Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR2NR365V3AH1ZRRH27NSF

By the time Harlow Quinn reached the bottom of the stairs, her shirt was damp between the shoulder blades. The heat trapped in the abandoned station settled low and thick, like breath that couldn't quite escape. Her torch beam cut along glazed cream tiles, streaked brown with age. Original adverts peeled in long, curling strips from the curved walls—women in mid-century dresses selling cigarettes, a smiling couple promising holidays by rail. The past clung down here, sticky and stale. Yellow tape sagged between rusted railings, the words POLICE LINE in bold black half lost in shadow. Beyond it, the old Camden Deep platform sprawled out, a long concrete tongue edged with the black gulf of the tracks. Portable work lights flooded the scene with flat, forensic white. “Forensics are already on,” DS Rob Patel called, lifting the tape for her. “You’re late.” “I was at Lambeth,” Harlow said, ducking under. “Traffic.” He snorted softly. “On a disused line at one in the morning. Sure.” She straightened, ignoring him, and let her gaze sweep the station. It had that peculiar underground silence, the sort that wasn't silence at all but a low, continuous hum. The living city pressed down from above—distant tyres, sirens, a tremor in the bone that might have been trains on other lines or might have been her own pulse. A pair of SOCOs in white paper suits worked near the far end of the platform, bent over something on the concrete. Shadows jumped large on the grubby tiles behind them. The faint chemical tang of fingerprint powder and luminol cut through the musty damp. “What’ve we got?” she asked. Patel flicked through his notebook with a gloved thumb, his own latex snapping quietly. “Security contractor for the redevelopment lot. He does a walk-round twice a night. At midnight he comes by, everything’s locked, motion sensors clear. One-thirty, sensor in here trips. He checks the camera on the access corridor—door still chained from the outside. He thinks fault in the system, calls it in rather than come down alone. Patrol shows, sees nothing on the corridor camera except the contractor waiting. So they break the chain and find this.” He jerked his head toward the SOCOs. Harlow checked her watch—a worn leather thing with a cracked face, its strap darkened by years of sweat and rain. 01:46. “Any other access?” “According to the station plans, no.” Patel’s mouth pulled sideways. “Proper locked-room job, if you like that sort of thing. Me, I prefer witnesses and a clear CCTV trail.” “Don’t we all,” Harlow said. She walked, boots crunching on scattered grit and fallen plaster. Her footsteps echoed back too loud. Close up, the tiles showed faint patterns beneath the grime, looping art deco flourishes half erased by time. There were other marks, too—thin white lines along the base of the wall, curved and broken, as if someone had chalked an incomplete circle then smudged it with a heel. Not graffiti. Not quite. Her jaw clenched. Another basement, another empty place that felt thick with things unseen. Morris had died in a basement. Different building, different case, same sour taste at the back of her throat. “Victim?” she asked without looking at Patel. “Male, mid-twenties, no ID on him. Eastern European from the look of him. Jeans, hoodie, leather jacket. Couple of tattoos. Wallet’s gone, phone’s gone. I’m saying robbery gone wrong, or a deal turned over. He meets someone down here to buy or sell, it goes sideways, they stick him and leg it before the guard comes back.” “Through a locked door that never opens on camera,” Harlow said. “Interesting trick.” Patel shrugged. “Camera could be on the blink. We only have the contractor’s word it was rolling the whole time. Maybe he’s involved, holds the door, looks the other way. Maybe he’s nervous he’s going to lose his job over a trespass and spins us a tale. I’m saying there’s a sensible explanation.” “You always do,” she murmured. He watched her move toward the body. “What are you saying?” “Too early to say anything. That’s why we look before we decide.” She crouched beside the corpse. The air down here held the metallic sweetness of blood, not fresh now but still strong. One of the SOCOs, a woman with her mask pulled low enough for fogged goggles, glanced up. “Ma’am. We’ve done initial photos. You can get close.” “Lorna, isn’t it?” Harlow said. Eighteen years on the job left faces imprinted like ghost images. Names came with a beat’s