AI The suspect vaulted the bonnet of the black cab and vanished between two buses.
Quinn swore, boots skidding on the slick tarmac as a horn blared at her back. She cut in front of the cab, palm up, flashing her warrant card without breaking stride.
"Police, move it."
Someone shouted. Tyres hissed. She trusted drivers would prefer points on their licence to manslaughter and pushed harder, rain needling her face, coat heavy with it. Ahead, the lean figure in the grey hoodie darted towards the jumble of lights and late-night bodies around Camden High Street.
He glanced back once. Pale face, hollow beneath the hoodie, eyes that flicked over her in one sharp, assessing sweep. Not panic. Calculation.
Good, she thought, lungs burning. The clever ones made mistakes when they thought too far ahead.
He cut right, into a narrower side street between a tattoo shop and a closed newsagent. The shopfront shutters rattled as he clipped them. She followed, the thud of bass from a nearby bar thinning to the echo of her own footsteps .
"Stop, police."
He did not stop. Figures.
Brick walls closed in, tagged with old graffiti buried under fresh, all of it streaming with dirty water. A skip blocked half the alley. He scrambled up its slick side, used a broken pallet as a foothold and swung himself over the wall beyond.
Quinn did not slow. She hit the skip hard, metal booming under her weight . Her boots slid. She grabbed the rim with numb fingers and dragged herself up, shoulder muscles screaming in protest. Over the top, legs out, drop.
She landed wrong, ankle twisting on the uneven cobbles. Pain stabbed up her shin. She rolled with it, used the momentum to come back to her feet and found herself in a dead service yard behind the high street, hemmed in by the backs of buildings, overflowing bins, the sour smell of rot and old fry oil.
Grey Hoodie was already crossing the yard, heading for a set of iron railings that fenced off a short flight of steps. A rusted sign hung from the gate.
NO PUBLIC ACCESS
L.U. MAINTENANCE ONLY
He grabbed the bars, shook them once, then produced something small and pale from his pocket. For a second it caught the weak light from a lone security lamp, narrow and slightly curved. Bone, her brain supplied, unhelpfully.
He pressed it to the lock.
The padlock did not open so much as slacken, metal seams going soft and dark, the chain drooping like chewed liquorice. He slipped through, hauled the gate behind him and took the steps two at a time, vanishing into the dark below.
Quinn stopped short, chest heaving.
Metal works failed, she thought. Old lock. Cheap council job. She tasted the lie like stale smoke and swallowed it anyway.
Three choices lined themselves up in her head, neat as evidence bags.
Call it in. Wait for backup. Lose him.
Find another way round. Hope he surfaced on the high street again. Unlikely.
Go in alone. No signal. No CCTV. Unknown territory.
Her wristwatch ticked steadily against her skin. Twenty-three eighteen. No time to stand and draft a risk assessment.
"Morris would have gone," she muttered, and hated herself at once for saying his name out loud.
She moved to the gate. The chain hung loose now, the padlock dark and pocked as if it had rusted through in seconds. She pushed. The hinges shrieked, loud in the enclosed yard.
Quinn drew her baton and torch, clipped at her belt, and descended.
The noise of the city thinned with every step. The air cooled. Damp crept under her collar, clung to her hair. The concrete walls on either side felt close, the narrow stairwell swallowing the last spill of streetlight after the first turn.
She flicked the torch on.
The beam cut through dust motes and picked out old red tiles on the walls, cleaner where a hand had slid along recently. Voices murmured below, too many to place, a low, constant susurration. Not one man in a hoodie.
It sounded like a crowd.
She reached the bottom of the steps and stopped.
An old underground passage stretched ahead, arched ceiling ribbed with flaking, once-white plaster, now the colour of old teeth. Faded posters from another decade peeled from the walls in curling tongues. Somewhere distant, water dripped in a slow, uneven rhythm.
The passage should have been silent and sealed. She had seen the decommissioning reports for half the abandoned stations in the city, after Morris, after that case. None of them mentioned what she saw now.
Light pulsed at the far end of the tunnel, not the steady white strips of Transport for London, but a shifting mix of colours, greens and golds and deep dull reds, like distant lanterns through fog. The murmur of voices swelled and eddied.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Control, probably chasing her location. She ignored it. Signal would die the next bend anyway.
Quinn moved, steps careful on the damp floor. Her torch beam picked up footprints in the grime, a busy, confused scatter, some fresh, some old. Recent shoes, different treads and sizes. Not just one suspect.
The smell hit her halfway along. Not damp and mould, though those were there, ghosts under the rest. Spices she could not name. Burnt sugar. Hot metal. Animal musk. Cigarette smoke threaded through with something sweet and chemical.
Her heart began to drum faster, a colder rhythm than the run above.
Someone had carved a symbol into the grime near the floor, a swirl of lines that dipped and crossed back over themselves, half wiped by a heel. Something like the thing they had found drawn in Morris's blood on that flat's kitchen tiles.
