Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXRS6NPR0N5K3NZ5EGF2JJ

The air tasted of rust and river mould. Harlow Quinn paused at the bottom of the service stairs and let her eyes adjust. The abandoned platform stretched in both directions, a long concrete throat lined with boarded windows and dead light boxes. Old adverts peeled in ragged strips, colours leeched to a dull bruise. Blue-and-white tape fluttered between pillars, catching the weak glow from the portable work lamps the SOCO team had hauled down. Her watch ticked against her wrist, too loud in the hush between train rumbles from the live lines above. A uniformed constable lifted the tape for her. “Ma’am. DCI Quinn. Sarge said you were on your way.” She ducked under, boots scuffing grit. The air held that old-station chill, the kind that climbed inside clothing and stayed. Her breath misted faintly. “Where’s Lennox.” “Down by the body. Past the second support.” Harlow walked, listening. The scrape of SOCO boxes. The murmur of voices. The distant groan of ancient pipes. Underneath all of it, something else. An absence. Too much silence for a place under Camden on a Friday night. She stepped around a trestle table loaded with evidence bags. Brown paper, clear plastic, numbered tags. The organisation calmed her in a small, automatic way. Beyond the second support pillar she saw the knot of people: white suits, one hunched photographer, and Lennox in his rumpled suit with his tie knot halfway down his chest. He looked up as she approached. “Knew they’d drag you out for this one, guv. You love a bit of urban decay.” “Brief me.” He gestured with his chin toward the body. “Male, mid-twenties. Name on his Oyster: Thomas Baird. Urban explorer, if the kit’s any clue. Our caller found him like this about an hour ago. Paramedics declared. SOCO’ve had a first look. No obvious signs of assault. I’m thinking misadventure. Bad trip, fall, hit his head.” Harlow shifted her gaze past Lennox. The body lay a few feet from the platform edge, on his back, arms flung out. Head turned slightly left, eyes wide. Someone had placed a paper evidence tent by his right hand. Another by his boot. A third at his throat. The red of his hoodie jumped against the grey concrete. No blood soaked it. No crimson pool spread from under him. Just a faint smear on the floor near his ear, not enough for a nasty fall onto stone. She crouched, knees creaking. The smell of dust and metal thickened this close. “Misadventure in a sealed station.” Lennox rocked on his heels. “Kids get in all the time. Roof access, old service tunnels. Whole YouTube channels about it. They think they’re invincible until the floor gives way or they mix pills.” “Hmm.” She checked the soles of the dead man’s boots. New hiking boots, laces double-knotted. The treads held a thin skin of dust, not clotted grime. No water marks up the jeans. No snagged threads. She swept her gaze along the platform. No other footprints marred the dust layer except the cluster around the body: the crisp oval of paramedic shoes, the irregular SOCO patterns, Lennox’s longer stride. Before them, nothing. The dust closer to the tunnel darkened, thicker where pigeons had never reached. Harlow traced a line from the tunnel mouth to the body, back again. “He didn’t walk in from the track,” she murmured. Lennox scratched the back of his neck. “He could’ve come through that access door over there. Those boot prints are all scuffed now, mind; SOCO’s been trampling.” Harlow looked toward the iron door he meant, half rust and flaking paint. The floor by it held the fresh twist of boot marks and the round smears of equipment cases. Beyond that top layer, she saw faint older prints, softer shapes. Rat tracks in dust. Nothing that matched the hard edge pattern of Baird’s boots. She angled her head, studying the dead man’s face. No foam at the mouth. No bluish tinge around the lips, at least not yet, though the poor light stole some colour. Pupils fixed. Jaw slack. A tiny cut above the right eyebrow, not bleeding much. She nodded toward the third evidence tent by his throat. “Let me see that.” A SOCO in a hooded white suit stepped closer and peeled the tent away with gloved care. Underneath, nestled against the hollow of the dead man’s neck, lay a small brass object on a chain, half