AI “Stop right there. The blood’s too neat.”
Detective Harlow Quinn’s voice sliced through the stale air of the abandoned Tube platform. Boots planted on the mosaic tile, she surveyed the cordon where two constables bickered about paperwork, the body motionless at the far end, shoes poking over the yellow safety line. She moved, not rushed, each step measured , her shadow stretching along the slick wall. The police tape bowed where someone had clipped it to a cracked pillar. Wrong angle, wrong distance. As if whoever sealed off the scene had doubted the perimeter. Quinn noted it.
PC Linton raised one brow. “Uniforms pushed up from below. We’ve done three sweeps. Bloody rats everywhere. Found nothing else out of place.” His radio chirped . He ignored it.
Quinn ignored him right back, eyes locking on the corpse—male, late twenties, threadbare blazer over a misbuttoned shirt, tie torn halfway off and wound tight around his left fist. No blood on it, though. The pool around him, a round, dark lake, had no splatter, no drag marks. She knelt by the body, fingers brushing the sticky tile without touching the still hand.
“Have you ever seen a tube suicide without a scrape on the palms?” she asked.
Linton gave a leery grin, shook his head. “Guy jumped. Landed heavy enough. Head wound did for him. Rail shoes are slick. Not much else to say.”
Quinn turned the wrist, careful not to disturb the scene. Dark grain beneath the thumbnail—black, too shiny to be filth, too patterned to be accidental. She kept that to herself. Her gaze lifted. No sign of luggage, no wallet on display, no phone nestled under his jacket. Someone had worked fast or knew exactly what to take. Above, the frozen clocks on the platform had their faces slashed through with white paint: someone had tried to erase time itself.
“You check if this platform links to anything?” Quinn’s tone offered no room for comfort.
“Just storage rooms, locked. We called for the keys. Old office up near the stairs. Never used, except by station staff needing a nap. CCTV’s fried, by the way—flood took last month’s feed.”
The words came too quickly . She caught it, logged the slip. He believed it—wanted her to believe it. She rose.
“Linton. Why’d you set boundaries all the way to the service tunnel?”
The constable half-smiled, half-frowned. “We thought, with squatters—might be traffic through the old supply lines. Traces of food wrappers, some torn blankets down there.”
She rounded on him, eyes sharp. “You’re not in Evidence Recovery—don’t improvise at a scene. You find those traces before or after you saw him?”
“Before. Routine inspection. Saw the blankets, figured—well. Could be relevant, you know?”
Quinn moved past him, snapped blue gloves from her pocket, careful not to touch her watch . Her voice lowered.
“Your partner—Briggs—he keep to the same story?”
Linton bristled, chin jutting. “Ask him yourself. He’s back at the steps.”
She let him stew. She knelt again, this time inspecting the toe-caps of the dead man’s shoes. Dust clung to the edges, but something off lingered: a line around the sole, faint but visible, as if the shoe had pressed into powder.
She stood, scanning the wall behind the corpse. Hieroglyphs scratched light lines in the dust, shapes that triggered a deeper unease—unfamiliar, urgent, angular. The sigils echoed none of the crude graffiti elsewhere.
“Linton. Call down one of the Museum consultants. I want a check on these marks.”
He sucked his teeth. “A Museum girl? That’s a first.”
“First time for everything,” she snapped.
Someone shouted above. Briggs. His boots clattered down the steps, breathless, crouched at the edge of the cordon. He thrust a notebook out.
“Witness,” he panted. “Old vendor, off the main drag. Heard voices half six—arguing, a woman with him. Saw a green scarf, that’s all he could say.”
Quinn took the notebook, flicked through jagged notes. A woman. Irritated, she turned, peering into the gloom behind the platform. A low arch yawned, trailing darkness.
She motioned to the body. “Search his pockets for scarf fibres. Use a fresh envelope.”
Briggs went pale. “Shouldn’t we, er—wait for forensics?”
“You want to go home tonight or not?” She didn’t raise her voice .
She scanned the dark arch. Her eyes caught on a glimmer—metal by the tracks, half buried in bits of broken glass. She knelt, pried it loose between rubber-gloved fingers. Small, brass, patina-laced—a compass, but not for directions. Symbols—sigils—gouged the face. The needle quivered , wobbled, then pointed not towards north, but toward the sealed concrete wall at the end of the platform . Too forceful to be random. She tucked it into an evidence bag.
“Look at this, Linton. Ever seen a railway nav use a trinket like this?”
He shuffled, defensive. “Could be theatre. These lot get theatrical after dark.”
Quinn watched him, reading the muscles in his jaw, the half-coiled tension in his neck. He wanted to leave. Too much noise for comfort. She pocketed the compass, bag crackling.
White noise filled the space—station ventilation, far-off drip of water, but underneath, a soughing motif, as if something hummed behind the wall. Her eyes narrowed .
“You checked that room, you said?”
“Locked,” he insisted. “We radioed for keys. Two minutes, tops.”
Quinn didn’t like his eyes. She squared her shoulders and motioned him aside. “I want to see it now. Briggs, with me.”
The brittle bulb in the archway flickered as Quinn led them down the tunnel, boots echoing . The heavy steel door loomed , streaked with coal dust, handle smeared. One gloved thumbprint blotched the metal. Fresh.
She leaned close. “Linton. You open this door before or after you made your sweep?”
He faltered. “Didn’t touch it. Gloves, see?”
Quinn pressed her own gloved thumb over the print. Match. Not Linton’s size.
She drew herself up. “Call Control. Tell them I want the full team. Now.”
A heavy cough from the other side rang out, deep and deliberate, like someone clearing their throat in another language.
Linton stared at the door, mouth slack. “Briggs, we—”
Briggs had already stepped back, hand drifting towards his baton.
Quinn put her mouth near the door, voice low. “Metropolitan Police. Identify yourself.”
Silence, then, from the other side—a scrape, deliberate. The rattle of a chain. Pipes rang beyond the threshold, as if someone dragged metal across stone. Quinn signalled for the others to hold back. Her own heart pounded, a fast, clipped rhythm. She turned to Linton.
“You said this was clean. You lied.”
His mouth worked. “We—I—protocol said clear the arch before forensics arrive—no one’s inside—”
A thin shaft of light split the gap beneath the door. Someone whispered, words too muffled to decipher. Quinn edged closer, straining. Her hand hovered over her torch. Her shadow slid up the wall, swallowed by the growing glow from beneath the door.
Suddenly, the chain pulled taut. Something heavy banged against the metal with a bone-rattle, three times—rhythmic , like a signal, like the railway’s dead knocking back in reply.
“Briggs, get backup,” she commanded.
The last knock reverberated . The door creaked on its hinges, the chain whining. The smell of burning—oil, maybe hair—seeped through, thick enough for everyone to catch it. Linton’s badge glinted, beads of sweat gathering. Briggs was already on the steps, feet scrambling for the signal.
Harlow Quinn stepped into the light, boots braced, every muscle wound tight as the chain quivered . The door bulged, fingers curling through the crack, nails streaked with old blood.
“On three,” Quinn ordered, fingers on the holster, eyes on the trembling edge.
The door groaned. The air behind her thickened.
Then the chain gave way. The door jerked open, hinges howling like an air raid siren.
A woman stumbled through, scarf swinging wild, blood spattered up her sleeve, eyes wide, teeth bared—and something shadow-black threaded through her fingers, smoke or fog or—
Briggs screamed, “There’s another one—” before the lights snapped out, the world plunging into black, the rattle of metal echoing off every tile.