Devraj Sinha
Part 1 — The Echo in the Dark
The gallery stood like a lone lantern in the sleeping street, its glass façade throwing pale squares of light onto wet cobblestones. Midnight rain had just stopped, leaving the air sharp with that metallic scent London kept after a downpour. Lena Brooks had been watching the place for an hour, hood drawn low, hands in her jacket pocket, the spray can warm against her palm.
She’d chosen this night carefully. No security guard on the roster—she’d checked the rota online—and the CCTV camera above the side alley had been broken for months. The target wasn’t the art inside. It was the north wall of the ground floor, a slab of untouched white begging for her tag. Lena’s street name, Rook, would claim it by sunrise.
She moved like a shadow along the alley, pushing against the service door until the cheap lock gave way. The gallery smelled of varnish and money—the kind of air-conditioned chill that clung to rich people’s spaces. Her trainers squeaked once on the polished floor. She froze, listening. Nothing but the hum of the dehumidifiers.
Then came the voices.
She’d just reached the stairwell when she heard them, drifting down from the upper gallery. A man’s voice first, low and urgent, like someone pleading to be believed. The second voice—also male—was sharper, metallic, every word clipped clean. She couldn’t make out the sentences, but the rhythm told her everything: the first man explaining, the second cutting him down.
A pause. Then the sharp voice said something Lena caught in full:
“You’ve run out of time, Thomas.”
The name hung in the air like the smell of static before lightning.
A muffled movement—furniture shifting—and then a gunshot split the gallery in half.
Lena’s body reacted before her mind did. She ducked into the shadow beneath the staircase, hands clamped over her mouth. Her heartbeat was so loud she was sure it would give her away. Footsteps above—measured, unhurried—came to the top of the stairs. She pressed herself flatter against the wall.
The figure appeared only briefly, a silhouette against the spill of light from the upper floor. A long coat, gloves, and something over the face—a mask, but not the carnival kind. It had a featureless oval front, smooth and pale, as if someone had scrubbed away human identity.
And then… the voice again.
“Not a sound.”
She knew he wasn’t talking to her; the voice was too calm, almost mechanical, like it was addressing someone else entirely. Yet the sound drilled into her ears, every syllable burning itself into memory. She didn’t just hear it—she mapped it, the pitch, the tone, the faint rasp at the edges.
The man—if it was a man—walked past her hiding place without slowing, pushed through the side door, and was gone.
Lena stayed frozen until the only sound left was the steady drip of rainwater from the awning outside. When she finally moved, her knees felt like wire about to snap.
Upstairs, the gallery’s second floor was a wreck of perfect silence. Thomas—whoever he had been—was slumped in a leather armchair facing a half-finished display wall. The bullet wound was neat, a single point of red above his collarbone. His eyes were still open, catching the reflection of the recessed lights overhead.
Lena backed away, every step measured, afraid the stillness might break if she moved too quickly.
She didn’t notice the security camera in the corner until it blinked once, a dying red dot. Dead or not, it was still aimed directly at her.
By the time she reached her flat in Wapping, the image of that mask had stitched itself into the back of her eyelids. She stood under the shower for twenty minutes, as if hot water could erase sound from memory. But the voice—the one word Thomas and that final, chilling “Not a sound”—played in loops, perfect and unchanged.
She tried to sleep. Failed.
At 4:12 a.m., a siren screamed past her building. By 6:00, her phone was buzzing on the nightstand. She ignored the first three calls, answered the fourth.
“Lena Brooks?” The voice was a woman’s—clipped, professional, but carrying the weight of too many sleepless nights. “Detective Inspector Maya Clarke, Metropolitan Police. I need you to come in.”
Lena sat up, cold despite the blanket. “What for?”
“We have you on camera at the Tateford Gallery last night.” Clarke didn’t raise her voice. “We also have a dead man in the same room.”
“I didn’t—”
“We’ll talk when you get here. And Lena?” Clarke’s tone shifted, almost imperceptibly. “Bring whatever you remember. Even the things you don’t think matter.”
The line went dead.
Lena stared at the phone. Outside, the city was waking—buses groaning down wet streets, footsteps on pavements, the smell of coffee and diesel drifting through her open window. She’d been caught before, small-time stuff—trespass, graffiti—but this was different. This was the kind of trouble that didn’t wash off.