turned. Harlow leaned in. A compass. About the size of a fifty-pence piece. The casing wore a skin of green, years of verdigris in its seams and along the hinge. The glass face showed faint etched markings around the edge, too fine to read at this angle. The needle stood not on north but canted toward the tunnel. It quivered, almost in time with the distant thunder of trains above, then held steady. She recognised compasses. She had used them in training exercises. This one looked wrong. The symbols round the edge curled like someone’s idea of letters that had never met an alphabet. Lennox snorted. “Hippy jewellery. Everyone’s into vintage now. Could’ve bought that off a stall upstairs.” Harlow extended a hand. The SOCO shot her a look, then placed the compass in her palm after a beat. The metal felt warm against her skin. Not body-warm, as if it had lain against a throat, but as if it held a faint life of its own. “Gloves, ma’am.” She realised her mistake. The SOCO fumbled a pack towards her. Harlow snapped on latex, then took the compass again, this time through the thin film. The warmth dulled but didn’t vanish. She turned it under the work lamp. The sigils round the rim caught the light. Circles with slashes, nested triangles, lines that crossed and looped back into themselves. One particular curve hit some buried image in her head. A sketchbook on a pub table. DS Morris’s rough pen strokes, his eyes too bright after a twenty-hour shift. Found this on the wall. Looks like the one from the warehouse job. Don’t you see it, Harlow? Her stomach clenched. She breathed once, slow. Lennox watched her. “You all right, guv. It’s just a cheap trinket.” “Cheap trinkets don’t weigh like this.” She turned the compass over. The back bore a tiny stamp: a crescent made of overlapping shadows. No hallmark. No brand. “Get a close-up.” The photographer shuffled closer, lens clicking. Harlow held the compass high enough to line it with the tunnel mouth. The needle twitched, swung, then dragged itself back to the same fixed point in the dark. The air from the tunnel felt cooler. Deeper somehow. “You notice where this points.” Lennox huffed. “North, south, who cares. Kid comes down here off his face, wanders too close to the edge, head meets concrete. Tragic, but not weird.” She handed the compass back to SOCO. “Any sign of drugs on him.” “Couple of empty blister packs in his rucksack. Some herbal crap. One bottle of spirits. We’ll get tox.” “Empty syringe. Powder. Anything like that.” “Nothing obvious.” “So he brought no serious gear. Walked to a sealed station through god knew how much derelict infrastructure. Alone. In good boots. For a drink.” Lennox shrugged. “They do stranger.” “Usually they post it on social. We pulled his phone.” “On its way to techs. Uniforms couldn’t get into it.” Harlow looked around again, this time higher. The walls bore graffiti in overlapping waves, decades of names and tags. Under the thick layer, in patches where water had eaten through paint, she spotted older markings. Rings. Cross-hatched diamonds. A line of bone-white symbols close to the tunnel mouth, each about a hand’s breadth, sitting just above head height. At first glance they looked like chalk. Up close they gleamed faintly under the lamp, like old marrow. “Get me a closer light here.” A SOCO obliged, lifting a portable halogen and angling the beam. The symbols resolved into the same style as the etchings on the compass. Precise, careful, carved into the concrete rather than drawn. Someone had filled the grooves with something pale, then smoothed the surface. Lennox followed her gaze. “More art. Some people draw knobs, some draw runes. Either way, not crime of the century.” “These cuts are old.” “How can you tell.” “The water damage’s run over them. Whatever filled them hasn’t flaked. This wall’s taken decades of damp. Those lines still stand clean.” He grunted. “Architectural critique from DCI Quinn. Do I log this as your personal tour of heritage assets.” “Log it as something that doesn’t fit. You walk into a sealed site and see geometric carvings in the concrete, you ask why.” She traced an outline in the air, not touching the wall. The symbols formed a rough circle across the tunnel mouth, just far enough back that casual eyes missed them. A boundary. A frame. Inside that