Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT016Z7YQHABB3Q5HZ158K0

The air in the abandoned Tube station tasted of rust, damp earth, and something else, something metallic and coppery that Harlow Quinn recognized instantly. Blood. Her worn leather shoes crunched on grimy tiles as she descended the final set of stairs, the beam of her torch cutting a solitary path through the oppressive gloom. The platform should have been silent, a dead space in the city’s subterranean skeleton, but a low murmur of voices echoed from ahead, punctuated by the occasional flash of a police camera. She found the scene cordoned off near what was once the eastbound platform. Two uniformed officers stood watch, their faces pale under the harsh work lights they’d set up. In the center of the light pool, a figure knelt beside a dark, shapeless heap. “Quinn.” The kneeling figure stood, brushing dust from his trousers. Sergeant Liam Carter, young, earnest, and still too clean for this job. “Messy one.” Harlow stopped at the edge of the tape, her eyes scanning, cataloging. The body was a man, late fifties, dressed in expensive but now ruined tailoring. He lay sprawled on his back, a dark blossom of blood soaking his waistcoat. A silver-tipped cane lay a few feet away, as if tossed aside. “Who found him?” Her voice was flat, devoid of the early morning hour’s weariness. “Security sweep. The contractors are due to start asbestos removal next week. Lucky they did a walk-through.” “Lucky,” Harlow repeated, her gaze drifting past Carter. The station was a known haunt for The Veil Market, a fact the Metropolitan Police officially ignored. Unofficially, it was her obsession. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, the snap loud in the cavernous space. “Cause of death?” “Looks straightforward.” Carter gestured with his chin towards the body. “Single stab wound, lower abdomen. Probably a robbery gone wrong. Wallet’s missing, watch is gone. We found this near the stairs.” He held up an evidence bag containing a slender, bone-white token, intricately carved. A bone token. Entry to the Market. Her pulse gave a dull thud. “He have a name?” “Alistair Finch. Antiquities dealer. Has a shop in Mayfair. Clean record.” Carter lowered his voice. “The token… you know what that is. Maybe he was down here for a deal, it went south.” Harlow ducked under the tape. She moved with a military precision that made the younger officers straighten their backs. She didn’t look at the token; she looked at the scene. The blood spray was wrong. Too contained. A single, violent stab like that, there should be arterial spray, a pattern on the wall, the ceiling. This was a pool, thick and stagnant, soaking into the man’s clothes and the grimy floor. She crouched, her knees popping. “The weapon?” “Not found. Probably a switchblade. Thief panicked, took it with him.” “A panicked thief who remembers to take the murder weapon but is careless enough to drop his entry token?” She didn’t look at Carter, her focus on the ground. The tile around the body was relatively clean, but a few feet away, a fine layer of dust lay undisturbed. No scuff marks, no signs of a struggle. “Where’s the point of entry? The attack?” Carter pointed to a spot nearer the stairs. “We think he was jumped over there, stumbled back, collapsed here.” Harlow stood and walked to the indicated area. The dust was pristine. “No blood trail, Liam. He didn’t stumble. He was placed here.” “Placed? Why would a mugger move the body?” “They wouldn’t.” Her eyes continued their methodical sweep, moving up the curved tiled wall, over the old, peeling advertisements for cocoa and cigarettes. Her beam halted on a poster for a long-defunct ballet. A faint, almost imperceptible smudge marred the edge of the paper, about five feet off the ground. It wasn’t dirt. It was a residue, a greasy, dark smear. She took a step closer. “Quinn, it’s a simple mugging. A bad one, but simple. The Market attracts all sorts. Finch bit off more than he could chew.” She ignored him, pulling a small evidence swab from her kit. She dabbed at the smear. It came away black, shimmering with a faint, oily rainbow sheen under the light. It smelled of ozone and cold stone. Alchemical residue. Banned substances dealt in the darkest corners of the Market. “This wasn’t a mugging,” she said, her voice low. “This was an execution. Staged to look like one.” “Based on a dirty wall?” Carter’s patience was wearing thin. He’d learned his policing in a clean, modern world of CCTV and phone records. This subterranean world of tokens and smears was alien to him. Harlow turned back to the body. She focused on the wound, ignoring the gore to study the fabric of the waistcoat. The cut was clean, precise. Too precise for a frantic stabbing. And around the edges of the blood-soaked slit, the wool was singed. Not burned by flame, but cauterized, as if by immense, instantaneous heat. Her mind flashed back three years. DS Morris, bleeding out in a warehouse, a wound that defied explanation. The official report called it an industrial accident. She knew it was a lie. She’d seen the same strange, precise, cauterized wound before she’d been ordered from the scene. Her watch felt heavy on her wrist. She looked from the body to the smudged wall, then back to the token in Carter’s evidence bag. A wealthy antiquarian, a banned alchemical substance, a professional killing masked as a clumsy crime. This wasn't random. This was a message. Someone was cleaning house. “Run the token for prints,” she instructed, her tone leaving no room for argument. “And get a full toxicology screen. I want to know what Alistair Finch was really dealing in.” “Quinn, the budget…” “Do it, Sergeant.” Her brown eyes locked with his, and the years of experience in her gaze silenced his protest. “The evidence doesn’t add up because we’re not reading it right. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make this look simple. That means it’s anything but.” She peeled off her gloves, the snap echoing in the dead air. “This started in the shadows. That’s where we have to look.”