Coincidence. It had to be.
At the end of the passage, the tunnel opened out.
A heavy metal gate divided the space, the kind that belonged in a secure depot, bars thick as wrists. Beyond it, stairs dropped again, but their view was blocked by fogged glass panels and slats of old advertising boards lashed together on the inside, forming a makeshift barrier. Light bled through the gaps, flickering.
A figure stepped out of the shadows beside the gate.
He stood well over six foot, shoulders straining a too-tight black shirt, the sleeves rolled to show forearms crosshatched with pale scars. His skin had the dark tone of someone from somewhere warmer than London, but his accent, when he spoke, came out flat and familiar .
"You are lost, Detective."
Her hand had gone to her hip without conscious thought, fingers brushing the butt of her Glock, and she left them there.
"Open it," she said.
He smiled, slow and without humour. His teeth looked too sharp, though that could have been the light.
"No one goes in without a token."
He nodded at a battered tin on a crate near his foot. It sat filled with pale, curved slivers, each one like the thing Grey Hoodie had pressed to the padlock above. Bones. Small. Finger widths.
"You have a name," she said.
"You do not want my name." He tilted his head, eyes flicking over her as if weighing the distance from gun to throat . "And you do not want the place down there."
"My suspect went through your gate thirty seconds ago."
"Then he is not your suspect any longer."
She took a slow breath. Smell of clove, stale sweat, damp metal. Her ankle throbbed with each heartbeat.
"You interfere with an active investigation, I arrest you."
"No, Detective Quinn. You go back upstairs, you forget you saw a door where there is no door, and you live to drink bad station coffee tomorrow."
Her surname in his mouth froze her.
"How do you know who I am."
He shrugged, heavy shoulders rolling.
"This city has more eyes than CCTV." His gaze slid briefly to his left, past her. "You are not the first to come sniffing. You will be the first to go back upstairs."
He believed it. She saw it in the easy way he held himself, weight on one leg, gate key on a strap wound round his fist. She also saw the tension in his neck, the way his free hand twitched near a length of metal pipe leaning against the wall.
She thought of Morris lying on his back in that flat, eyes wide, mouth open on a word that had never come. Of the symbol on the tiles. Of the report stamped CLOSED that had not matched the body she had zipped into the bag.
Quinn holstered the torch. The light now came mostly from beyond the gate, shivering lines through the gaps. Figures moved behind the fogged glass, their shapes warped, too tall or too narrow or bent at angles that made her eyes ache when she stared too long.
"I am not leaving," she said.
The man sighed, a long slow exhale.
"Then you give me a token, Quinn."
He reached into the tin and drew one out. He turned it between thumb and forefinger. A metacarpal, from something small, polished by many hands.
"Got any spare ribs back there," she said. "We can talk about it over a plate."
That twitched something at the corner of his mouth.
"Jokes. Good. Means you are not yet afraid enough."
She stepped closer, staying just outside his reach.
"What is this place."
"We call it the Market." He lifted the bone a little, as if in a toast. "You are late. Doors close soon."
"In which case," she said, "I will not waste more of your time."
Her hand moved before he clocked her intention. She snapped her baton out, steel shaft telescoping with a sharp click, and jammed it through the bars. It caught him in the ribs, a hard stun, more warning than damage. He grunted, staggered back, key hand loosening.
She grabbed the gate, shoved.
He recovered fast. The pipe clanged against the bars next to her fingers. She yanked her hand back, then drove the baton into his wrist. The keyring slipped, skittered across the floor. They both went for it.
He had reach. She had intent.
She stamped on his instep, felt the crunch of bone or metal under her sole. He swore in something guttural and strange. The pause gave her enough space to dive, shoulder scraping the floor as her fingers hooked the ring.
Cold metal. Victory.
She rolled, used the spin to get back to her feet as he swung the pipe again, this time higher.
"Do not do this," he said, breath ragged.
She ducked under the arc, felt air stir her cropped hair, and worked the first key into the heavy padlock on the gate. It did not fit.
Of course it did not.
Second key, thicker, rusted at the teeth. She jammed it in, turned.
The lock clicked.
Voices on the far side rose, a shiver in the sound, some thread of alarm running through whatever lay beyond.
"Last warning, Detective," the man said.
"Bored of warnings," she said.
She tore the lock free and threw her weight against the gate. It swung inward with a protesting groan.
The noise hit her first.
The Market roared.
Sound rolled up the short flight of steps in a hot wave, layered with smells that made her eyes water. Sizzling meat, acrid smoke, perfume so sweet it turned her stomach , wet fur, old blood. Cries in a dozen languages climbed over one another, some familiar , some so wrong her brain slid off them.
