Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXSP3NX2PF7PZM618Q0WXS

The ambulance lights carved red and blue wounds through the fog rolling off the Thames. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped under the police tape, her worn leather watch catching the damp air as she lifted the barrier. The river's stench mingled with something else tonight—copper and ozone, a combination that set her teeth on edge. "Thought you'd want to see this one yourself, guv." PC Lestrade stood by the entrance to the defunct pumping station, his young face pale beneath the streetlamps. He'd been the first responder. Three months out of training, and he looked ready to reconsider his career choice. "Who called it in?" "Anonymous. Tips line got a recording at 0347. Male voice, no accent I could place. Just said there was a body at the old Jenner facility, then hung up." Quinn studied the building. The Jenner pumping station had been decommissioned since the eighties, its Victorian brickwork now more moss than mortar. Boarded windows. Rust-eaten doors. The kind of place kids dared each other to explore, the kind of place junkies used when the shelters filled up. Not the kind of place that saw much else. "Who's inside?" "DCS Mercer. He's been here twenty minutes." Of course he had. Quinn kept her expression neutral. Mercer had made his opinion of her clear after the Morris investigation—too many questions, not enough answers, and a stubborn refusal to close a case that everyone else wanted buried. She crossed the threshold, and the temperature dropped. Not unusual for a stone building by the river in October, but this cold had teeth. It bit at her exposed neck, settled into the joints of her shoulders. The main chamber stretched ahead, its ceiling lost in shadow. Industrial pipework crawled along the walls like veins. Emergency lamps had been set up around a central point, their harsh light pooling on the concrete floor. And in that pool lay the body. Quinn approached with measured steps. Military precision, her ex-husband used to call it, usually with complaint. But precision meant survival in places like this. The victim was male, mid-thirties, dressed in a suit that cost more than her monthly salary. Italian leather shoes. No visible wounds. No blood. He could have been sleeping, save for the wrongness in his posture—limbs bent at angles that suggested he'd collapsed rather than lay down. "Harlow." Mercer's voice echoed off the brick. He stood by the far wall, arms crossed, his grey suit immaculate despite the hour. Dawn wouldn't break for another two hours, yet he looked ready for a press conference. "Sir." "Heart attack, far as we can tell. Young for it, but not impossible. Stress, maybe. Undiagnosed condition. The ME will confirm." Quinn crouched beside the body. The man's face held an expression she'd seen before—not peace, not pain. Surprise. His eyes stared upward, clouded over, fixed on something beyond the ceiling. "No signs of struggle?" "None. We checked his pockets—wallet, phone, keys. Cards identify him as one Marcus Webb, addresses in Kensington and the Cayman Islands. Preliminary search suggests financial services. Banking, possibly." Quinn studied the man's hands. Clean. Manicured. No defensive wounds beneath the fingernails. She leaned closer, and that ozone smell intensified, sharp enough to taste. "Sir, did you notice—" "The smell? Chemical residue. This place was used for industrial processing before they shut it down. Probably still leaching from the pipes." Quinn stood and circled the body. The concrete showed scuff marks, but old ones, layered with dust. No fresh footprints except those belonging to Lestrade and the medical examiner's team. Whoever had left the tip hadn't stuck around. She moved toward the wall where Mercer waited. The pipework here was different—older, the metal discolored in ways that had nothing to do with rust. She ran her finger along one pipe, and it came away with a residue that shimmered faintly green before fading. "Sir, I don't think this was natural causes." Mercer's jaw tightened. "The ME hasn't finished the preliminary." "Look at his position. He fell where he stood, but there's no indication he was running or fighting. No clutching at his chest, no reaching for support. He was walking normally, then he just—" She snapped her fingers. "Stopped." "People drop dead without warning all the time. Thrombosis. Aneurysm. His medical history will tell us." "And the call? Someone knew he was here. They didn't report a man collapsing—they reported a body. How did they know he was dead unless they saw it happen or they were the ones who—" She stopped. Mercer's expression had shifted. Not anger. Something more careful. "We're pursuing all leads, Detective. But I'll remind you that anonymous tips are common, and speculating about the caller's involvement without evidence is premature." Quinn turned back to the body. The medical examiner's team waited for the all-clear to move it. She crossed to them, to the man with the kit bag who looked like he hadn't slept in a week. "Can you check his eyes? Specifically, the retinas." The examiner raised an eyebrow. "Standard procedure—" "More thorough. Look for haemorrhaging. Petechial patterns." "You think he was suffocated?" Quinn shook her head slowly. "I think something else happened here. Something that doesn't show up on a standard tox screen." She returned to Mercer, who had produced a notebook and was pretending to review his observations. His posture said dismissal; his presence said something else entirely. "Sir, why did you respond to this call personally?" "I was available." "In the middle of the night, for what appears to be a straightforward natural death?" Mercer closed the notebook with deliberate care. "You aren't the only one who answers when the radio crackles, Harlow. Some of us still believe in leading from the front." The words carried an edge she recognized. He'd used similar language at Morris's memorial service, when he'd suggested she take extended leave. When he'd made it clear that further investigation into the circumstances would be met with resistance. She let the silence hang between them, then turned away. The walls of the pumping station held more than pipework. Quinn's flashlight traced the brickwork, searching for anything the initial sweep might have missed. Near the ceiling, half-hidden by shadows and decades of grime, she found it. A symbol. Etched into the stone. The lines were faint, but the shape was unmistakable—curved in ways that seemed to shift the longer she looked at it. She'd seen something similar before. Three years ago. In a basement in Whitechapel, where Morris had— "Find something?" Mercer's voice came from directly behind her. She hadn't heard him approach. "Just graffiti. Old, by the look of it." "Probably dates back to when the station was active. Workers marking their territory." Quinn turned to face him. His eyes held steady on hers, and in them, she saw something that looked almost like warning. "Sir, I'd like to keep this case open pending the full toxicology report." "Standard procedure already covers that." "I mean I'd like to lead the investigation. Personally." Mercer's mouth flattened. "You have active cases." "None that can't be reassigned." The silence stretched. Somewhere in the building, a pipe dripped, the sound magnified by the chamber's acoustics. "Very well," Mercer said at last. "But I want daily updates. And Harlow—" He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Not everyone shares your interest in finding patterns where none exist. Some of us prefer evidence. Concrete, provable evidence." He walked past her toward the exit, pausing at the threshold. "This was a tragedy. A man died too young, and his family deserves answers. Don't make it into something it isn't." Quinn watched him disappear into the fog. Then she turned back to the symbol on the wall, pulling out her phone to photograph it before the light changed. The image on her screen confirmed what she'd suspected. The etching was fresh, the edges of the carved lines still sharp where they cut through decades of accumulated grime. Whatever Mercer believed, someone had been here recently. Someone who knew things that didn't appear in any police database. She pocketed her phone and knelt beside the body one final time. Marcus Webb, banker, Kensington address. A man with means, found in a place that had no business hosting him. And in his jacket pocket, barely visible where his body had folded, she glimpsed something that caught the lamplight. Quinn reached in with gloved fingers and withdrew a small object. Circular. Brass. Tarnished with verdigris. A compass. But when she opened it, the needle didn't point north. It spun, lazy and unhurried, before settling on a direction that made no sense—toward the wall with the symbol, the wall that should have been solid brick. She closed the compass and slipped it into an evidence bag. Outside, the Thames continued its ancient flow, and the fog closed around the pumping station like a secret kept too long.