delay. “Yes, ma’am.” “Talk me through what you see.” “Single stab wound,” Lorna said, gesturing with her pen but careful not to let it cross the body’s outline. “Left side, just under the ribcage. There’s some defensive wounding on the hands, knuckles grazed. Blood pool where he lies is consistent with him going down where he was hit. No drag marks I can see. No obvious head trauma. Trainers still on, laces knotted—doesn’t look like a fall onto the tracks. He’s a good metre from the edge.” The victim lay half on his side, one arm flung forward as if he’d been reaching out. Dark hair clung in wet strands to his forehead. His eyes stared past Harlow, pupils filmed, mouth slightly open in the slack surprise of the newly dead. His hoodie had ridden up where he fell; the skin of his lower back was pale and smooth, save for a thin black tattoo of something angular and looping. Old, not prison ink—too crisp. Harlow’s gaze traced the way his body lay in relation to the space. The angle of the arm. The direction the blood had sprayed, fine droplets speckling the tiles behind and to his right. He’d been standing facing the tracks, she decided, when something or someone behind him drove the blade up under his ribs. He’d pitched forward and twisted as he went down, hand reaching for— She followed the line of that hand and saw the object near his curled fingers. Small, round, brass. For a heartbeat she thought it was a pocket watch like her own, then she saw the tiny hinged lid and the green of verdigris eating the metal. She leaned in. “What’s that?” “Compass, ma’am,” Lorna said. “We haven’t touched it yet. Looked odd, so I left it as found.” The casing was the size of a two-pound coin, dull under the lights. Tiny sigils chased one another around the edge—shapes that weren’t letters, not in any language Harlow knew, but had the sinuous suggestion of writing trying to become form. Protective sigils, Eva would say. Wards. Harlow snapped the thought away before it could fully form. She’d spent too many evenings over whisky listening to Eva Kowalski talk about older languages than Latin, about glyphs and grimoires. That was off-duty, unofficial. It didn’t belong down here with the SOCOs and the official log sheets. Still, her skin prickled. “Any prints on it?” she asked. “Too early to say. We’ll bag it.” Lorna tilted her head. “There’s something else, ma’am.” Harlow shifted to see where she pointed. A few inches from the victim’s other hand lay a small, smooth object about the size of a gaming die. Off-white, faintly yellowed. Carved. Harlow squinted. “Bone?” “Looks like,” Lorna said. “Some kind of token. See the markings?” Tiny lines etched each face in what might have been a pattern or might just have been scratches. Harlow didn’t recognise them either. They were not the jagged scrawls of gang symbols. They curved, looped back, completed themselves. “We’ll want close-ups of that before collection,” Harlow said. “And soil samples from around it. Could have been dropped.” Patel hovered a few paces back, hands on hips, expression tight with impatience. “Trinkets,” he said. “Junk. Kids break into ghost stations all the time, leave their urban explorer nonsense. I’ve seen worse down by Shadwell—candles, salt circles, all that faux-Satan crap. Doesn’t mean anything.” Lorna’s eyes slid to Harlow, then away. Years on the job taught you where not to step between ranks. “Maybe,” Harlow said. “Maybe not.” She let her gaze move outwards. The chalk at the base of the wall extended in faint arcs, too regular to be random scuffs. Part of a circle, centred roughly where the victim lay. But someone had smeared it, kicking through it, dragging something heavy over. The pattern broke beneath the sprawled body. Harlow rocked back on her heels, letting the space settle in her mind. The platform, the end wall, the dark mouth of the tunnel yawning beyond. The arcs of old enamelled signs. The direction of the blood. Something about the tunnel tugged at her attention. The steel rails ran straight into blackness, but the grime on the concrete between them was different about ten metres in. Lighter? No. Disturbed. As if feet had passed that way, over and over, using a path that shouldn’t exist. “Rob,” she said, still watching the dark. “You said the plans showed no other exits.” “Right.” “Did you compare them to the original station blueprints? Before they bricked things up?” He hesitated. “No. You think there’s an old staff tunnel or something?” “I think I don’t like coincidences,” she said. “We have