Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0EFXWJJSTDYBQHFGAFYKP

Detective Harlow Quinn ducked beneath the rusted chain blocking the entrance to Camden's abandoned Northern Line extension. Her torch beam cut through the darkness, revealing crumbling tiles and decades of accumulated grime. The smell hit her first—not the expected mustiness of a forgotten tunnel, but something sharper. Metallic. "Body's further down, ma'am." PC Thompson's voice echoed off the curved walls. The young constable stood twenty feet ahead, his own torch creating a second pool of light in the gloom. "Found by some urban explorers around midnight." Quinn's boots crunched on broken glass as she approached. The tunnel opened into what had once been a platform, its edges disappearing into shadow. But instead of the usual detritus of abandoned stations—graffiti, empty bottles, makeshift camps—the space looked swept clean. Too clean. "Where exactly?" She swept her torch across the platform. Thompson pointed to a recessed doorway marked 'Staff Only' in faded paint. "Through there. Used to be a control room, according to the old maps." Quinn noted the lack of dust on the door handle. Someone had been using this entrance regularly. She pushed through, and the metallic smell intensified. The control room stretched maybe fifteen feet square. Ancient electrical panels lined one wall, their gauges dark and broken. In the centre of the concrete floor lay a man in his thirties, arms splayed, wearing what looked like an expensive suit. No visible wounds. No blood. "Christopher Aldrich." Thompson consulted his notebook. "Investment banker. Wallet still on him, full of cash and cards. Watch too—Rolex, genuine by the looks of it." Quinn crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the scene. Aldrich's eyes stared at the ceiling, pupils dilated. His mouth hung slightly open, and she caught a whiff of something floral beneath the metallic tang. She checked her worn leather watch—3:47 AM. The body showed early signs of rigor mortis. "Drugs?" Thompson suggested. "Rich banker, secret location. Maybe a deal gone wrong?" Quinn pulled on latex gloves and gently turned Aldrich's head. No injection marks on the neck. She checked his arms through the suit jacket—nothing there either. But something else caught her attention. A faint residue on his collar, iridescent in the torchlight. "Has forensics been down yet?" "On their way. Traffic's murder at this hour." She stood, scanning the room more carefully. The dust patterns were wrong. While the floor around the body showed recent disturbance, the corners remained pristine—except for one spot near the electrical panels where the dust had been deliberately swept in a rough circle about three feet in diameter. "Thompson, what do you make of this?" She directed her beam at the circle. The constable squinted. "Looks like someone cleaned up. Maybe trying to remove evidence?" "Or preparing the space for something." Quinn moved closer to the panels. Scratch marks scored the concrete within the circle, forming a pattern she couldn't quite make out in the harsh torch light. She'd need proper lighting to see it clearly. Her phone buzzed. A text from DI Morrison at the station: 'Aldrich's office called it in. Said he missed a critical meeting yesterday. No one's seen him since Tuesday night.' That was two days ago. But the rigor mortis suggested death within the last twelve hours. Quinn frowned at the discrepancy. "Ma'am?" Thompson had wandered to the far corner. "There's something here." She joined him. Tucked behind a fallen panel lay a brass compass, its face etched with symbols she didn't recognise. The needle spun lazily, never settling on magnetic north. "Evidence bag," she ordered. Thompson produced one, but as Quinn reached for the compass, footsteps echoed from the platform. She tensed, hand moving instinctively to her radio. "Detective Quinn?" A woman's voice called out. "I'm Dr Sarah Chen from the Coroner's office. PC at the entrance said you were down here." A short woman in her fifties appeared in the doorway, medical bag in hand. She took in the scene with practiced efficiency before kneeling beside Aldrich. "Initial observations?" Quinn asked. "No obvious trauma." Dr Chen gently manipulated the body's limbs. "Rigor's inconsistent though. See here?" She lifted Aldrich's left arm, which moved with surprising ease. "But the right side's completely stiff. That's unusual." "Time of death?" "Based on this? Anywhere from six to thirty-six hours. I'll know more after the post-mortem." Chen opened Aldrich's shirt collar. "Hello, what's this?" Quinn leaned in. A faint mark on the deceased's chest, just visible above the shirt line. It looked like a burn, but the edges were too precise, forming a symbol that matched one of the etchings on the compass. "Thompson, I want this whole room photographed. Every angle, every corner." Quinn straightened. "And get uniform to expand the cordon. I want the entire platform sealed off." "You think there's more to find?" Quinn gestured at the swept circle, the marked body, the hidden compass. "Someone went to a lot of trouble to stage this. The question is why." Dr Chen looked up from her examination. "Staged? You don't think this is where he died?" "Look at the dust patterns. This body was moved here, positioned deliberately." Quinn walked the perimeter of the room again. "No sign of struggle. No defensive wounds. A wealthy banker doesn't just wander into an abandoned tube station to die peacefully." "Unless he was meeting someone," Thompson offered. "In which case, where's the other party?" Quinn's torch beam caught something else—scratches on the doorframe, fresh ones. "And why clean only certain areas while leaving others untouched?" She photographed the scratches with her phone. They formed a repetitive pattern, almost like writing but in no alphabet she recognised. "There's something else," Dr Chen said quietly. She'd pulled back Aldrich's eyelids with gloved fingers. "The pupils are blown, but look at the irises. See that discolouration?" Quinn looked closer. What she'd taken for brown eyes showed flecks of silver, creating an almost metallic sheen. "Drug reaction?" "I've never seen anything like it." Chen made notes on her tablet. "I'll run a full toxicology panel, but this isn't consistent with any recreational drug I know." The compass in the evidence bag continued its lazy spin. Quinn watched it, unease building in her chest. Eighteen years on the force had taught her to trust her instincts, and right now they screamed that she was missing something fundamental about this scene. "Ma'am, you should see this." Thompson stood by the electrical panels, shining his torch on the wall above them. "These cables have been cut. Recently, by the look of it." Quinn examined the severed wires. Clean cuts, not frayed by age. Someone had deliberately disabled whatever systems these panels once controlled. "But here's the thing," Thompson continued. "According to the station blueprints, this room never had external power. These panels were decorative, part of a planned extension that was never completed." "So why cut cables that were never connected to anything?" The pieces of the puzzle refused to fit. A body with impossible rigor mortis. A room cleaned in specific patterns. Decorative panels someone had bothered to disable. And a compass that defied magnetic north. Quinn's phone rang. Morrison again. "We've got another problem," his voice crackled through the poor reception. "Aldrich's wife just called. Says she spoke to her husband an hour ago."