AI The bone token felt cold against Harlow Quinn’s palm, a sliver of polished ivory that hummed with a frequency only her teeth seemed to notice. She dropped it into the rusted ticket slot of the disused service door. With a groan of protesting metal, it swung inward, revealing a descending staircase swallowed by gloom and the distinct, cold scent of buried earth.
“Quinn. Took your time.”
The voice echoed up from the darkness. DS Miller stood under a flickering emergency light at the base of the stairs, his silhouette blocking most of the view. His posture was rigid, a textbook picture of scene containment, but the slight tap of his foot against the grimy tile gave him away. Impatience. Or unease.
“Traffic’s a nightmare, even for the dead,” Harlow said, her boots finding the steps with military precision. The stale air thickened as she descended, carrying traces of ozone, old incense, and something coppery. “What’ve we got?”
“Burglary gone wrong, looks like.” Miller stepped aside, sweeping an arm towards the platform. “Victim’s a stallholder. Marcus Fleck. Dealer in… unusual antiquities.”
The abandoned Camden Town tube station had been repurposed . Where commuters once waited, makeshift stalls constructed from old crates and moth-eaten velvet drapes now lined the curved walls. The place was a tomb of shadows, lit by flickering LED camping lamps and the odd guttering candle. The Veil Market, according to the whispers in certain restricted files. A place that technically didn’t exist, moving with the lunar cycle. Tonight, it was a crime scene.
Marcus Fleck lay sprawled behind a collapsed trestle table, a pool of dark liquid haloing his head. His stall was a catastrophe of spilled curios: shattered clay tablets, scattered coins that glinted dully, feathers from unidentifiable birds. A glass case lay in shards, its velvet lining empty.
Harlow crouched, her sharp jaw tightening. She didn’t touch, just looked. The wound was a single, precise strike to the temple. The weapon, likely the heavy brass candlestick lying a few feet away, was clean. Too clean. No blood spray on its intricate patterning.
“Who found him?”
“His neighbour.” Miller pointed to a hunched figure wrapped in a shawl two stalls down, being comforted by a uniformed officer. “Said she heard a crash, came to check, saw him down and called it in. No sign of the perp. Classic grab-and-dash.”
“Classic,” Harlow repeated, her tone flat . Her eyes were already moving past the body, cataloguing. The spilled items fanned out from the table as if swept aside by a frantic search. But the pattern was wrong. It was too uniform, like a staged dispersal. Her gaze caught on a single item that had rolled under the stall’s draped cloth: a small brass compass, its casing patinated with verdigris. It lay perfectly upright, as if placed, not dropped.
“What was he known for, this Fleck?”
“Information broker, mostly. The physical stuff was a front. If you needed to find something… obscure, he was your man. For a price.”
Harlow straightened, her leather watch strap creaking. She walked a slow perimeter, her focus narrowing. The floor was dusty, a mosaic of footprints. But near the body, the dust was smeared in a broad, clean arc. As if something had been dragged. Not a body—Fleck hadn’t moved. Something else. She followed the arc’s invisible line with her eyes. It terminated at a heavy, iron-banded trunk shoved against the curved tunnel wall. The trunk’s padlock hung open, its hasp bent.
“For a grab-and-dash, they were surprisingly selective,” she said, more to herself than Miller. “Smashes a glass case, ignores the silver coins. Ransacks the table, leaves the jade figurine.” She nudged the figurine with the toe of her boot. It was valuable, obvious. “They were looking for something specific. And they knew where it was kept.”
“The trunk,” Miller said, following her logic.
“The trunk,” she agreed. She approached it. The interior was lined with faded purple silk , empty save for a lingering scent of sandalwood and static. The dimensions were odd; shallower than it should be. She ran her fingers along the inside, pressing at the joints. Nothing. But the dragging mark…
She looked back at the compass. Then at the empty trunk. Then at the candlestick, devoid of prints or blood.
“Your assessment is off, Miller.”
“How do you figure?”
“This wasn’t a burglary.” She turned to face him, her bearing straight. “It was a retrieval. And it wasn’t a stranger.”
“The neighbour?”
“Maybe. Or a client Fleck double-crossed.” She pointed to the candlestick . “No struggle. One blow, from behind or the side. He knew his killer. Let them get close.” She gestured to the compass . “That rolled. But not from the table. The trajectory’s wrong. It came from the trunk’s direction. It was in there. They took everything else *but * left that. Why?”
