Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYSGAMDH6N0WGAJVEDQRCZ

Boots on wet tile, her breath hung like smoke in the stale air. The old Camden platform stretched out in yellowed lamplight and shadow. White tiles had cracked into spiderwebs, and old adverts peeled like scabbed paint from the curved walls. Someone had strung fairy lights along iron beams as if the place threw parties. The string sagged, bulbs ticking with a tired hum. A thin river ran along the gutter where the track used to shine. “You found the front door alright, then?” A uniform leaned against a tiled column. DS Price’s tie sat loose, his suit shoulders dusted with grit. He swung a torch beam in a lazy arc toward the far end of the platform. “We had to jam a chain off the service gate. Whoever runs this circus takes security seriously.” Harlow tapped the worn leather strap near her wrist and glanced at the time. “They make you pay at the door.” “Oh yeah?” He smirked. “What’s the fee, then?” “A token.” She drew one from her pocket and laid it in his palm. Thumb-long, off-white, carved with tiny grooves that teeth had once held. Bone, polished by fingers. “You leave it at the gate. It gets you in—if it likes you.” Price let it sit in his hand as if it might bite. “I preferred guest lists.” “Where is he?” He jerked his chin down the platform. “By the stairwell. Someone tidied up before they made the call. Pretty generous for a bunch of thieves.” They walked. The platform opened into an apron of shadow beneath a dead clock. A scatter of folding tables stood in a rough horseshoe, the tops nicked and stained. Little paper placards with prices curled on damp cardboard. A row of glass bottles glowed faintly in a crate. No move to hide them. The place had been stripped in a hurry, nothing more. Harlow crouched by the body. Male, thirties, threadbare coat. No obvious marks but a crimson bloom across his shirt and chin. Blood had trickled and slackened in the old dust. A neat puddle, too neat. No spatter beyond the edge of the tarp someone had slid beneath him. “He fell,” Price said. “Over those cables. Hit his head or heart gave way. Look at the scorch on his cuff.” Harlow lifted the left wrist and rolled back the sleeve. A scorched cuff, true, but the burns stopped short of skin. She let the wrist drop. “He didn’t stop his fall with his hands.” “He could’ve been out of it. We pulled vials from under a table. Amber glass. Could be anything.” “Could be water.” She tipped one with a fingernail and watched the bubble climb. “You moved him.” Price clicked his tongue. “We didn’t. Someone piled those tarps and that crate after. We found him like this.” “Where are SOCO?” “On their way. This wasn’t on the rota.” He swept his torch across the tiled arch. The beam caught chalk lines near the wall. A circle drawn in rough hand, sigils nested inside the wheel like teeth. A break at the top like someone had rubbed a thumb through it. “Kids with a Ouija board. There’s your black magic. He scared himself to death.” She rose. “The Market doesn’t run on Thursdays.” “Market?” He waved at the tables. “Boot sale with delusions. Look at this junk.” Harlow ran a finger over the nearest table’s lip. A fine powder clung, pale as ash. She sniffed it. Bone dust with a tang like old pennies. She made a fist and the grit fell back in a tired little rain. “You got any names yet?” She looked at the face. Stubbled jaw. Faint blue stain along the left thumb. “Nothing on him. No wallet. No phone. We pulled a single key from his coat. Weird little shape at the end. Like a batwing.” Harlow slid a gloved hand into the coat’s inner lining. A small brass weight nudged under her fingers. She brought out a compass, the casing tired and green around the edges, sigils etched into the face so finely they caught on the glove. The needle flicked past north and swung like a thing alive. It settled, then twitched. Not magnet work. She tipped it and the needle fought gravity. Price snorted. “Tourist tat.” “It points where it wants to.” She set it on the table and the needle swung again, toward the black mouth of the service tunnel off the far track. Bootsteps scuffed on tile near the entrance. A small figure stepped through the chain-hung gate, round glasses fogged at the edges. Curly red hair tied back, a leather satchel