She thought about lying. About saying she hadn’t seen anything. But the voice wouldn’t let her. It was there, etched with a precision she couldn’t explain, the way some people remembered faces and she remembered sounds.
She didn’t know it yet, but that gift—her curse—was about to make her the most valuable, and the most hunted, witness in London.
Part 2 — The Shape of a Voice
The interview room was a rectangle of tired blue paint and fluorescent light, the kind of place where truth looked smaller than it felt. A camera lurked high in the corner, red dot steady. A kettle hummed on a metal trolley beside a stack of paper cups that smelled vaguely of cardboard. Lena sat with her hands under her thighs to stop them shaking. Across the table, Detective Inspector Maya Clarke flipped open a thin file and studied her as if the answers might be written on Lena’s face.
“You’re not under arrest,” Clarke said, voice low, measured. “You’re here as a witness. I’m recording this. State your name for the audio.”
“Lena Brooks,” she said. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
“Time is 06:52. Detective Inspector Maya Clarke present with… Detective Sergeant Callum Rees.” The man in the corner raised a hand, offered a half-smile, and resumed tapping on a tablet.
Clarke slid a glossy print across the table. A man’s face, fifty-something, strong nose, that cultivated carelessness rich men wore like aftershave. “Thomas Hale,” Clarke said. “Co-owner, Tateford Gallery. Shot once at close range between 23:56 and 00:08, according to neighbours and the ME’s early estimate. You entered the building at approximately 23:31 via a compromised service door.”
“I didn’t touch him,” Lena said. “I didn’t even go near him until—after.”
“Tell me about the voices.”
Lena’s mouth was dry. She could still hear them in her head, clear as street signs. “Two men. One pleading, one… clean. Like a knife. The second one said, ‘You’ve run out of time, Thomas.’ And later—down the stairs—‘Not a sound.’”
Clarke didn’t look surprised. “Anything else?”
“It wasn’t just the words,” Lena said. “There was a… an undernote. Like when a speaker’s on and there’s a faint hum. A buzz. And the consonants were clipped at the end. Every ‘t’, every ‘k’—cut off, perfect. People don’t normally talk like that.”
Clarke glanced at Rees, then back at Lena. “You said in the lobby you have a good ear.”
Lena lifted a shoulder. “I remember things I hear. Some people remember faces. I remember sounds.”
Clarke leaned in, elbows on the table, chin on her knuckles. “Humour me. Can you repeat what you heard—as it sounded?”
Lena looked at the camera light, then at the table. It wasn’t a trick; it was a map she could unfold. She exhaled slowly, let the voice unfurl from the back of her throat, narrowing the vowels, trimming the ends, adding just enough air to graze each word. When she spoke, the room chilled a degree.
“You’ve run out of time, Thomas.”
Rees stopped tapping. Clarke’s eyes flicked to the recorder as if checking it hadn’t grown teeth.
“And the other line?” Clarke asked softly.
“Not a sound.”
The hum of the fluorescent bars seemed louder afterwards. Clarke sat back, expression unreadable, but something like interest now warmed the room.
“We’re going to do something slightly unusual,” she said. “We’ll have you listen to a few voices. People in Mr. Hale’s orbit. You’re not picking a line-up; we just want to know if anything sits near what you heard.”
Rees pushed a slim black speaker toward the centre of the table and paired it with his tablet. The first clip was a radio interview: a man talking about contemporary collections and democratising taste. Smooth, public-school vowels. “Elliot Ward,” Clarke said. “Mr. Hale’s business partner. They had… creative differences.”
“Not him,” Lena said immediately. “Too round. His vowels slide. Last night’s voice snaps.”
Second clip: a woman with a smoker’s laugh describing conservation varnishes. “That’s Dr. Katya Solovey,” Clarke said. “Restoration consultant. Don’t let the varnish talk fool you. She could bankrupt a country with a phone call.”
“Not her,” Lena said. “And it wasn’t a woman.”
Third clip: security contractor, clipped Northern edge, bored and practical. “Ray Tunstall. Installed the new cameras at Tateford. We’ve not recovered the server yet. Thief or murderer took it.”
“Not him. He chews the ends of words. The one I heard—neat. Almost like he was trying to be a machine.”