Miller shrugged. “Missed it in the dark?”
“It’s brass. It would catch the light. And look at it.” Harlow didn’t move to pick it up. “Sitting pretty. Not a scratch. This was a message. Or a signature.”
A new voice cut through the damp air, softer, layered with academic curiosity. “Or a tracking device.”
Harlow turned. Eva Kowalski stood at the edge of the pool of light, her freckled face pale, her curly red hair a muted flame in the gloom . She clutched her worn leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Harlow’s eyes narrowed . The museum researcher wasn't on the call sheet.
“Miss Kowalski. This is a restricted scene.”
“I… I was asked to consult. On the artefacts.” Eva’s gaze darted from the body to the compass, her green eyes behind her round glasses wide. She tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear, a nervous, quick motion. “Detective Miller thought some context might be… useful.”
Harlow shot a look at Miller, who had the decency to appear sheepish. “The occult angle ,” he muttered. “Given the venue.”
“The *angle *,” Harlow said, her voice low, “is a man is dead. Context is how he lived and who wanted him to stop.” She focused back on Eva. “A tracking device?”
Eva approached cautiously , giving the body a wide berth. She stared at the compass, her head tilting. “It’s a Veil Compass. Shade-made. The sigils aren’t just for show. It doesn’t point north.” She swallowed. “It points to the nearest active rift. A tear in… well, in everything. People use them to navigate the deeper parts of the Market, or to find hidden doors that shouldn’t be there.”
Silence stretched, broken only by the distant drip of water. Miller shifted his weight . Harlow didn’t move.
“So why leave it?” Harlow asked, the question hanging in the cold air .
“Two reasons,” Eva said, her voice gaining a sliver of confidence . “One, it’s useless to anyone who doesn’t know how to read it. It’s not a map, it’s a needle. And without the correct… calibration, it just spins.” She took a half-step closer. “Or two, it’s been turned on. And it’s not pointing to a rift anymore. It’s pointing to something else. Something they wanted to tag.”
Harlow’s mind raced , connecting disparate points. The staged ransacking. The missing item from the trunk—likely the compass’s intended target. The single, clinical blow. The killer hadn’t just retrieved property. They had planted a beacon and covered their tracks with the crude theatre of a robbery.
“They took what they came for from the trunk,” Harlow stated, the deduction clicking into place . “Then they activated this and left it behind. Knowing someone like you,” she looked at Eva, “or a rival, would find it. It leads not to them, but to the thing they stole . A double-bluff. Or a trap.”
Eva’s nod was almost imperceptible.
Miller cleared his throat. “That’s a lot of maybes, Quinn. We’ve got a body, a weapon, and a witness who heard one crash. Occam’s razor.”
“Occam’s razor is for simple worlds,” Harlow said, her eyes fixed on the innocuous brass disc on the floor. Her mind flashed to another scene, three years old: her partner Morris, a confused expression, and evidence that made no sense until it was too late. A different kind of razor. She pushed the memory down. “This isn’t a simple world. Not down here.”
She finally moved, pulling a clean evidence bag from her coat. She didn’t reach for the compass directly. Instead, she used a pen to carefully slide it into the bag. The brass felt unnaturally cold through the plastic. The sigils seemed to shift under the LED light.
“The witness,” Harlow said, her voice all business again . “I want her statement again. Focus on the crash. Was it glass? Wood? Metal? One sound or two?” She looked at Miller. “And I want the market’s entry logs for the past month. Every bone token issued. Fleck’s client list, if you can find it.”
“You think the killer’s still on the list?” Miller asked.
“I think the killer walked in here with permission,” Harlow said, sealing the bag. The compass inside seemed to quiver, its needle twitching from its fixed position to settle, decisively, pointing directly at the tunnel arch that led into the deeper, unlit stretches of the abandoned station. “And I don’t think they care about being found. They just want to see who comes looking.”
She held up the bag, the verdigris-etched face glowing dully. The needle didn’t waver. It pointed past the crime scene tape, past the pooled blood, into the consuming blackness of the tunnel.
“So,” Harlow said, her own reflection grim in the brass . “Let’s see.”