bumping her hip. Eva glanced at the uniform and straightened, eyes skimming the scene, not the people. “You called me here, then. This place smells like a library’s cellar.” Her gaze landed on the chalk on the tiles. “Whoever drew that wheel didn’t know what they were riffing on.” Harlow nodded toward the compass. “Have a look.” Eva ran a thumb over the verdigris on the casing. “Shade work. Old too. It shouldn’t look pretty. They don’t care about pretty.” She lifted it, close to her glasses, so the little etched wards reflected in her lenses. “You found this on him?” “In his coat.” Harlow watched the needle. It strained toward the service tunnel again and slouched back, shy. “What do you make of the chalk?” Eva toed the break at the top of the circle. “They broke it after it had settled. See the crumble along the line? It flaked, it didn’t smear. Whoever drew it wasn’t trying to finish anything. Show piece.” Price tapped the circle with his pen. “So no devils popping out. Shame.” Eva tucked a curl behind her left ear. “You could coax a draft with this pattern and a lot of patience. Not here. The air is wrong. Can you feel that?” She lifted her face, listened to the tunnel as if it sang. “There’s a hum. Old electrics and something else. I don’t like it.” Harlow walked the arc of the tables. Each one sat a hair out from the chalk circle, no leg crossing the lines. The gaps lined up too neatly. She crouched again by the body and slid two fingers under the hem where shirt met tarp. Dust had settled under the cloth, in a perfect drift like frost. She pressed and lifted, and the pattern printed on her glove. “He wasn’t lying here when the dust fell.” Price raised both brows. “Staged? For who?” “For us.” Harlow pointed at the scuff trails toward the stairs. Two parallel streaks in the grime, a foot and a half apart, same width. “It took two to bring him in. They dragged a crate down then set him on the tarp. No scuffing round the edges. Whoever did it stood here.” She saw shoe prints, a tight cluster on the platform grime where someone planted their weight and lifted. The treads bit sharp and shallow. Not boots. Trainers, smooth-worn. “Electrocution’s not on the table,” she went on. “No exit wounds on the soles. No smell of singe on hair. Cuff burn isn’t skin deep.” Price spread his hands. “Overdose, then. They freaked and arranged him like art.” Eva crouched at the dead man’s feet. She turned his left hand palm up. A pale crescent scar crossed the bulb of the thumb. She sniffed, wrinkled her nose. “Smells like copper. And bone glue. You ever cut little sigils with a craft knife for a living? Your hands look like this.” “Artisan?” Harlow looked at the compass again. A Shade had crafted this. Shades kept to the Market. She felt the old ache low in her ribs, the way a bruise lived under winter clothes. Morris had pulled her through a scene like this once, chalk on tile and a dead man who looked like he’d been posed to hide where the blood began. She pushed that aside and placed the compass in a clear bag. Price nudged a crate with his shoe. Bottles rattled and whispered. “We lifted these under the tables. Labels in some made-up alphabet. You can have them, Miss…?” “Eva.” She opened her satchel and laid out a cloth, then lined up the bottles. She didn’t touch the stoppers. “These marks aren’t made up. They’re a trader’s shorthand. A date here. A moon. A price. Someone packed in a hurry and left stock. That doesn’t happen.” “Unless someone yelled ‘Police’,” Price grinned. Harlow checked the edge of the nearest table. Small notches along the underside, the kind you cut when you lash a strap tight. She crouched and pressed her thumb into an impression in the wood, half a circle bored deeper than the rest. “They tied something off here. A leash. See the mark? That’s old. But this one’s fresh.” Eva leaned close. “Binding? For what?” “People,” Harlow said. “You keep punters from wandering, you cordon the stall. But this fresh mark—someone tied their own kit up. Heavy. Then they pulled it fast. It bit the table and splintered.” Price pointed at the blood on the tarp. “So where did this come from if it’s all theatre?” Harlow poured a splash from one vial onto the table and scrubbed with a gloved hand. The stain dulled and lifted. “Blood thickener. Stage