Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXSFW8CFTHBE3YXR2EX2FE

The abandoned station breathed cold air at her. Harlow took the metal stairs down two at a time, hand trailing the sticky rail, the hum of the active lines above thinning behind her. The light changed halfway, yellow carriage glow giving way to harsh mobile lamps that painted the tunnel in slabs of white. "Mind your head, Gov." A constable held the tape up. Harlow ducked under, the worn leather of her watch scraping the plastic. The place swallowed sound. No trains. No announcements. Just the distant tick of cooling metal and the echo of her own boots. Posters flaked from the tiled walls. The old roundel still clung on one pillar, CAMDEN ROAD in peeling blue. Rats rustled somewhere in the dark beyond the cones. Patel waited on the platform, hands in his pockets, coat collar turned up. He watched her come, brown paper cup in one hand, steam ghosting his face. "Thought you’d retired to a nice desk by now, Quinn." Harlow stopped beside him, eyes already on the dark end of the platform where the lights clustered. "Desk doesn’t want me." Patel snorted into his coffee and nodded toward the knot of SOCOs. "One male. Early thirties, best guess. No ID. No CCTV. No power down here apart from what we brought. This part of the line’s been shut since the eighties." Harlow let that sit while she looked. The tracks lay in front of them, rails dull with rust, ballast choked with black water and rubbish. but the platform surface right ahead shone under the lamps. Clean. Too clean. "You sweep already?" "Hasn’t been swept since Thatcher. Forensics laid the paper so they don’t trample the good stuff." Patel gestured with the cup. "Body’s down there, behind the stalls." "Stalls?" "You’ll see." They walked. The further they went, the more wrong the station felt. Someone had dragged things down here. Crates. Makeshift trestles. A wardrobe without doors sat against the wall, its shelves lined with glass vials and cracked ceramic bowls. Wax from dozens of candles glazed the concrete. "Looks like a night market threw up," Patel muttered. A constable with a clipboard clocked them. "Pathologist’s two minutes out, sir. Temperature’s—" "Later." Harlow stepped past, pulled on gloves, and moved behind the clutter. The body lay between two trestle tables that looked like old doors on crates. Mercifully flat, eyes closed, hands folded on the chest as if someone had arranged him for viewing. No blood pool. Shirt dark but dry. A chalk circle wrapped him, broken near his left boot. Patel hung back. "Overdose. Or ritual nonsense that went wrong. Plenty to choose from." Harlow crouched. The lamps shimmered in his pupils. No petechiae. No foam at the mouth. Skin pale, but the lips not quite the grey she linked to heroin or fentanyl. The neck bore a faint band of bruising, high up under the jaw, not a clean ligature mark, more like rough hands. "Who found him?" "Maintenance crew doing an inspection topside. One of them noticed the gate down here wasn’t locked. Took a look. Got spooked. Rang it in." "Gate’s usually locked?" Patel shrugged. "Supposed to be. Keys with Transport, they reckon. No sign of forced entry." Harlow ran her gaze along the body. Nails short, no dirt. Shoes decent leather, soles barely scuffed. "He didn't walk down a disused service stair in those. Not from street level." She looked up. "What’s beneath us?" "Tracks." "Beyond." Patel shrugged again, looser this time. "Sewers. Service tunnels. Ghosts, if you ask the lads." A SOCO lifted one of the man’s hands for photographs. No track dirt on the cuff. A faint inked shape peeked from under the wrist: a circle around a jagged line. Not a gang symbol she knew. She clocked it and stood, knees cracking. "Personal effects?" "Only this." Patel fished a clear bag from his pocket and held it up. A small brass compass lay inside. Its face gleamed with a matte polish under the film of grime, etched with unfamiliar markings. Protective sigils, if someone asked Eva Kowalski. Harlow’s jaw hardened. Her watch strap creaked as her hand tightened. "Where?" "Right hand, under his palm. Like he’d been clutching it." "Open it." Patel snorted. "Chain of custody, Gov." "Hold it flat. Don’t breathe on it." He rolled his eyes but peeled the seal and slid the compass into his palm. The brass casing showed pale lines where fingers had worn at it. A halo of verdigris clung near the hinge. Patel thumbed the lid up. "Broken. Needle’s gone daft." The tiny arrow spun once, then snapped tight, not toward north but