AI Quinn shoved the last length of hanging cable aside and stepped over a puddle that stank of old piss and copper.
“Tell me that’s not blood.”
The uniformed constable in the tunnel flinched at her tone and gripped the tape like it could save him.
“It’s, er, it’s what it looks like, ma’am.”
Quinn ducked under the tape anyway. Her worn leather watch scraped the concrete as she steadied herself, and she felt the familiar pulse of anger in her wrist, the kind that arrived when a scene went wrong before she even laid eyes on it.
“Where’s the body?”
“In there.”
The tunnel widened into a disused platform, but it did not look disused. Lanterns hung from pipes. Crates formed neat aisles. A line of stalls sat where commuters should have stood, draped in velvet and oilcloth, their wares lit with a low, sickly gleam. The air carried hot metal, crushed herbs, and a sweet rot beneath it, like bruised fruit left too long.
A market had grown underground, and not one that had ever applied for a licence.
Quinn took three steps in and felt eyes on her, not just from people. The shadows near the ceiling held their own weight , as if they listened.
“Detective Inspector Quinn.”
A man stepped out from behind a stack of empty bottles. Crime Scene Unit jacket, mask pulled under his chin, hair net already damp with sweat.
“Davies,” Quinn said. “You look thrilled.”
“You brought the Met into a fairy tale,” Davies said. He nodded at the stalls. “Good luck with the paperwork.”
Quinn moved past him. Boots scuffed grit and something that glittered like ground glass. She kept her hands away from the walls. The concrete bore scratches that did not match any tool mark she knew. They curved in repeating arcs, too deliberate for vandalism.
A second voice cut in, dry and practical.
“Quinn. Over here.”
DS Reeve stood by a column, tall and broad, his tie loosened like he had already decided this place did not deserve respect. He held a notebook open, pen poised, and watched her with that look he saved for her worst instincts.
He jabbed his chin towards a stall with a collapsed awning. The canvas lay like a dead thing, torn into strips.
“You’ll want to see this before you start rewriting reality.”
Quinn approached, and the crowd, if it counted as a crowd, shifted back. Men and women in coats too heavy for a commute. A skinny boy with blackened fingertips and a crate of teeth. An older woman with a string of dried herbs that clicked like bones. They watched with the caution of people who did not trust police to understand what they saw.
Quinn stopped at the edge of the stall. The smell sharpened.
The body lay on its back, legs twisted under a broken table. Male, mid-thirties, dressed in a smart dark wool coat that had turned stiff at the seams. His hands looked wrong. Fingers splayed as if he had grabbed at something that refused to be held. His face held a frozen surprise, lips parted, eyes open and clouding.
No blood pooled under him.
Quinn crouched. Her sharp jaw tightened. She scanned the coat, the floor, the ripped canvas.
“Where’s the wound?”
Reeve pointed with the capped end of his pen.
“Throat. Clean slice. No weapon at scene. No blood because the trader bled out somewhere else, got dumped here.”
Davies snorted.
“Dumped through a crowd, over crates, past the tooth boy. Without anyone noticing.”
The tooth boy bared his gums in something that might have been a grin. Quinn ignored him.
She leaned closer to the neck. The cut ran from just below the left ear to the centre, precise, shallow at the end. It looked like an expert had measured the depth, chosen not to sever the spine, and still achieved death.
She lifted her gaze to the concrete beneath the head.
A faint circle marked the floor, drawn in ash or soot. Within it, thin lines formed symbols that made her eyes itch. They sat at exact intervals, each one angled towards the centre like teeth.
Quinn straightened.
“That isn’t blood spatter,” she said.
Reeve’s mouth twitched.
“It’s graffiti.”
“It’s a ring.”
Davies stepped closer, interest waking.
“Those lines aren’t random. They’re protective. Like warding marks.”
Reeve rolled his eyes.
“Here we go.”
Quinn did not answer. She looked for footprints.
The dust near the body held impressions, plenty of them, but they did not behave like prints should. Some showed tread, modern trainers, a heavy heel. Others looked like a smear that ended too clean , as if a foot lifted without shifting weight . One set ran through the ash ring, and the ash did not smudge.
Quinn held her breath for a moment and listened. The market made noise, muttered bargaining, clinking glass, a faint hum from lanterns, but beneath it she caught a soft, rhythmic tick, too slow for any clock.
Tick. Tock.
It came from under the broken table.
Quinn reached down and shifted a plank aside.
A small brass compass lay half-hidden in grit, its casing filmed with verdigris. Protective sigils were etched around the face, tiny and neat, the work of a careful hand. The needle did not point north. It swung in tight circles, then jerked and settled towards the far end of the platform, towards a service corridor blocked by a metal shutter.
Reeve watched her fingers hover above it.
“Don’t touch that.”
Quinn looked up.
“Why.”
Reeve nodded towards Davies.
“Because Davies already told me this place sells cursed rubbish. We’re not adding ‘possessed DI’ to the list.”
Davies raised both hands.
“I didn’t say cursed. I said enchanted. There’s a difference.”
Quinn picked up the compass anyway. The brass felt warmer than it should. The tick-tock sharpened, and she felt it in her teeth.
Reeve swore under his breath.
Quinn turned the compass in her palm. The sigils on the face mirrored, in miniature, the ash ring on the floor.
“Bag it,” Reeve said.
“It’s evidence,” Davies added, and for once he sounded almost pleased.
Quinn held it steady and watched the needle quiver, as if it strained to reach what it wanted. A magnet could pull a needle. So could an electric field. Neither could explain the way it tugged at her wrist, like a dog on a lead.
“What did the witnesses say?” Quinn asked.
Reeve flipped a page in his notebook.