Rees scrolled. Clarke’s pen clicked, stopped. “Last one for now. Father Michael Quinn. Runs a youth charity—Bridgehouse. Mr. Hale chaired a fundraiser last month.”
A warm male voice filled the room, lilting in places, rhythm easy. “…we ask not for pity, but for partnership. These kids remind us that the city’s heart is large enough for all of us—if we build the bridges.”
“Not him,” Lena said, though she frowned. “He breathes on the commas. It’s soft. The voice last night had barely any breath. Like the air was controlled.”
Clarke nodded slowly, making a note. “We’ll give these to Audio Forensics. There’s a possibility a device was involved. Modulated, masked.” She looked up. “You said you saw a mask?”
“Featureless,” Lena said. “Oval. White. No eyeholes I could see. Like a blank face.”
“Terrific,” Rees muttered. “Like a nightmare IKEA.”
Clarke shot him a look. To Lena: “Anything else?”
Lena hesitated. The thing she wasn’t sure counted. “He didn’t hurry. The footsteps. No rush. And he didn’t smell like anything. Not sweat, not smoke, not booze. Just—nothing. Like the air around him didn’t stick.”
Clarke’s pen stopped. “People who plan,” she said. “They erase. Gloves, coat, no aftershave. You’re doing well, Lena.”
A knock at the door interrupted them. A uniform poked his head in. “Ma’am? The… priest is here. For the witness.”
Clarke checked the file. “You listed a Father Quinn as your contact.”
Lena startled. “I didn’t—oh. He’s on the school forms at Harbour House. In case my mum—” She stopped.
Clarke’s voice softened. “It’s okay.” To the door: “Two minutes.”
When Father Michael Quinn came in, the room adjusted to accommodate him without meaning to. He was late-forties, maybe, handsome in the way kindness sometimes made people handsome. Clean black shirt, collar neat. His eyes went to Lena first.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and the warmth in his tone could have melted ice. “They told me you’d had a fright.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
Clarke stood. “We’re wrapping for now, Father. Ms. Brooks is a witness in a homicide. I’ll want to speak with her again today.”
“Of course,” Quinn said. He turned back to Lena. “We’ll get some breakfast into you, yes? Then we’ll talk.”
The way he said “we’ll” had a gentle authority, a promise bundled into a plan. Lena nodded, grateful for it and irritated by her own gratitude.
As they stepped into the corridor, Clarke caught up, handing Lena a card. “That’s me,” she said. “Call if anything surfaces. Even small. Especially small.” She lowered her voice. “I’m going to assign a car near where you live—discreetly. Don’t advertise that you were at the gallery. No posts, no tags.”
Lena managed a smile. “I don’t exactly have fans.”
“Everyone has an audience,” Clarke said. “We just don’t always know where they’re sitting.”
The station’s morning smelled of bleach and tired coffee. A cleaner pushed a trolley past, wheels squeaking. A corkboard near the exit sagged under laminated posters: bike theft, domestic abuse helpline, a flyer for a charity art auction with Thomas Hale’s face smiling too confidently above the words City Hearts Gala. Someone had inked horns on him with a biro.
Outside, the sky wore that diluted grey London favoured between showers. Quinn steered Lena toward a small café two doors down, the kind that still made tea in pots. “Food first,” he said. “Then a plan.”
They took a corner table. Quinn ordered toast and eggs for her, something porridge-like for himself. He said little while she ate, just sat, present without pressure. When he finally spoke, it was to the plate rather than her. “You don’t have to tell me what happened. But if you want to, I am here. Confession is a sacrament, but so is silence.”
“I heard him die,” Lena said, surprising herself. “I heard the man who did it.”
Quinn’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second, a muscle jumping near his ear. It was so slight Lena would have missed it if she weren’t built for noticing what most people didn’t. He placed a hand near, not on, her wrist. “Then we will be careful,” he said. “And we will tell the truth to those who can use it.”
Her phone buzzed on the table. Unknown number. Her insides went cold.
“Don’t,” Quinn said quietly.
“It might be Clarke,” Lena said, though she knew it wasn’t; Clarke’s card had a number she’d already saved. She hesitated, then swiped to open. A voice note waited, ten seconds long. Her thumb hovered. She pressed play.
