AI Do not step on that.
Quinn caught Rowe by the elbow before his boot smudged the chalk. He froze mid stride, eyes on the looping white sigil that ringed the body like a carelessly drawn halo. The draught carried the tang of copper and a sweet, acrid note that did not belong in any Underground station.
Tidy little trap, Rowe said, leaning back. He wore the nerves of a man who had downed quick coffee and skipped breakfast. Kids with candles. Urban explorers. We cuff them every few months.
Walk me through what you have, Quinn said.
Rowe gestured with the tip of his pen, careful to keep clear. Female, mid twenties by the look . No ID. Blonde, but the roots are dark. Fingernails clean, palms calloused. No defensive wounds. Strangulation, he said, making a grim circle at his own throat. Could be a ligature, could be hands. We will know once SOCO finishes.
Quinn stepped closer, boots crisp on grit. She kept her hands tucked in blue nitrile, her watch , the worn leather strap soft against her skin, ticking a steady metronome. The face stared up at them, lips parted, teeth showing faintly, eyes open, latticed with burst vessels. Bruising lay like a collar, but too even. The chalk had smeared where someone had dragged the line back into place. She crouched, joints creaking, and sniffed the air above the face. Copper stung her nostrils. Blood. Recent.
And no pooling, she said.
Rowe blinked. Dry rails. Clean ballast under the head. No seep. It was true. Blood had pooled nowhere, but copper lingered.
Night watch heard nothing from topside, Rowe went on. Grades on the door are scuffed to hell. Vandals. He raised his voice for the white suited SOCO kneeling near the feet. Patel , can you get the marks on the door for Quinn?
Already done, Patel said, brisk and thin behind the mask. Old, new, a mix. Different directions and heights. No single straight scrape like a pry bar. Foot traffic through the service access is recent. Five, six sets, maybe more.
Quinn scanned the old platform, now a staging ground of tripods, evidence tents, and the low hum of generators. There had been posters once, their ghosts patterning the walls in torn rectangles, dull under dust. Far down the line, the tunnel swallowed light and swallowed sound, a mouth of black. A lonely pigeon clucked from the ribbed ironwork above, feathers clinging to cobwebs that had gathered like dirty lace. It was not the Market night, not by her own count, but the place held a throb in the brick, a low hum under the soles that matched the watch tick-tock with an old memory.
She looked back at the chalk. The pattern was wrong, not a halo at all. The loops broke at the top. A square at the corner mocked any circle’s perfection. A child’s idea of a circle will always part when the chalk is short.
Rowe bent and squinted. You are going to say occult. I can feel it in my kneecaps.
You will wait until you feel it in your eyes, Quinn said. Where are the candles?
He grinned. Kids nick the candles when the party ends. Or the Es ran out.
The chalk runs interrupted, Quinn said. The pressure changes in the slate where the line thickens. They were not crouching, not for long. She brushed a gloved finger over a loop and lifted white dust that smelled faintly of bone. They were standing . They drew from a height close to mine, left handed.
Patel stood and padded over. Left handed, yes, he said, noticing how the tail flared. And bone chalk, not standard shop chalk. Why waste bone chalk on a laugh?
You tell me, Quinn said.
Rowe flicked the pen from one hand to the other. Look, Harlow, we are under Camden in a dead station. I have a dead girl and daft scribbles. The marks on her neck look even because whoever did it wrapped something soft and pulled steady. A scarf, an elasticated belt. She meets someone, they go at it, it goes too far. Panics, draws something he saw on Reddit, legs it. It fits.
What did he wrap, then? Quinn asked. No fibres on the skin, no pilling. The abrasions are smooth, too smooth for a ribbed scarf. An elastic belt would leave laddering and lash backs. Her hyoid sits intact, so the pressure was distributed . The bruising sits oddly deep, but spare at the front of the throat. Someone avoided the larynx. Controlled, neat.
You think killer’s trained, Rowe said.
Quinn looked at the girl’s hands. Nails chewed down, but clean. Under one nail, a smear of green-black. Not grime. Polished verdigris flaked against the soft crescent of nail bed. She slid a stick from her pocket and teased it free into a bag. And I think she held something that stained.
Patel turned, interest catching in the crisp angle of his head. There is more, he said. By the left hip. We bagged a small brass object. Inscribed. Verdigris present. It felt old.
Show me.
Patel signalled a partner, and a flat tray came across, evidence bag sealed, a label half scrawled. Inside, a small brass compass, the casing a dull greenish brown, the face etched with tight, even sigils that coiled like vines across bright metal. A curious little old brass compass, the kind you might trust on a fogged moor, if you did not care where it led. The needle did not point north. It sat steady at an angle that faced the brick wall that had once framed a track into something else.