frame, the air looked… not darker. Thicker. As if dust hung in it in a subtle, fixed curtain. Her skin prickled along her neck. Her radio crackled at her hip. Static, then a brief burst of speech that died before she caught it. She tapped the set. “Control, repeat last.” Only the low hiss answered. Lennox smirked. “Signal down here’s pants. We’re under three layers of Victorian engineering.” She let the radio hang. “Who found him.” “Civilian. Eva Kowalski. Works up at the British Museum, of all places. Out of hours, down here with a torch and a guilty conscience. Claims she likes old train stations.” “And we believe her.” “We believe she’s shaken and not a killer. You can take it from there.” “Where is she.” “Benched over there, past the pillar. Uniform’s glued to her.” Harlow stood, knees complaining now. She brushed a smear of dust off her trousers and walked along the platform. The woman on the plastic chair hugged a leather satchel to her torso like a shield. Curly red hair had escaped its bun and frizzed around her face. Round glasses perched skewed on her nose. Freckles dotted any skin the neon jacket didn’t cover. She twisted a strand of hair behind her left ear. The move looked practised. Calming. The constable beside her straightened as Harlow approached. “Kowalski.” The woman blinked up. “Yes. I… I told the other detective everything already.” “Then tell me.” Eva licked dry lips. “I heard about this place from… from some friends. Urban explorers. They wouldn’t share the location, so I looked up old maps. The station closed in the sixties. I thought, if I could find an access, I could take some photographs. Industrial history. I like that stuff.” “On your own. After dark.” “I work late. This is when I had time.” Her grip tightened on the satchel strap. “I came in through a service door off the canal. Someone’d forced the padlock before. I followed the stairs down. I saw… that.” Her eyes flicked past Harlow toward the body. “Did you move anything.” “No. I wanted to check if he was breathing, but… I couldn’t step closer. It felt wrong. Like walking on a grave.” Lennox’s voice floated from behind Harlow. “There you go. Spooked herself. All shadows and ghost stories.” Eva’s head snapped up. “I know what I felt.” “What else did you notice.” Harlow’s tone sharpened. Eva hesitated, then dropped her gaze to her satchel. Her thumb swept a scuff on the leather. “There was a sound. When I stepped onto the platform. Like… like a sigh. From the tunnel. I thought it was the wind, but there was no draft. And the lights on my phone flickered. Battery went from sixty percent to ten in a minute. Then back up when I climbed the stairs again.” Harlow watched her face. No telltale twitch around the eyes. No shift to the left. Fear, yes. But clean. “Did you touch the compass.” “What compass.” “The one round his neck.” “I didn’t see a… oh. There was something under his hoodie. I noticed the chain, but I didn’t want to lift his clothes.” Lennox gave a short laugh. “You hear that, guv. Our museum girl hears a tunnel sigh, sees a corpse and a shiny trinket, and her first instinct is to leg it. Sensible, for once.” Harlow turned to him. “What’s your interpretation, then, besides misadventure and ghost stories.” “Kid meets some mates, necks a few pills, wants to show off his secret spot. They get down here, he does something stupid near the edge, cracks his skull. Mates panic, scarper. Civilian wanders in, gets freaked, calls us. Job done.” “Where are the mates.” “Legging it through half of north London. We’ll track them from CCTV near the surface, buses, shops. We always do.” “Camera coverage down here.” “Nothing live. The whole station’s off-grid. Closest feed’s at the Camden Road entrance, and those cameras already give our analysts headaches.” Harlow walked back toward the body, Lennox matching her pace. She stopped at the edge of the tape. “Look again. No scuff marks by the edge. No broken tiles. His head wound’s minor. Not consistent with a drop. There’s no blood spatter on the wall or floor. If he fell hard enough to die, we’d see it.” “Internal injury. Neck, spine. Happens.” “Then where’s the impact point. Where’s the transfer. The dust under his shoulders is barely disturbed. It looks like he lay down.” Lennox frowned. “People collapse.” “People thrown from a