a dead man in a sealed space. We have marks on the floor that aren’t random. We have items on and around the body that don’t fit a quick mugging. And…” She flicked a hand at the far wall, where a faint, almost perfect semicircle of cleaner tile cut across the filth about chest height. “We have places that look like they’ve been touched more recently than everything else.” Patel followed her gaze. “Could be where the contractor leant to puke after he saw the body.” “He never came off the corridor, if his story’s true.” “‘If his story’s true’ being the operative bit.” Patel scrubbed a hand over his cropped hair. “Look, Harlow, I know you like your puzzles. But the sensible read is some lads with bolt cutters get in earlier with our man. They do whatever shady business they’re doing, stab him, leave him where he falls, nip out with their new toys, then the security muppet finally notices his sensor. People can get in and out of places we don’t expect if they’re determined enough.” Her jaw tightened. “And the camera?” “Could be looped. Could be offline. Could be the guard’s mate. Could be half a dozen things that don’t involve… whatever you’re thinking.” He didn’t say “weirdness.” He didn’t have to. It hung between them anyway. She bristled, then forced herself to smooth it away. Patel hadn’t been there three years ago, in that soaked basement off Seven Sisters, when Morris had vanished between one step and the next in a shaft of shadow that shouldn’t have been deep enough to hide a cat, let alone a man. He hadn’t filed witness statements he knew would make him sound mad, only to see them quietly buried in Internal’s inbox. Harlow pushed to her feet, knees popping. “Have we got an ME ETA?” “On his way. Twenty minutes, give or take.” “Good.” She looked over at the access corridor. Someone had propped the heavy steel door open; beyond it, the newer concrete stairwell sloped up, strip-lit and sterile. A uniform PC stood there, guarding the entry. Another set of footsteps sounded on the stairs, lighter, hesitant. The PC shifted to block the way, then stood aside after a brief murmur of words. Eva Kowalski stepped out onto the platform, clutching a worn leather satchel to her side like a shield. Her curly red hair was yanked back in a frizzy bun; a few bright strands had escaped to curl against her freckled temples. Round glasses slid down her nose as she took in the view, eyes widening behind the lenses. She did not belong here, Harlow thought, in her battered boots and oversized cardigan thrown over a dress that still carried the faint dust of old books. And yet. “Consultant?” Patel’s voice carried more scepticism than question. “Since when do we bring the British Museum to a knifing?” “Since I called her,” Harlow said. “That token by his hand looks old. If it’s an antiquity, I don’t want to be the one responsible for chucking it in a property bag and losing half the detail. Eva’s cleared at Level Two. She can look, not touch. She’ll sign the same confidentiality as anyone else.” Patel muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like, “Bloody hell,” but he didn’t argue further. The chain of favours that had got Eva that clearance three months ago was long and embarrassing; Harlow had no desire to recount it. Eva approached slowly, eyes on the body, her usual nervous habit—tucking hair behind her left ear—made difficult by the confines of her bun. Her pale throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I… didn’t realise you meant an actual crime scene,” she murmured when she reached Harlow’s side. “You were a bit vague in the text, Quinn.” “I find that helps,” Harlow said. “See that?” She nodded at the bone token. “Thought it might be up your alley.” Eva exhaled, a slow, centring breath. When she spoke again, her voice took on a professorial steadiness. “May I…?” “You can look,” Harlow said. “No touching, no stepping inside the markers. Lorna, this is Dr Eva Kowalski from the Museum. She’s here as a consultant on the artefact only.” Lorna nodded, shifting aside. Eva crouched, knees cracking. She peered at the token, then at the compass, then at the faint chalk lines along the wall. Her fingers twitched in the air, wanting to reach, disciplined not to. “That’s not random,” she said quietly. “The carvings. They’re… approximate, but someone’s copying older forms. Northern European, but not runes as such. Something pre- or para-Christian. Protective, mostly. Passage, doors.” She glanced up at Harlow, green eyes bright behind the glass. “Thresholds.” Harlow felt the tiny hairs on her forearms stir. “And the chalk?” “Same. You can see where the circle would close, if it weren’t… interrupted.” Eva’s gaze moved to the blank tiles of the end wall, then to the dark tunnel mouth. Her lips pressed together, the colour briefly draining from them. “You shouldn’t have that,” she nodded at the compass, “and this”—she indicated the token—“and those marks in the same place at the same time, Quinn. That’s… deliberate. Not kids playing at witchcraft.” Patel made a derisive noise. “Oh, come on. Thresholds? Doors? It’s a knife wound, not a haunted house.” Eva’s shoulders stiffened. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I’m not saying anything about ghosts, Sergeant. I’m telling you the symbols were put here by someone who knew what they were doing. It’s not scribble. It’s a system. You ignore systems at your peril.” Harlow almost smiled. That was the Eva she knew from their student days—small, stubborn, bristling at dismissal. Her gaze dropped again to the compass. On impulse, she nodded at Lorna. “Time the photos?” “We’re done with that angle,” Lorna said. “Bag the token. I want it labelled carefully, separate lane,” Harlow said. Then, more quietly, “I’m going to have a closer look at the compass before it goes.” Patel sighed. “Harlow—” “It’ll go in evidence,” she said. “But if it tells us where he came from, I’d rather know now than in three weeks.” She slipped a new pair of gloves from the box on the SOCO’s trolley, snapped them on, then reached delicately for the brass disc. It was colder than the air warranted, the chill seeping through latex to the pads of her fingers. The metal’s patina was thick enough to roughen its surface like the texture of an old coin. She flipped the lid with her thumb. Inside, a needle swung lazily over a face etched with the same curling sigils, no cardinal letters, no numbers. Just lines, curves, arcs. The needle didn’t point toward the stairwell where the corridor lay; it didn’t settle toward any sensible north. Instead, once the initial wobble died, it angled decisively toward the blank expanse of tiled wall where the chalk circle had been half-drawn. Harlow held her breath. She turned her wrist slowly, angling the compass left and right. The needle jerked, corrected, stubbornly found the wall again, quivering as if eager. “Maybe it’s just stuck,” Patel said, leaning over her shoulder. “Or broken.” She pivoted completely, backing toward the tunnel. The needle swung, quested, and then, as her body blocked the direct line to the wall, snapped toward the tunnel mouth instead, settling with the same insistent little tremor. Lorna let out a low whistle. “That’s… that’s not right.” Eva watched with parted lips, her freckled knuckles white on the strap of her satchel. “It’s attuned,” she whispered. “To something here. A… a focus. A crack. You know how a magnet finds north because the Earth pulls it? This is being pulled by—” “Stop,” Harlow said sharply, more to herself than to them. Her mouth was dry. The hum in her bones was louder now, a pressure behind her ears. Morris, turning on a stair, one hand still reaching back to her, and then nothing but a shadow that felt too cold. She snapped the compass shut. “Whatever it is,” she said, forcing her voice to steadiness, “it matters. This isn’t a simple robbery. Our victim carried something specialised, stood in the centre of someone’s circle, and died in a place that’s supposed to be impossible to reach without us knowing. The evidence we have doesn’t add up to Patel’s bolt-cutter teenagers. It adds up to planning.” Patel opened his mouth, then closed it again as his eyes tracked from the chalk, to the token now nested in an evidence bag, to the compass in Harlow’s gloved hand. “Planning for what?” he said at last. Harlow looked at the wall, at the faint, wiped arc of clean tile exactly where the compass had pointed. At the smudged line on the floor where too many footsteps had passed and somehow left no clear prints. Through careful observation and deduction, it was starting to look less like a room with no way in or out, and more like a room with a door she simply couldn’t see. “We’ll find out,” she said. Her fingers tightened around the compass, feeling its small, insistent weight. “But I’ll tell you this much: somebody opened something they shouldn’t have. And whatever came through…” She glanced at the dead man on the concrete, at the way his hand still reached for the vanished exit. “It’s not done with us yet.”