work. You throw it on and it clings in a pretty puddle. No secondary spatter because there was no impact. It sits and everyone gasps.” “Kids and their pranks,” Price muttered. “Look at his jaw,” Harlow said. “The purple line at the angle, both sides. Fingers pressed there. He was lifted under the chin and pushed back. You can see where the thumb dug in. He couldn’t breathe. He panicked. Someone used a hold who knew where to put pressure, not a thug swinging wild.” Eva traced the bruises with her gaze. “A bouncer. Or someone with training.” Price clicked his torch on and off. “We get those at raves, too.” Harlow stood in the centre of the tables and turned slowly. The compass in its bag tugged toward the service tunnel by degrees, like a dog on a lead. She looked toward the tunnel mouth. A metal door sat half in shadow where the tracks sagged into darkness. Dust lay thick on the rail bed, track bolts bloomed with rust, and yet a smear of clean metal sliced through the grime where something heavy had been hauled. She walked along the platform edge and ducked down onto the old track bed. Her spine registered the give in the rotten sleeper. She crouched at the clean smear. Scratches notched the steel like claw marks, tight, parallel, not made by a boot or crate. “They dragged something through here. Not a body. Too low. Wheels, small ones.” “A trolley.” Price stayed up on the platform. “Stock cart.” “That would leave rubber. This left metal.” She pressed her fingers into the print pattern around the scratches. “Three toes. Two little nubs behind.” She glanced up. “You don’t get that from a trolley.” Eva’s breath hitched. “Harlow.” Harlow didn’t look at her. She followed the marks, step by step, to the metal door. A pile of posters for a purple seaside holiday covered the right half of the frame, fresh paste glistening. She dug a nail under the paper and dragged. The top layer tore and came off with a soft hiss. Under it, another, sun-faded. Under that, a black scorch. The edge of the door had kissed something hot recently. She touched the metal. Cold. “Everyone keeps magnets on their fridges, but they forget magnets love iron,” she said. “These rails should be pulling a cheap compass. This one fights them.” She held up the bag. The needle leaned in toward the seam of the door and wouldn’t look away. Price huffed. “So what? Someone hid a stash behind an old cleaner’s cupboard.” Eva stepped in beside Harlow and touched the bolt. “This primer’s new. It scraped yesterday. See? No dust in the scratches. You pulled the chain off the other gate to get in. Did anyone touch this?” “No one’s touched that one,” Price said. “We didn’t know it opened.” “Your call said abandoned Tube station.” Harlow kept her voice level. “Not that it moonlighted as a black market. Who called it in?” “Anonymous. Burn phone. Very helpful.” Harlow ran her hand along the jamb, fingers finding a nick at shin height. Fresh paint curled. A flake of something stuck in the downturn. She picked it out with a nail. A shard of bone, thin and curved like it had been carved from something delicate. It had a groove along one side, worn smooth. “Token restring. He lost his coin—cut a new one from scrap. Or someone cut it for him.” Eva shifted, her bag bumping her knee. “The Market moves on full moon. Two nights from now. This isn’t a night they’d pick. It stinks of an off-books meet. Two people. A buyer. A seller. No crowds. Fewer eyes.” “Someone came with him, then cleared out,” Price said. “They took his wallet. They took his phone. They left their art project.” “And they took whatever the tether marks belonged to.” Harlow straightened. “We find what his hands made and we find who needed it bad enough to stage a carnival.” She crossed to the chalk circle and crouched near the break at the top. Under the smear, where the chalk had crumbled and fallen inside the ring, a faint print curved. Not a hand. The heel of a shoe, small. She pressed her own boot next to it and compared the width. “Woman. Narrow foot. Not Eva’s style.” Eva looked down at her boots, scuffed and practical. “Rude.” “She wore soles that squeaked on tile.” Harlow tilted her head, listening to the memory in the stairwell where the two drag marks cut up toward the exit. “Eager. Impatient. The stride is long. The chrome on the