toward the grime-streaked tunnel wall to their right, away from the tracks, away from the stair. "Magnet’s had it," Patel muttered. "Turn it." He twisted his wrist. The needle fought, swayed, then locked back on the same point in space. The dead concrete wall waited there, empty, tiled, tagged with an old graffiti scrawl. Harlow watched the needle as if it might twitch another way. It held stubborn. "You pick up any metal down that way?" She nodded at the wall. "Nothing stronger than a bolt." She lifted her gaze to the chalk circle around the dead man. Smudges crossed it in two places where feet had scuffed through. The chalk line near his head looked fresher, thicker, less faded. Someone had reinforced part of it. Recently. "Anyone touch the scene before we got here?" "First on scene swears no. He stepped back as soon as he saw the body and called it in." "Walk routes?" Patel nodded at the taped-off path marked by paper squares and little numbered cones. "Single set of recent prints coming in from the stair. Boots. Big bloke." "Victim’s?" "Too early, but likely." Harlow moved to the edge of the circle, eyes on the ground. Dust lay on the platform in a thin even coat beyond the market clutter. Near the trestle legs, shoe prints overlapped. Some old, some crisp. "These tables. They live here?" "Looks like it. Dust on the tops, not much under. This place has been a doss spot for years, they reckon." She slid a hand under one trestle, fingers moving along the crate top. Clean. No long-term grime. No cobwebs. "These went up in the last week. Maybe last night." Patel shifted his weight. "Council sweeps homeless out, they move in somewhere new. Not weird." "Homeless drag a wardrobe down four flights of maintenance stairs?" Patel sipped his coffee and watched a SOCO scrape at a wax puddle. "This is Camden. For enough gear, I’d carry a piano." Harlow straightened and stepped around the head of the body. A tiny bone disk lay near the broken arc of chalk, off to one side, half-hidden in floor dust. She nudged it with the toe of her boot, then crouched. White. About the size of a fifty pence piece. Tiny symbols carved into its face. Too precise for a bored kid with a penknife. "Bag that," she told the nearest SOCO, her voice flat. The tech crouched beside her. "Missed one." Harlow watched the gloved fingers lift the disk. It felt annoyingly familiar, like a misplaced word on the edge of her tongue. Bone token. Echo of a briefing file that had crossed her desk after Morris died. Rumours of a market that moved every full moon. Patel leaned closer. "Playing piece? Can’t see Monopoly bringing out the occult edition." "Check for residue. Any trace on it, I want to know." He raised both brows. "You think this is about those warehouse nutters? Circles, candles, slaughtered chickens. Same vibe." "This man’s neck’s bruised." She gestured. The pathologist’s assistant paused, then stepped aside so Harlow could see again. The bruising ringed high, thumb marks faint near the angle of the jaw. "He didn’t choke on incense." Patel blew out a breath. "Fine. So someone strangled him in the middle of his Dungeons & Dragons night. Still drug debt, still occult nonsense. We dig into his contacts, toss a net around Camden’s weirdos, and see what shakes out." Harlow’s gaze went back to the shoes. The leather caught the lamp with a dull sheen. "Check inside his shoes." The assistant paused. "For what?" "Just do it." They eased one shoe off. A faint tide line of dust marked the outside. The sock underneath came away clean, fibres still springy. "He wasn’t walking around down here long. If at all," Harlow murmured. Patel frowned. "He got here somehow." "Not by the stair. Not alive, anyway." She stepped to the platform edge and peered down. The ballast glistened with oily water. No drag marks. No disturbed rubbish. "If they’d hauled him along the track, you’d see it. And no one’s climbing across rails with that lot." "Service tunnel, then." "Gate’s locked." "Could have had a key." Harlow walked back to the compass in Patel’s hand. She took it without asking, turned her back on the lights, and faced the blank tunnel wall. The needle quivered, centred itself. She walked. Cones and tape protested as she stepped past them. Someone started to speak. She didn’t stop. Patel’s footsteps followed, heavier. "Quinn—" "Watch." She paced toward the wall. The compass needle quivered but held to the same invisible point. Ten feet away. Five. Three. At two feet the air turned colder; her breath hung in front of her in a faint cloud. She