height don’t land as if they chose a spot.” She pointed to the hands, palms open toward the ceiling. “Relaxed. No defensive wounds. Nails clean. No fibre, no skin, no dirt. For someone who walked through derelict tunnels, he stayed spotless.” Lennox’s gaze drifted to the tunnel. “What if he didn’t walk.” “Transported.” “Carried. Dragged. Whatever.” Harlow shook her head. “No drag marks. No smear pattern from boots or clothes. The only traces are vertical footprints. Straight up to him, then away. All in first responders’ tread.” She drew a slow breath, nostrils flaring. The smell from the tunnel nudged at her again. Not just dust and old oil. Something else. Faint metallic tang. A sweetness under rot, like overripe fruit hidden in a larder. DS Morris’s last scene slid across her mind without invitation: an empty warehouse, floor blackened in a perfect circle, his body just outside it. The same lack of scatter. The same impossible cleanliness where chaos should have reigned. She focused on the present. On the circle of pale sigils around the tunnel mouth. “We’re missing the method. Nothing here supports a stumble and fall. And yet he is dead.” Lennox folded his arms. “What’s your theory, then.” Harlow studied the compass in the SOCO’s tray, the needle locked toward the tunnel. “He came to meet someone. Not mates. Someone who uses places like this and doesn’t want company. The carvings on the wall suggest planning. Ritual, if you believe in that rubbish. The compass matches the markings. That isn’t a random accessory.” Lennox’s mouth curled. “You think some cult dragged him down here and magicked him to death.” “I think whoever he met controlled the environment. Enough to move him without leaving obvious marks. Enough to step through all this dust without a trace, or leave before the dust settled.” “You’re reaching.” “I’m looking at what’s in front of me. You’re ignoring half the scene because it doesn’t fit an easy answer.” She stepped toward the tunnel until the tape brushed her chest. “Whoever did this uses this place. Those markings aren’t kids’ doodles. They’re functional. They frame the tunnel like a threshold. The compass points there, not north. Our victim owned it, or brought it. Either way, he’s connected to whoever made those symbols.” Lennox stared into the dark, jaw working. “So what, we chase compass makers now. Put out a BOLO for dodgy Boy Scouts.” “We follow the object. It’s unique. No hallmarks, no brand, no serial. We get it to someone who understands that… script. Maybe they tell us where it came from.” “You mean our museum girl. She lit up when you mentioned industrial history. Bet she’s got a book full of squiggles in that satchel.” “Or someone in her world. Academics, collectors. The type who like hidden markets.” “Hidden what.” “Never mind.” Harlow glanced back at Eva. The woman sat hunched, knuckles white on her satchel strap, eyes flicking between officers and the tunnel. She met Harlow’s gaze. For a heartbeat, something passed between them. Recognition of fear, maybe. Or of curiosity neither of them wanted to own. Harlow turned to the SOCO nearest her. “Bag this compass separate. Rush it to the lab. Full metallurgical workup, prints, trace. I want a high-res of every mark on it.” The SOCO nodded and slid the object into a fresh bag. “And these wall carvings. Photo, 3D scan if we can manage it down here. Casts, if not. Don’t assume they’re decoration.” Lennox let out a short breath through his nose. “You’re building a lot on some weird graffiti and a funky compass.” “You brought me in because no one upstairs liked ‘misadventure in a ghost station’ when the press office called. They’ll like ‘ritualistic unidentified activity in abandoned Tube infrastructure’ even less, but it’ll be closer to the truth.” He rolled his shoulders. “All right, guv. You get your runes and compass. I’ll get CCTV and phone records and Baird’s mates. You chase your shadows, I’ll chase the living. Between us, we might hit something solid.” Harlow’s eyes went back to the tunnel mouth, to the faint shimmer of dust hanging within the ring of sigils. “Whatever happened to Thomas Baird, it didn’t start with a fall. It started before he came down those stairs. We find who gave him that compass and why it points to that dark, we’ll start to understand the rest.”