door frame holds a smudge—someone oily touched it. A mechanic’s thumbprint, not a banker’s.” “You get all that from a bit of chalk?” Price let out a low laugh. “From all of it.” Harlow pointed at the tarp puddle. “From people who think we look where they point.” She dug in the dead man’s coat one more time. A scrap of card hid inside the inner seam. She teased it free. The corner of a stall placard, price still written in a careful hand. Three digits and a little mark. Not a pound sign. Eva leaned in. “Market currency. They didn’t deal in sterling. He sold to the Market, not the street.” Price pulled his phone, took a photo. “So we look for who buys your fancy compass knock-offs. We show the photo to Camden pawnbrokers.” Eva’s glasses slipped down her nose. “He didn’t sell knock-offs. That’s a real compass. It took a Shade artisan’s time. You can see the ward-line. It sits under the face. Humans copy lines on top because they don’t know you need to sing to the metal while you etch.” Harlow’s jaw tightened. “We keep the compass bagged. We don’t lose the chain of custody. Photo everything. Under the tables, along the rail, on the door frame. Get shoe prints. Sift the bone dust for fibres. And find me the person who cut this rope mark.” She knocked her knuckle on the fresh gouge in the table. Price nodded to the uniform hovering at the stairwell. “You heard the boss. Photos on everything. Don’t sneeze.” Eva stayed by the door as the scene woke up, cameras clicking, white-suited techs stepping around with the grace of cats. She looked at Harlow. “This isn’t going to end well if you open that without…without them.” Her chin tipped toward the compass in the bag. “We’re not opening anything.” Harlow slid the shard of bone into a smaller bag and tucked it into her coat. “We’re cataloguing a door.” Eva’s mouth quirked. “Your jaw has that line it gets when you want to kick a door.” Harlow ignored that and looked again at the dead man. Thumb scar. Verdigris ground under the nails. A knuckle bruised at an angle that spoke of one desperate punch. She crouched and looked under the tarp. One thing the stagers had missed: a strand of coarse black thread stuck to the floor, caught under the edge of the tarp. She picked it free. Strong, waxed. The kind used to stitch leather. “His satchel,” she murmured. “He travelled with one. It’s gone now.” Price glanced over. “How do you know that’s not from any old thing?” “You don’t spend all your time with wire and wood and bone and not stitch something for yourself. You make bags and pockets and discreet places to slide things in and out.” She held the thread up. “And when someone pulls that bag off fast, a stitch gives.” Eva’s eyes warmed behind the glass. “You’re getting good at this, Harlow.” “Not good enough.” Harlow tucked the thread into the bag with the token shard. She set the compass on the table a final time and watched the needle resist and then give, aligning to that dark seam along the rail. “Call the Museum and ask for restricted archives. Ask who enquired after Shade work this month. Ask who asked about compasses. Use my name if you must.” Eva’s hand moved to her hair, tucking that left curl, the nervous habit she couldn’t break. “They’ll pretend not to hear me. They dislike sharing. I’ll make them.” Price made a face. “And I’ll check pawnshops, then, shall I?” “Check service companies too.” Harlow pointed at the bolt. “Someone with a pass opened that door in the last day. You don’t buy those passes in a pawnshop. You sign them out.” He blew out through his nose. “So a city contractor with a shady side gig. That narrows us down to half of London.” “Start with Camden. And anyone assigned to abandoned infrastructure. Cross-check with anyone picked up near this station in the last month.” She straightened up and rolled her shoulders. The military brace found her spine without her thinking. The hum under the tiles crawled up through her boots. It had risen a degree as the room filled with movement and breath. Eva watched the compass in its plastic. The needle held to its choice. “If we follow that, you know where it leads.” Harlow rested her palm on the cool table and let the thought pass. “We’re not following. We’re documenting.” She glanced to the rail again and then back to the body. “We owe at least that.”