inhaled; it smelled of damp stone and copper. "Feel that?" Patel rubbed his nose. "Temperature drop. We’re in a basement." "It was warmer back there." "We’re closer to open tunnel. Airflow." "Tunnel’s sealed." They reached the wall. Old tiles, glazed white once, now stained nicotine and soot. The compass needle still pointed dead ahead, though the wall left it nowhere to go. She ran gloved fingers over the surface. Smooth, ridged grout between tiles. No cracks. No outline of a bricked-up arch. "Infrared these walls," she called toward the cluster around the body. "All of them, not just this bit. Look for voids." One of the techs lifted a thermal camera and started towards her. Patel watched her hand move over the tiles. "You think there’s a hidden room." "I think that compass isn’t broken." "It’s an antique. Made before proper QA." "It points the same way whatever angle you hold it. That’s deliberate." Patel shifted, boots squeaking. "Or someone had a magnet in their pocket and thought they’d invented magic." Harlow gave him a look, then tapped the centre of the compass glass with her knuckle. "Why leave this under his hand if you strangled him over a drug debt? Why chalk a circle and drag all this junk down here for an overdose?" "Drama. Guilt. People do strange things with bodies. We both know that." "He’s tidy. He wears decent shoes. Nails trimmed. No track marks. No calluses that say heavy lifting. He didn’t haul trestles. He didn’t sleep on this platform. He came for a purpose." "To buy banned mushrooms from Camden’s underworld." "Where are they?" Patel swung his gaze round the scattered vials, jars with burnt labels, bowls crusted with old herbs. "Raided. Whoever killed him cleared their stock and legged it." Harlow glanced at the wardrobe again. Its shelves gaped, a few empty hooks still swinging. "They forgot the interesting things." She nodded at the bone token in its evidence bag, now dangling from a tech’s fingers as he labelled it. "One tiny disk out of god knows how many. Easy to miss." "They didn’t strip the scene. They left the compass. They left the circle. They left him." Patel’s jaw muscles worked. "So what’s your version?" She watched the wall as if it might breathe. "He came here to meet someone. Not for drugs. For whatever this place was set up to be." She tipped her head at the trestles, the wax, the chalk. "They met. It went bad. They killed him. They had another way out. One that doesn’t use the stair or the tracks." Patel folded his arms. "Secret tunnel, magic door, or they grew wings. Take your pick." "You still got that contact at Transport?" "Depends if we fined him last year." "Ask for every blueprint on this stretch. Original plans. Post-war works. Anything that shows voids or chambers off this station. If there’s a bricked-up passage behind this wall, I want it on paper." He downed the last of his coffee and lobbed the cup into a lonely bin. "I’ll put in the request. While we wait the week it takes them to reply, we still need a name for him." Harlow nodded, gaze drifting back to the tattoo on the dead man’s wrist as the pathologist eased the shirt cuff up for a better look. "Get his prints to Ident. Dental if you have to." "You thinking he’s in the system?" "Everyone leaves a record. Even if it’s just a library card." Patel gave a half-smile. "Since when do you trust libraries?" "Since they started keeping better hours than witnesses." She peeled off one glove and checked her watch. The leather strap bit into her skin. "Who’s on occult liaison this month?" Patel groaned. "Please don’t drag those lot into this. Last time we had three hours of a bloke in beads telling us about ley lines." "Call the Museum. Ask for Kowalski in restricted archives. Tell her we have a symbol and a compass with sigils. She can grumble on her own time." "You already know her name." "You call a person enough about circles and burnt candles, it sticks." Patel blew out another breath and reached for his phone. "Fine. But if she starts on about cursed objects, I’m hanging up." Harlow closed the compass with a snap and handed it back in its bag. "Until forensics says otherwise, it's evidence. Not a curse." Patel moved off, phone to his ear, voice low as he argued with Control about museum numbers. The thermal tech reached her side, camera already whirring. "Start here," Harlow told him, fingers brushing that stubborn patch of cold tile. "And don’t assume the wall’s solid just because it looks like it." The camera chimed as it powered up. The colours on its small screen began to bloom.