subjective lens forced upon him when greeted with a colleague fighting for her life on a stretcher. Distracted when he could least afford to be; he felt like he was letting her down, letting them both down.

He turned in a slow three-sixty circle, taking it all in. The report had found no evidence of any recent activity on the ground floor prior to Tuesday’s events, so he headed upstairs, Styles following close behind. The stillness of their surroundings served to amplify the chorus of creaks and groans as they made their way up the old staircase. The first floor and the doorway into the room beyond looked strangely bare without the body in situ and those in attendance documenting what they saw. The dark tattoo of blood on the floorboards was the only indication that anything bad had ever happened.