The café’s clatter faded in her head. The same clean edges, the consonants shaved down to the bone, the faint electronic undernote. The voice from the gallery, intimate as breath against her ear.
“Good girl, Rook,” it said. “Not a sound.”
Lena’s hand shook. Across from her, Father Quinn’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes did—like a door shutting softly in a far room.
Outside, a bus sighed at the stop. Inside, her phone buzzed again. Another voice note, shorter this time. She didn’t press play. She didn’t need to. The first message had told her everything she didn’t want to know.
Whoever had killed Thomas Hale not only knew what she’d heard.
He knew who she was. And he was already inside her life.
Part 3 — The Listener’s Trap
Lena’s hand was still on the phone when Quinn reached over, slid it toward himself, and killed the screen with a firm tap. “Don’t play the second one,” he said, tone more command than advice. “If it’s the same voice, you’ll only be feeding it space in your head.”
But the space was already there. The first message—Good girl, Rook—sat in her mind like a drop of ink in water, spreading dark tendrils through every thought.
“How do they know—” she started.
“Your tag,” Quinn interrupted. “You’ve been using it for years. If they saw you at the gallery, or on any camera, they’ll have made the connection. Rook is not hard to find if someone is looking hard enough.”
Lena pushed her plate away. “Then they’re coming for me.”
“They’ve already come,” Quinn said. He slid the phone back to her. “What matters now is what you do next. You can run and make yourself smaller, or you can stand with people who know how to fight shadows.”
She hated the way his words curled into her, wrapping themselves around her fear. “You mean you?”
He gave a small smile. “Me. And perhaps Inspector Clarke, if you let her in.”
Before she could answer, the café door chimed and a gust of damp air swept in. A man in a brown courier jacket stepped inside, scanning the tables. When his eyes landed on her, he approached without hesitation.
“Delivery for Lena Brooks,” he said.
“I didn’t order—”
He set a small, flat cardboard box on the table, about the size of a book, and turned to leave. No clipboard, no signature. By the time she looked toward the door, he was gone.
Quinn’s hand was already on the box. “May I?”
She nodded. He slit the tape with a butter knife, lifted the lid. Inside, cushioned in shredded brown paper, was a single cassette tape in a clear plastic case. A label on it, typewritten: LISTEN ALONE.
Lena’s throat tightened. “Who even uses tapes anymore?”
“People who don’t want a digital trail,” Quinn said. He turned the case over—no markings, no return address.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, a text from Clarke:
Found something. Need to see you at the station. Now.
She typed back before she could second-guess herself: Got a package. Cassette tape. Hand-delivered. No ID.
The reply came in seconds: Don’t open. Bring it in.
Clarke met them at the station’s rear entrance, coat collar up against the drizzle. “Inside,” she said, leading them past the reception desk and through a coded door into the evidence intake room.
An officer in gloves took the box, bagged it, and vanished into the back. Clarke turned to Lena. “Tell me exactly how it arrived.”
Lena recounted the courier’s arrival, his vanishing act. Clarke listened without interruption, eyes narrowing. “We’ll run prints, but I’m not hopeful. The tape’s the interesting part.”
“Interesting how?” Lena asked.
“We pulled the gallery’s partial CCTV feed from across the street,” Clarke said. “Your masked man leaves the building at 00:05. Two minutes later, a dark van pulls into the alley, no plates, parks for thirty seconds, then drives away. Same van was outside this café ten minutes ago.”
“So he’s watching me,” Lena said.
“Not just watching,” Clarke corrected. “Testing. That tape’s bait. He wants to see what you’ll do—whether you’ll share it, or keep it to yourself.”
Lena’s stomach dropped. “If I’d listened alone—”
“Then you’d be exactly where he wants you,” Clarke said. “Alone in his narrative.”
She led Lena into the interview room again, but this time the air felt charged, the fluorescent hum too loud. On the table sat a small portable tape player. Clarke slipped on gloves, popped the cassette in, pressed play.
A hiss filled the room, then silence. A chair scraped faintly, somewhere far away.
Then the voice:
“Lena. You hear well, but do you see? Close your eyes. Picture the wall you wanted to paint. North side. White. Waiting. I left you something there.”
Silence again, for a long twenty seconds. Then:
“Come before the rain, or it washes away.”
The tape clicked off.
