Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0PFX1V567FKAH7CRPN2X5

Detective Harlow Quinn kept her bootfalls controlled, echoing sharp and measured along the chipped linoleum. Pipework ribbed the ceiling overhead, half-choked with web, leaking occasional sullen drips onto the concrete. The surviving bulbs cast jaundiced light, flickering as her silhouette slid across the corridor. They’d told her the scene was odd. She found that word lacked edge; odd had dimensions, textures, shades, and this place, the abandoned Tube station beneath Camden, had turned up at the deeper end of that scale. Uniformed officers clustered by the stairwell, radios squawking intermittently, bored and wary in equal measure. Beyond them, white-suited SOCOs moved with solemn hands, chalking placements and photographing glints among the grime. Quinn brushed past and snapped on gloves, nose wrinkling at the cocktail of mildew, old smoke, and something faintly chemical. She nodded at the constable guarding the cordon, whose face held the stiff, braced look she’d seen before—someone unready for what the world sometimes offered up. “Heads up, boss.” DI Gosse leaned against a rusted turnstile, his breath visible in the chill. He’d grown a new beard since she last saw him, greying, untended. He gestured through the barrier, chin dipping toward the central platform. “Bit different from morning runners and pickpockets, eh?” Quinn spared him a glance, kept moving. Near the tracks sprawled a nest of tarpaulin, cardboard, and what passed for a blanket. Amid the nest—a mess of evidence markers—lay a body, limbs splayed at sharp angles. The left shoe sat two feet from its owner, laces still knotted. Eyes stared up, blood pooled beneath the ear in a grim halo. She crouched over the body. Male, maybe early forties, but city living and rough sleeping made age a debate. His coat was frayed at the seams, but stitched with new patches, some with sigil-like embroidery she marked for later. Around the body converged odd debris: a fat candle stub, melted smooth and midnight blue, a sheaf of dried herbs scattered from a torn net bag, and a metal object the size of a biscuit tin. Quinn reached for the object, brushed the surface: cold brass nibbled her skin, and runic motifs danced under the grime. Gosse loped up, cleared his throat quick. “Looks like an accidental—overdose most likely. See that?” He pointed at a yellowed strip of plastic tubing, a syringe in a sandwich bag dropped beside the nest. “You know how the regulars in these tunnels get.” She shook her head. “Disagree. No needle mark on his arms, and there’s no powder residue. Look—his hands are clean, but under his nails—” She tilted the left hand toward Gosse, showed the crescent grime. “Fresh dirt. He was digging. Not for drugs.” Gosse snorted. “Could be off his food, or he scrounged somewhere. Don’t overcomplicate.” Quinn snorted softly, gaze narrowing. “What’s that on his wrist?” She nodded to the chain just visible under the sleeve—a charm bracelet, of all things. It caught the artificial light, five linked tokens clinking. Every one carved bone, etched with grinning animal faces—a fox, a wolf, a crow, a snake, and one she couldn’t place. She turned his palm. On his thumb, a burned sigil, half-obliterated, centered on a fresh blister. “Tampered.” She straightened, ignored Gosse’s sigh. “No ID?” “No papers on him. Just junk. Maybe worth calling social services, not CID.” She fingered her own leather watch strap, then searched the tarpaulin more thoroughly. Under the blanket, she found another bag. Not heroin packets this time—just loose, dried petals, and a battered notebook stinking of tallow and earth. She leafed through, squinting. Pages brimmed with cramped script. Too dense for a diary, too repetitive for a ledger. Names, perhaps—no, these were itemised, annotated: ‘Candle—blue, Market; Compass, persistent pull—north-west entry, hidden shelf; Token exchange, Veil, two moon cycles.’ The writing clawed at her memory. She recalled the Sergeant mentioning a whisper of a market—a fairy tale told by runaways and street sellers, tucked beneath the city’s crust where Tube tunnels wandered near-forgotten. “Market?” she muttered. Gosse cocked a brow, looked over her shoulder. “Right. Maybe our guy fancied himself a wizard.” He snorted again, more irritation than amusement. Quinn turned the compass in her palm, weighty and old. The casing had a green-blue patina where fingers had rubbed. She noticed the sigils covering its face, not for ornament but warning—a layered protection, none repeated by accident. “Ever seen a shadow compass before?” Quinn’s words cut flat, watching Gosse’s reaction. He gave her a blank frown. “It’s old junk. Pawnshop could tell you that.” She grunted, but pinched the compass stem, aware of a strange heft. The needle twitched erratic, refusing to settle north or south. Instead, it trembled near the western edge, stubborn as a hung jury. “Bag this. Careful with the evidence,” Quinn snapped to the SOCO nearest, a tall woman whose eyes shifted between the body and Quinn’s gloves. “Everything goes. Even the candle.” She stepped back, crossed her arms, took a slow scan of her surroundings. No sign of a struggle: no defensive wounds, and the area around the body lacked disturbance—blankets only crumpled by sleep, or its counterfeit. Yet that sigil burned onto the thumb, that was pain, deliberate. Ritual? Gosse tapped his radio, voice cracking through static. “We’ll wrap up. Washed-out squatter, case closed by morning.” “Not yet.” He rolled his eyes, muttered something about paperwork. Quinn ignored him. Instead, she surveyed the corners of the platform. Shadows slithered where the light faded out. She followed the outline of an old service door beside a faded ‘Way Out’ sign—the hinges had new scratches, the bottom scuffed by hurried boots. She glanced at the ceiling: thin wafts of incense smoke still clung near the conduit vents. “They burned something. Something strong. What’s that pattern in the soot?” She pointed, raising her eyebrows at SOCO. The SOCO came in close, camera flashing blue in the dim murk. “Could be a sigil or a partial glyph. Not local graffiti.” Gosse snorted but said nothing. His confidence thinned. Quinn knelt by the bags and herbs again. The petals weren’t opium poppy, but something else—angelica and rowan. Both pulls from old lore: protection, guidance, hidden travel. She noticed traces of bone dust mixed in with the leaves. Not street stuff. Her phone buzzed. She let it ring out, thoughts ticking. She thumbed through the battered notebook, noting more spectral sketches: hidden doors, market emblems, rough Tube maps—all converging here, on this station. He’d marked the next full moon—tonight. She pieced the clues: The charms and burned sigil, the candle, the compass, herbs and bone dust, the marks on the door, old market stories. Ritual, perhaps botched; certainly not an overdose. Someone went to a lot of trouble to mark this spot. Her jaw snapped tight. She looked up at Gosse, voice low. “He didn’t overdose. This is arranged. A ritual, a passage attempt—gone wrong, perhaps. Someone knew.” “Got spirits on your tail now?” Gosse’s attempted quip fell flat, mouth twisting. She snapped her gloves off, eyes locking on the door scuff. “No ghosts. Just someone clever, and dangerous, walking these tunnels while everyone else looks the other way.” Her gaze flicked to the compass again—needle still twitching west. “And I bet this isn’t the last body we’ll find.”