“Depends who you believe. One says rival stall owners. Another says a buyer got angry. Another says the dead man sold fake goods and someone made a point.”
“Names.”
Reeve glanced towards a cluster of people hovering behind a stall hung with dark cloth.
“They don’t give names. They give titles. The Crow. The Ink Man. The Sister with No Mouth.”
Davies made a small choking sound, laughter caught in his throat.
Quinn’s gaze stayed on the ash ring.
“And you,” she said to Reeve . “What do you believe.”
Reeve’s shoulders rose and fell, impatient.
“I believe this is Camden. I believe criminals love costumes. I believe someone found a hidden place to deal and stabbed a man over money. That’s all.”
Quinn kept her voice flat.
“Then explain the blood.”
Reeve pointed at the cut again.
“Arterial spray went somewhere else. They cleaned him up. That coat could hide a lot.”
Quinn reached out, pinched a fold of the dead man’s coat between gloved fingers, and lifted it. The wool cracked slightly where it had stiffened. A darker patch spread across the inside lining, but it looked old, soaked and dried more than once.
“Not fresh,” Quinn said.
Reeve stared at it, then shifted his stance.
“Cleaning solution.”
Quinn lowered the coat and traced the edge of the ash ring with her eyes. The soot lay undisturbed except for those impossible prints that did not smear it. She looked beyond the circle. Beyond the stall, past the lanterns, the concrete bore a narrow groove, a thin track that ran towards the shuttered service corridor.
A drag mark.
But it did not wobble. It ran straight, like something heavy slid without snagging on grit or cracks.
Reeve followed her gaze.
“You think they dragged him.”
“No,” Quinn said. “I think something took him.”
Davies swallowed and checked his phone as if he hoped for signal.
“Quinn,” Reeve said, sharper now. “Listen to yourself.”
Quinn ignored him and crouched again. She examined the dead man’s hands, the nails, the skin. No dirt under the nails. No tearing. No defensive cuts.
She lifted one wrist and found a thin indentation around it, like a tight cord had bound him. It did not match handcuffs. It looked smoother, almost burned in.
Quinn’s thumb pressed lightly against the mark. The skin gave no tack, no damp. The body had dried too quickly .
“What’s the estimated time of death?” she asked.
Davies cleared his throat.
“Hard. Temperature down here stays steady. No insects. He’s… wrong. Skin’s too dry. Eyes clouded fast. I’d expect more pooling.”
Reeve seized on the one thing that sounded normal.
“Stable environment. That explains it.”
Quinn stood and looked back at the people watching her. She picked one at random, a woman with braided hair and a scarf pinned with tiny silver charms. Her pupils were too wide.
“You saw him die.”
The woman’s chin lifted.
“I saw him bargain. He offered a token he did not own.”
“What token.”
The woman’s eyes flicked to the compass in Quinn’s hand.
“That kind.”
Reeve stepped between them.
“That’s not a proper answer.”
Quinn moved around him, her gaze pinning the woman again.
“Who sold him the compass.”
The woman smiled without warmth .
“A Shade artisan. Crafted for finding doors.”
Reeve let out a humourless laugh.
“Doors. Brilliant. Any CCTV in Narnia while we’re at it?”
A low murmur rippled through the nearby stalls. Anger, amusement, something sharper.
Quinn did not flinch. She held up the compass so the woman could see it clearly.
“This points to doors,” Quinn said. “Where’s the nearest one.”
The woman’s smile widened.
“You already feel it.”
Quinn’s grip tightened. The compass needle jerked, hard, and pointed again towards the shuttered corridor.
Quinn walked in that direction. Reeve swore and followed, Davies trailing with his kit, mouth working as if he had forgotten how to breathe.
They passed stalls that smelled of ink and burnt sugar, shelves of stoppered bottles that made the air shimmer, a cage covered in cloth that rattled when Quinn stepped too close. Voices fell away as they moved. The market did not like attention near its edges.
The shutter ahead looked like standard service access, grey metal, industrial bolts. Someone had painted over it, but the paint had peeled in strips. Underneath, the same kind of symbols as the ash ring scratched into the metal, deep enough to catch a fingernail.
Quinn stopped a pace from it. The compass needle pressed towards the shutter like it wanted to pierce it.
Tick. Tock.
The sound came from the metal itself now.
Reeve pointed at the symbols.
“Graffiti again?”
Davies leaned in, then stopped short, skin blanching.
“Those aren’t for decoration. They lock something. They’re a seal.”
Reeve’s voice hardened.
“We’re not opening some idiot’s occult art project. We secure the scene. We bring in specialists. Real ones.”
Quinn looked at the bolts. Fresh scratches ringed them. Someone had worked at them with a tool, recent enough that the metal still shone.
“It’s already been opened,” Quinn said.
Reeve started to argue, then the shutter thudded once from the other side, a blunt удар that vibrated up the concrete. Lanterns swung. Somewhere behind them, glass chimed in a nervous cascade.
Davies stepped back, and his boot caught a bottle. It rolled, clinking, and stopped against the wall.
Quinn raised a hand, and Reeve fell silent despite himself.
The thud came again, closer, as if whatever sat behind the shutter tested the thickness of the world.
Quinn pressed her ear near the metal, careful not to touch the scratched symbols. The tick-tock faltered. A new sound slid in beneath it, wet and slow, like something breathing through a throat full of fluid.
Reeve’s voice dropped.
“Quinn. Move.”
Quinn pulled back.
The compass needle spun wild, then snapped to a fixed point dead centre on the shutter. The protective sigils on its face heated under her palm, a sting that travelled up her fingers.
Behind them, someone in the market screamed, and the lanterns all guttered at once, their light shrinking to pinpricks.
The shutter bolts began to turn, one by one, without any hand on them.