Run: 2026-02-19-01KHSWEX6FSBY1MJAR1RJX7DTE

The abandoned Tube station smelt of wet concrete and something else—something copper-sweet that Harlow Quinn had learned to associate with bad nights. She stepped over the yellow crime scene tape, her worn leather watch catching the torchlight as she checked the time. Three forty-seven in the morning. The hour when London showed its true face. "Down here, Detective." DC Sanjeev Rao's voice echoed from the platform below. He was young, eager, and had the kind of optimism that made Quinn's teeth ache. She descended the stairs with military precision, each footfall deliberate on the cracked tiles. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness beyond the police cordon, a steady rhythm that would drive a person mad if they listened long enough. The platform stretched before her, graffiti-tagged and litter-strewn. Ancient advertisements peeled from the walls—Britannia Airways, a production of Cats, something about a phone service that no longer existed. But the body lay centre stage, arranged with a care that made Quinn's stomach tighten. "Male, mid-thirties. No ID on him." Rao gestured toward the corpse with his torch. "CSIs have been through. Photographs are done. We can move him whenever you're ready." Quinn crouched beside the body. The man wore a tailored suit, the kind that cost more than her monthly salary. His shoes were Italian leather, barely scuffed. No signs of struggle on his clothes, no tears or grass stains. Yet here he lay in an abandoned station that had been sealed since 1992. "What's wrong with this picture?" Rao shifted his weight. "The location's unusual, but junkies and dealers use these old stations all the time. Could be a drug deal gone wrong." "Look at his hands." Rao aimed his beam downward. The victim's fingernails were clean. Manicured, even. The skin around his cuticles showed no sign of needle marks. "Could be a user who kept himself presentable. High-functioning addict." "Look at his shoes again." The torchlight swept back. Quinn waited. "They're... clean?" "Dry." Quinn stood, her sharp jaw tight. "The tunnel floor is wet. There's standing water two metres from where he's lying. To get here from the street entrance, you'd have to walk through at least three flooded sections. I know—I just did it." Rao's brow furrowed. "So someone carried him?" "Through a flooded tunnel? In a suit that expensive? Without getting water on the shoes or the trouser cuffs?" Quinn circled the body slowly. "Look at the shoulders, the underarms. No damp patches. No water stains on the fabric at all." "Then how did he—" "That's the question, isn't it?" Quinn knelt again, this time examining the area around the body. The concrete platform was dusty, scattered with old newspapers and crisp packets. She could see her own footprints in the grime, Rao's, the CSIs'. But nothing leading to the victim. It was as if he'd materialised right where he lay. "Maybe he came from the other direction. The tunnel on the north side." "That tunnel collapsed in 2008. There's no other way in." Rao scratched his neck. "With respect, ma'am, there has to be. Someone killed him somewhere else and dumped him here. They probably knew another route. Homeless people, urban explorers—they find ways into these places all the time." Quinn didn't argue. She'd seen enough of London's hidden arteries to know he wasn't entirely wrong. But something about the scene nagged at her, a splinter in her mind that she couldn't dislodge. She studied the victim's face. Pale, unsurprisingly. Eyes closed, almost peaceful. But there was something about his expression—a lingering surprise, as if death had arrived without warning. No fear, no pain. Just surprise. "What do the CSIs say about cause of death?" "Nothing obvious. No wounds, no ligature marks. They're thinking poison or natural causes, pending the post-mortem." "Natural causes." Quinn let out a breath through her nose. "In an abandoned Tube station at three in the morning." "People die in strange places all the time." She couldn't argue with that either. But her instinct—honed over eighteen years on the force, sharpened further by the case that had taken DS Morris from her three years ago—told her this was different. This was wrong in ways that went beyond the unusual location. She walked the perimeter of the crime scene, forcing herself to look at everything. The graffiti on the walls. The rusted track bed. The old signal box, its door hanging crooked on one hinge. A rat scurried into the darkness, and Rao flinched. "Jumpy?" "Rats and I have an understanding. They stay away from me, I don't scream like a child." Despite herself, Quinn's mouth twitched. "What's in the signal box?" "Nothing. CSIs checked. Just old equipment, some rubbish." She approached it anyway. The door groaned when she pushed it open, revealing a cramped space filled with decommissioned levers and switches. Rao was right—nothing here but rust and rodent droppings. But as she turned to leave, something caught her eye. A marking on the wall. Small, almost invisible in the shadows near the floor. She crouched, angling her torch. "Rao. Come here." He joined her, squeezing into the cramped space. "What am I looking at?" "That." She pointed. Etched into the concrete was a symbol. A circle with lines radiating outward, intersected by what looked like angular script. It reminded her of something, though she couldn't place what. "Some kind of graffiti?" "Maybe." But Quinn doubted it. The symbol was too precise, too deliberate. And beneath it, barely visible, were other marks. Scratches in the concrete that formed a pattern—not random, but purposeful. Like a formula, or a map. She photographed it with her phone, then backed out of the signal box. Her mind was racing now, making connections she couldn't quite articulate. "The victim's pockets. What was in them?" Rao consulted his notebook. "Wallet—no cash, no cards. A key. That's it." "A key to what?" "Unknown. Standard Yale lock. CSIs bagged it." "And no phone?" "No phone." Quinn returned to the body, studying it from a new angle. The victim's right hand was curled slightly, as if he'd been holding something when he died. Something small enough to fit in a palm. Something that was no longer there. "Who found him?" "Transit police. They were doing a sweep of the tunnels, checking for trespassers. Found him around two a.m." "Who called it in?" "Control. Standard procedure." Quinn turned to face the tunnel entrance, the way they'd come. The darkness beyond the police lights seemed to press against them, hungry and patient. "Show me exactly where the transit officers entered." Rao led her back up the platform, past the crime scene, toward the tunnel mouth. "They came through there. The entrance on Kentish Town Road." "And they didn't see anyone? Hear anything?" "According to their statements, the station was empty except for the body. No sign of forced entry, no sign of anyone else having been here." Quinn stood at the tunnel's edge, peering into the blackness. Her torch beam caught the gleam of standing water, the curve of the tunnel wall. Nothing unusual. Nothing that would explain how a well-dressed man had died in the middle of an abandoned station without getting his shoes wet. Then she saw it. A faint discolouration on the tunnel wall. Circular, about the size of a dinner plate. She stepped closer, water seeping into her shoes, and raised her torch. The concrete there was different. Not damaged, not decayed. Changed. As if the wall itself had been altered at a fundamental level, the molecules rearranged into something that shimmered almost imperceptibly in the artificial light. "Rao." He sloshed through the water to join her. "What is it?" "Do you see that? On the wall?" He squinted. "See what?" Quinn pressed her palm flat against the spot. The concrete was cold, solid. But beneath her fingers, she felt a faint vibration. Not mechanical. Not electrical. Something else entirely. "Ma'am? You're starting to worry me." She pulled her hand back. The discolouration remained, but the sensation had faded. "Get forensics back here. I want this section of the wall analysed." "For a water stain?" "It's not a water stain." Quinn turned to face him. "And I don't think our victim walked in here through the front door. I think he came through something else entirely." Rao's expression was sceptical, but he'd worked with her long enough to know better than to argue. "I'll call it in." Quinn stood alone in the tunnel, water soaking through her shoes, staring at the spot on the wall. She didn't have answers yet. But she had questions now—better questions, the kind that could crack open a case if she followed them far enough. And somewhere in the back of her mind, three years old and still bleeding, Morris's voice whispered that she was getting close to something she wasn't ready to face.