This ring any bells for your witch clubs? Rowe said. He leaned close but did not touch.
Quinn studied the sigils. Her skin prickled. The designs were not inked, they were carved in clean cuts with a control you did not find in market tat. Her thumb moved over the bag’s plastic and the needle twitched, a hair, as if the object felt the study and did not like it. She knew a thing like this. She had held one once, longer ago than she liked to count.
It points to current, Patel said. Not magnetic , no. We passed a magnet across during the bagging and saw no response. The needle drifted to here when we moved it away. Back to the same brick.
Quinn looked at the wall it indicated. The arch there had been bricked in during the war. The bricks were newer than the soot-caked flank of the tunnel, red upon black, but damp had softened them to a bruise. At the bottom edge, mortar crumbled in a dot-dash of insect burrows. An old white paint letter peeked from under later grey, a ghost of words: VEI, cut short. She could fill the rest in.
Rowe followed her gaze. Secret door, he said with mock awe. We push a brick, find Narnia.
You logged this as an Underground property, Quinn said to Patel .
Transport gave permission to open the service access, nothing more, Patel said. We cut the lock. Inside to the platform only. The bricked arch is out of scope.
Not anymore.
Rowe folded arms. You are not seriously telling me we are about to punch through a wall in a condemned station because your spooky compass fancies it.
We are going to press the brickwork with a probe, Quinn said. The mortar falls away under finger to dust. If the other side is a service staircase, we call it in. If it is a cave full of teenagers, you can write your memo.
Patel already held a metal probe. He stepped to the base and pressed the point to a seam. Powder slid in a quiet trickle. He pressed higher, and the powder fell faster. He glanced at Quinn. Hollow.
Rowe sighed. Fine. But if a rat bites me, I am suing.
Quinn crouched again by the girl. The brass compass had been placed near the left hand, not dropped. The line of chalk had curved around it, a respect granted mid draw. Her watch ticked steady. DS Morris’s watch had ticked like this when he had raised his hand toward a line of chalk long ago, and then his hand had not come back. She closed her eyes to that room and opened them to this.
Patel pressed along the mortar. Some sections rang true, others gave in damp crumble. He inserted a flexible scope through a widened seam and slid it left to right. He frowned. Open space, he said. More than a stairwell. Tall. Lined brick. I see , it is odd. Cloth, hanging. Stitching across. Numbers painted. He adjusted the cord. Stalls, he said. Empty stalls.
Rowe snorted. Flea market for moles.
A hidden market, Quinn said.
Rowe cocked his head. You have tales for everything.
She nodded to the compass. That is not a prop from Carnaby Street. The girl had not found it in a costume trunk. The bone chalk is not Lidl. The bruising on her throat speaks of even pressure and calm hands. Where there is calm, there is intent. And where there is intent, there is planning. She had been somewhere before this. That brick does not hide teenagers. It hides a place that moves when it wants.
Patel looked at her. What do you want us to do?
Quinn stood. She ran the knuckle of her thumb along the tendons in her right hand until they eased. Open the arch, she said.
Rowe threw up his hands. For the record.
We will record plenty, Quinn said. Start at the base, ease the bricks. We control the collapse. And get extra lights. I do not walk into a fair in the dark.
They set to work with small chisels and care, a patient tap-tap that matched the tick-tock and the low hum underfoot. Each brick gave with a reluctant sigh. Dust coughed into their masks. As the gap grew, the smell changed. Not dust and rot of old London, not oil and train, but a sappy scent like cut ivy and a breath of stale spices. Rowe wrinkled his nose.
Smells like Christmas wrapped in wet dog, he said.
Quinn stepped back to the corpse as the men worked. She watched the skin at the girl’s lips. Dried. No slippage. The eyes had clouded but had not filmed fully. She checked the sclera and ran a light along the lids. The lids did not rise easily. The blood spatter on the cardigan’s sleeve lay in a fine mist at the elbow, not at the cuff. She angled the arm. The mist sat on the upper side. She turned to Rowe.
She died upright, Quinn said. The pooling on the back is absent because there is not enough. She was drained.
Drained, Rowe said, incredulous loud. Now we are chasing vampires.
No, Quinn said. It is neater than that. Drained by gravity without incision. Why bind a throat? She considered the arch, the compass, the brick that breathed a warmer air.
Patel half laughed, half choked as a brick jerked free, dislodging a cascade of mortar that hit his shoulder. He brushed dust aside. Nearly there.