Clarke ejected it, slid it into an evidence bag. “He’s drawing you out,” she said. “This is control theatre—he wants you to follow instructions so he can measure you.”
Lena felt heat rise in her chest. “If he’s leaving something, it could be—”
“Or it could be a bullet in your back,” Clarke cut in. “You’re not going alone.”
By noon, Lena was crouched behind a parked police car across from Tateford Gallery, drizzle threading her hair. Clarke stood beside her, Rees on the other side with a long-lens camera. The street was quiet except for a cyclist passing with a plastic crate of bread.
The gallery’s north wall loomed, pale against the brick, a faint patina of moisture from the morning rain. From here, Lena couldn’t see anything unusual.
“On my mark,” Clarke said. “You approach. Rees and I cover. Keep your hands visible. If anything looks off, you stop. Understood?”
Lena nodded.
She stepped out, shoes slapping the wet pavement. The wall was ten metres away, then five. She scanned it—no marks, no packages—until her eyes found it: a perfect black circle, spray-painted at chest height. Inside the circle, a smaller red dot.
She moved closer. It wasn’t paint. It was blood.
Her breath caught. Something was tucked behind a loose brick below the mark. She pulled it free—a Polaroid photo, wrapped in plastic to keep it dry.
The picture showed her, standing in the gallery stairwell last night, half-hidden in shadow. The angle was low, as if taken from the floor above.
She turned it over. In neat, blocky handwriting:
YOU’RE NEXT, LISTENER.
If you want, I can continue with Part 4, where the hunter-versus-prey game escalates, and Clarke realises the killer has been inside the investigation from the start. That’s where the paranoia really kicks in.
Part 4 — The Man in the Choir
The photo sat in the middle of the interview room table like a slow leak in the air. Clarke stared at it for a long time, not touching, her thumb tapping a silent metronome on the table’s edge. Rees leaned against the wall, arms folded, the kind of stillness that comes when your mind is running hot.
Lena couldn’t stop looking at her own eyes in the Polaroid. They looked wider than she remembered, but it wasn’t fear she saw—it was awareness, the second before flight. She’d been spotted.
Clarke finally broke the silence. “This wasn’t just last night. This was taken from a position inside the gallery. Whoever took it was either already there before you came in… or was moving freely through the place.”
“That means security let them in?” Rees said.
“Or they were security,” Clarke replied. “Or Hale himself opened the door.”
Lena tore her eyes away from the photo. “And now they’re saying I’m next.”
Clarke’s gaze shifted to her. “Which is exactly what they want you to believe. Fear narrows vision. We keep your field wide.” She pushed the photo into an evidence bag, sealed it with a snap. “But it tells us something important—he’s watching from close quarters. He’s not afraid of proximity.”
Rees tilted his head. “Could be someone in the gallery’s regular circle. Staff, partners, artists.”
Clarke nodded. “And now we cross-reference with anyone who’s been near our witness in the last twenty-four hours.”
Lena’s mind flicked back—Quinn in the café, the courier in the jacket, the strangers on the street who suddenly didn’t feel like strangers.
The list Clarke pulled together that afternoon was short but ugly:
- Elliot Ward – last seen arguing with Hale over missing funds.
- Ray Tunstall – on-site two days before the murder, “repairing” security.
- Father Michael Quinn – present at Lena’s initial statement, listed as her emergency contact.
- Two unnamed figures from CCTV stills near her flat—both wearing hats, both avoiding camera angles like it was an art.
“This one,” Clarke said, tapping Quinn’s name, “interests me. Not because I think he pulled the trigger, but because proximity is his trade. People open up around priests. They confess, they trust. Which makes him a perfect ear for someone else’s voice.”
Lena frowned. “You think he’s feeding information to the killer?”
“I think,” Clarke said slowly, “we don’t know who’s feeding who. But the fastest way to a masked man is through his unmasked contacts.”
That evening, Clarke suggested something Lena wasn’t sure she could stomach: a controlled meet. They’d lure Quinn into a setting where they could observe him, see who approached him, maybe catch the masked man’s scent.
The location Clarke picked wasn’t a police station or a safe house—it was St. Jude’s Church in Holborn, where Quinn’s choir was rehearsing for Sunday service.
“Why there?” Lena asked as they pulled up.