Light flooded the stairwell, a chaotic wash from mismatched bulbs, naked flames, strings of coloured fairy lights, lanterns shaped like insects, glass jars filled with things that glowed on their own.
Quinn hesitated on the threshold.
Not fear, she told herself. Assessment.
One, this was off-grid. No Met protocols, no guidelines. Two, the man behind her had not tried to kill her. Only stop her. Three, that meant something down there terrified him more than a murder charge.
"Better decide," he said behind her, voice low. "The door does not always let people back through."
She did not look at him.
"That a threat."
"A fact."
She tucked the baton into her belt, free hand on the rail, and went down.
The space that opened before her had once been a train platform. The curve of the tracks still showed under makeshift stalls, tables, cages, piles of crates. Old Tube tiles peeked between cloth awnings and hanging charms. The arched ceiling dripped where decades of grime met new condensation, strands of electrical cable twisting along it like dark vines.
Bodies packed the platform. Not commuters.
A woman with mirrored sunglasses and a fur coat that moved too much, as if the fur still breathed. A boy with buzzing lines tattooed round his throat, the ink pulsing in time with the music from a stall selling vinyl that smoked faintly. An old man with eyes filmed grey and a string of copper keys round his neck, each one whispering against the other as he passed.
Then the ones her mind shoved into the category of costume to keep functioning.
A figure whose shadow did not match its movements, lagging half a step behind. A tall thin woman with arms just a fraction too long, fingers hooked like claws, selling glass jars filled with slow-moving darkness. A person built like a weightlifter, skin the colour of fresh bruises, laughter booming as he argued over a crate of something that looked a lot like preserved tongues.
Quinn's hand had settled on her holster again without asking her.
Grey Hoodie moved through the press partway down the platform, head lower now, shoulders hunched. He cut between stalls with the sliding ease of someone who knew the route well.
She pushed into the crowd, using shoulders and a hard expression, flashing the glint of her warrant card when someone squared up.
"Oi, watch it."
"Move."
"You lost, love."
She ignored them. Focus narrowed to the shape of the hoodie.
He reached a stall built from stacked old suitcases and broken display units. Rows of small bottles lined its front, each stoppered and tied with ragged ribbon, liquids inside swirling slow and thick. Behind them, an array of knives lay on a velvet cloth, blades dull with age or dark with something that was not rust.
A man stood behind the stall, his olive skin lit gold from the string of bare bulbs overhead. Curly dark hair, week-old stubble, Saint Christopher medallion glinting at his throat above a plain grey T-shirt. A fresh scar snaked up his left forearm, pink against the older, whiter line running alongside.
"Tomás," Grey Hoodie hissed. "Necesito entregarlo ya."
Tomás Herrera's gaze flicked past the hoodie, over his shoulder, and met Quinn's.
His posture changed in a blink.
The easy slouch went. His shoulders drew back, mouth flattening. His eyes, warm and sleepy a second before, sharpened.
"Estás hecho polvo, tío," he said without looking away from her. "Who is she."
Grey Hoodie kept his back to her, fingers twitching near his pocket.
"No time. Take it."
He slid a hand towards the table, something small and white cupped in it.
Quinn shoved the last body out of her way and closed the distance.
"Metropolitan Police," she said. "Hands where I can see them, now."
People stilled around them in a widening ripple, like a stone dropped in dark water.
Grey Hoodie froze. Tomás did not.
He smiled, lazy and disarming, though his eyes did not soften.
"Officer," he said, accent wrapping round the word. "You got lost on the wrong line, no."
"Hands," she said.
He lifted them, palms empty and open.
"You are pointing that energy at the wrong guy, jefa."
Grey Hoodie bolted.
He ducked sideways, away from her, hand slapping the table. Bottles wobbled, liquid inside swirling furiously. One toppled and shattered on the floor, contents splashing across Quinn's boots.
The liquid smoked where it hit the concrete, pale vapour curling up round her legs. Cold stabbed through the leather, ice driving into her bones.
She staggered, knee buckling.
Tomás moved, fast and smooth. He caught her arm, grip firm but not painful, steadying her.
"Careful," he murmured. "You do not want to breathe that."
She tore her arm free.
"Out of my way."
Her foot slipped in the spreading liquid. More vapour thickened, rising in a rolling wave. It smelled of freezer burn and hospital corridors, that sharp antiseptic that soaked into your clothes and stayed for days.
Grey Hoodie disappeared into it, only the afterimage of his movement left in her eyes.
Around them, stallholders cursed, shouting to drag their wares back. Someone chanted under their breath, words hard and quick. A charm , Quinn's brain suggested before she could squash it.
The vapour hit chest height.
Her breath hitched. Frost crawled along the edge of her coat in a lace of white.
A hand clamped on her shoulder from behind, fingers like a vice.
"You brought a cop in here," a voice growled near her ear.
Quinn twisted, hand already on her gun, as something huge and dark surged at her through the thickening cloud.