Rowe peered in through the widening gap, then pulled back. I see bunting, he said, voice odd. Fabric. Handletters. Foreign script? And bones. Hanged. Decorative bones.
Quinn moved to the opening. She put the compass tray in Patel ’s free hand. Hold that.
The needle lifted a degree, eager as a hound. The tray trembled in Patel ’s grip. He steadied it and his eyes widened as he watched the needle’s hunger angle deeper. Rowe’s torch beam cut across. The light found cloth, stitched with careful symbols, sewn into a low roof of pennants that thickened air. Beyond, rows of tables stood draped in once-bright fabrics now greyed. Hooks hung empty. Chalk tags dangled from strings that swayed though no one brushed them.
Heard the stories, Rowe murmured despite himself. Camden within Camden. You think this is it?
Quinn did not answer. Her gaze tripped across the threshold. The floor inside did not carry the same dust. A skin of grime lay, yes, but prints disturbed it. Some small, some heavy. The pattern was wrong for police. The tread depth changed in arcs, as if weight shifted in hip-borne baskets. At the threshold, a smear of dark green had touched a brick and dried.
She pointed. Bag that, she said. She looked to the chalk on their side of the wall again. The line broke closest to the arch. Whoever drew had shifted focus, cut short, curved away. Not because the chalk ran out. Because the wall did something.
Tap-tap changed to crack-crack. The remaining bricks toppled into a slanted slope that led into the space like the lip of a mouth. Lights swung as extension cords paid out. The room beyond, longer than a platform and twice as wide, took the light and drank it down. The bunting and cloths took a weak glow, revealing colours in their bellies, purple and old red like bruises, gold thread tarnished to swamp.
Patel kept the compass steady. The needle did not point random. It fixed on a line to the back left corner, where a stall had been makeshifted from packing crates. A sign in neat hand read in English and something older: CONDUITS, MINOR AND MAJOR. Then, a price line in chalk that had been wiped away.
Quinn stepped through the arch. The air pressed in, thick with dust and a sickly sweetness not of rot, but of too many exotic things sealed together too long . Her torch found small bones sewn neatly into a curtain that framed the first stall. Bird bones. Finger bones, small as a child’s. They clicked against each other in a soft clack-clack as the draught tugged.
Patel followed. Rowe came after, muttering. We do not have jurisdiction for a bazaar from hell, Harlow.
We have a murder, Quinn said.
They moved between tables. Threads and scraps had fused to surfaces. A spilled bottle had etched a sticky circle on wood. She saw a pile of small vials in a basket. They were empty, stoppered, labelled in a tidy hand with words that turned wrong in the mouth. Fever-foil. Dream ash. Shade salt. She looked toward the back left. The stall marked CONDUITS had empty racks lined with grooves where brass had sat. She pictured the compass pressed there, needle quivering each time the wall pulsed .
She crouched and ran light along the baseboard. Scratches scored the wood in parallel, thin lines like comb teeth. Something was dragged along and removed quick, many times. A trade spot. Her beam found a coin under the lip, ivory white and carved on one side with a row of notches, on the other a crude eye.
She lifted it with tweezers, held to the light. A bone token. Once chewed smooth at the edge. A vendor’s pass.
Rowe whistled low. Well then.
Quinn opened her mouth, then shut it as a prickle rolled up her arms and lifted the hair on the back of her neck. The watch on her wrist ticked and, for half a breath, stumbled. The air pressed harder. The bunting rustled. Chalk labels swung.
Patel ’s voice had an edge. The needle moved.
Quinn turned. In Patel ’s hands, the compass spun a degree, then another, faster, then stilled with its point now aimed not at the stall, but at the bricked arch behind them, the side that still held the platform at its back. The bricks they had not yet loosened bulged. Mortar oozed in a wet line and split. A sound like slow breath came through stone.
Rowe stepped back hard, hip catching a table and sending a cascade of vials to the floor. Glass cracked, a thin high note that made the pigeons above flare and settle. His torch shook. You seeing that, he said, voice flat with fear he would never own.
Quinn lifted a hand, palm forward. Hold.
The bulge became a ripple. One brick slid forward like a shuddering tooth and dropped out, then another. Cold, wrong air poured through, smelling of night gardens and coin. Through the new dark slit, something moved, slow and deliberate, as if deciding where to put its foot .
The torch beams met the gap as a pale hand, too slender and too long, reached through and patted the air like a blind thing searching for the table’s edge. It touched the bone curtain and set it clicking.
Hello, said a voice behind the bricks, smooth, amused and nowhere, and the compass needle slammed hard against the glass and held pointing at Quinn.