Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXR2XBWY7NGAP0AWHFGG1

The abandoned Tube station smelled like rust and something else—something Detective Harlow Quinn couldn't quite place. Copper, maybe. Or old magic. Three years on cases that didn't make the files had taught her to trust her nose as much as her eyes. She descended the final stretch of platform stairs, her footsteps echoing through the tunnel. The station had been sealed for decades, according to the locals. According to the brass. But Quinn had learned that what people officially knew rarely matched what was actually true. A uniformed officer stood at the bottom, young enough to still have creases in his vest. He nodded at her arrival. "Detective Quinn. The body's through there." Quinn didn't respond, just moved past him with the same deliberate stride she brought to every scene. Her watch—the worn leather band her father had worn through two wars—caught the fluorescent glow of their torches. 4:37 AM. Dawn was still an hour away, and the darkness down here felt aggressive, layered, like something actively pressing against the torchlight rather than merely the absence of illumination. The crime scene was in what had been the station's eastern platform. A man lay in the center, positioned with an almost ceremonial precision. Mid-fifties, Quinn estimated. Expensive suit—Savile Row, probably—soaked through with blood that had dried to a rust-brown patina. His left arm was extended outward, the hand curled like he'd been reaching for something. "Single stab wound," Constable Miller was saying, and Quinn realized she'd been followed into the platform. Good. She'd need his notes regardless. "Upper left abdomen, angled upward. Medical examiner says it would've hit the heart, or close enough. Death would've been fast. Minutes, not hours." Quinn circled the body, not looking at the constable yet. This was how she worked—the full observation first, the conversation second. The body told its own story if you let it speak without interruption. The wound was clean. Professional. The kind of cut that suggested knowledge of anatomy, or at least access to someone with that knowledge. But the positioning bothered her. The arm extending outward. The slight angle of his torso. Most murders were messy in their execution—killers panicked, postured, tried to flee. This felt staged. She was kneeling beside the body, examining the man's right hand, when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Different cadence than Miller's. Heavier, but faster. Before Quinn could stand, a familiar voice carried down from the platform's upper level. "Don't touch anything else." Detective Inspector Morrison. Quinn's jaw tightened, but she stood smoothly, turning to face her senior with the blank expression she'd perfected over eighteen years of decorated service. Morrison disliked her. Had disliked her ever since she'd filed the report about DS Morris three years ago—the report that suggested something more than criminal negligence, something that didn't fit into his neat, rational categories. "The scene's cold," Quinn said. "No contamination risk." Morrison descended the stairs with the careful precision of a man who didn't trust his aging knees. He was fifty-eight, maybe fifty-nine, with the particular thickness that came from a desk job and expensive lunches. He didn't come down to actual crime scenes anymore. The fact that he was here suggested political pressure. "Victim's name is Thomas Ashford," Morrison said, consulting a notebook that looked pristine, unused. "Property developer. Cleaned up at the Deptford projects. Had connections to half the council and a quarter of Parliament." "What was he doing down here?" Quinn asked. "That's what we're going to find out." Morrison was studying the body now, his expression one of professional satisfaction. "Looks like a mugging gone wrong. He came down here—God knows why—and encountered someone. Things escalated." Quinn turned back to the body, her attention sharpening on the extended arm. A mugging. No. Every instinct she'd honed screamed against it. "Robbery victim," she said quietly. "Usually we find signs of struggle on the hands. Defense wounds, torn fingernails, bruising. This man's hands are pristine." "So he didn't fight back." "Or he knew his attacker." Quinn moved to the man's face, tilting it slightly to examine the area beneath the jaw. There was a mark there—faint bruising, barely visible against the pallor of death. "Someone held him still. Professional grip. Martial training, I'd say." Morrison was quiet for a moment. Then: "The wound suggests revenge, not profit. The angle's personal." "The wound suggests anatomy knowledge," Quinn said. She stood, taking a step back to view the entire scene once more. That was when she noticed it—the slight depression in the old tile floor, perhaps three meters from the body. Barely perceptible. She walked to it, knelt down. "Detective?" Morrison was watching her with the kind of patience that suggested he'd already decided what the truth was and was simply waiting for her to come around. "There's a mark here," Quinn said. "Recent. Something was positioned here, then moved." She pulled a small evidence bag from her coat and examined the depression without touching it. Dust patterns suggested a small, circular object. Heavy enough to leave an impression despite its size. "What did the victim have on him?" "Wallet, phone, watch. Nothing was taken." No robbery. No crime of passion, despite Morrison's suggestion. Quinn closed her eyes, letting the scene arrange itself in her mind like a photograph developing in solution. The body positioned with deliberate care. The extended arm. The mark on the floor where something had stood. A marker. A placement point. It wasn't a crime scene. It was a location. "He was moved here," Quinn said, opening her eyes. "After death, or just before. This is where he was supposed to be found." "By whom?" "Someone who wanted him found by us. Someone who wanted the police to come to this specific location." Quinn's mind was already running through the possibilities, each one more troubling than the last. "The Veil Market." She'd only said it aloud once before—three years ago, in the report about Morris. Morrison had carefully filed that report away and asked her to see the department's psychiatric advisor. Morrison's face tightened. "Detective Quinn—" "Camden Tube Station is on the Veil Market's rotation," Quinn continued, her voice low and steady. "Or it was, three years ago. You said it yourself—why would a property developer come down to an abandoned station? There's only one reason, sir. To get to a place that isn't officially here." "You're theorizing about fairy tales." "I'm observing the evidence." Quinn gestured to the body. "A man is killed with surgical precision. Positioned in a sealed, abandoned station. Placed exactly where he'll be found by police. And there's a specific mark on the ground where something stood before it was removed." She met Morrison's eyes. "That's not a mugging. That's a message." The silence that followed was thick and absolute, broken only by the distant drip of water from somewhere in the tunnel network. Morrison's jaw worked silently for several seconds. "I'll put in a call to the medical examiner," he finally said. "We'll need full toxicology. And I want this station swept for additional evidence." Quinn nodded, but her attention was already drifting to what lay beyond the torchlight. In the darkness of the tunnel, beyond the sealed station, something moved. She couldn't see it directly, but she felt it the way an animal feels a storm approaching. Someone had brought Thomas Ashford here specifically for the police to find him. Someone who knew about places that shouldn't exist. Quinn's hand drifted unconsciously to her watch. Her fingers found the worn leather strap and held it, grounding herself. Morrison was already ascending the stairs, his phone pressed to his ear. Quinn remained in the platform, studying the body one final time. "What did you find out?" she whispered to the dead man. "What were you looking for in the Veil Market?" The corpse didn't answer, but Quinn knew someone would. They always did.