“Because people drop their guard in spaces they believe belong to them,” Clarke said, stepping out into the drizzle. “And if our man is using Quinn, he may be here too, listening from the back pew.”
Inside, the church smelled of dust and candle wax, the high ceiling carrying the echo of voices like water in a cave. The choir was mid-hymn, Quinn at the front, conducting with easy grace.
Clarke and Rees took positions at opposite aisles. Lena slid into a pew near the centre, hood down, pretending to study the hymn sheet someone had left behind.
Quinn’s voice was strong, warm, but Lena wasn’t listening to the music—she was scanning for the kind of stillness she’d felt in the gallery. And then she saw him.
Back pew, far right. Coat collar high, hands folded. Not masked now, but the stillness was the same: too even, like he’d practiced being invisible.
Halfway through the next hymn, Quinn glanced toward the back pew—just for a second—and the man nodded once.
Lena’s skin prickled. She leaned forward, catching Clarke’s eye across the aisle. Clarke gave the smallest nod, touched her earpiece. Rees slipped out the side aisle, circling behind.
But when the hymn ended and the congregation shuffled their music, the man in the back pew was gone.
Outside, the rain had picked up, the streetlights slicing it into silver needles. Rees jogged back to them, jaw tight. “Lost him in the alley. No CCTV on that side of the block.”
“Of course,” Clarke muttered. She looked at Lena. “But you saw him. That’s something. Can you describe him?”
“Average height, pale coat, gloves,” Lena said. “And when he nodded at Quinn… it was like a signal. Not friendly. More like: ‘I’ve done my part. Now you do yours.’”
Clarke looked back at the church door, where Quinn was now shaking hands with parishioners. “We keep him close. But quietly.”
Lena shivered, though the rain hadn’t touched her. Somewhere out there, the man in the coat was already planning the next move. And she had the creeping sense that Quinn knew exactly what that move would be.
If you want, I can take Part 5 into the first major confrontation—where the killer finally makes direct, physical contact with Lena, and Clarke realises the case is no longer just about catching him, but surviving him. That would close the first act with a serious cliffhanger.
Part 5 — Contact
The night after the choir rehearsal, Clarke insisted Lena stay in a safe house—a converted flat above a closed bakery in Shoreditch. Two locks on the door, reinforced windows, unmarked from the street. Clarke’s voice had been matter-of-fact when she explained the rules:
- Don’t open the door unless you hear her voice and see her face.
- Don’t use social media, calls, or texts except on the secure phone she gave her.
- If anything feels wrong—even the smallest thing—call, don’t move, wait.
Lena followed the first two rules. The third, she would break before sunrise.
It was 3:07 a.m. when she woke. Not to a sound, but to the absence of one—the low, constant hum of the bakery’s fridge downstairs was gone. The silence was heavy, padded, unnatural. She reached for the secure phone, but something made her stop.
A faint knock. Not on the door—on the wall. Three taps, a pause, then two more.
She swung her legs out of bed, bare feet on the cold floorboards. The knock came again, from the wall beside the kitchen window. She crossed the small room, pulled the curtain back a fraction.
The alley outside was drowned in shadow. Nothing moved.
She should have called Clarke. Instead, she unlocked the window and leaned closer, her breath fogging the glass. That’s when she saw it—a square of white card taped to the pane from the outside.
She peeled it away. On the back, in the same blocky handwriting from the Polaroid:
LISTEN.
And beneath it, a small black audio recorder, the kind reporters used.
Her pulse thudded. She pressed play.
“Three minutes. No more. Meet me outside the bakery’s rear door. Alone.”
The voice—that voice—slid into her head like a blade between ribs.
She told herself she was just going to look. That she’d keep the door closed, check the alley from the safety of the frame. But the locks clicked open under her hand before she’d made the decision.
The alley was colder than she expected, wet brick smell rising around her. Light from a distant streetlamp cut a thin triangle across the far end.
And there he was. Not masked now, not fully—hood up, a scarf pulled high over his face, leaving only the eyes visible. They were pale, grey-blue, the kind that didn’t hold warmth.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Lena said, hating how thin her voice sounded.
“I’m always where I’m not supposed to be,” he replied. The consonants were perfect, surgical, the faint undernote vibrating against her skin. “And so are you.”
He stepped closer, slow, unhurried.
“You have something rare,” he went on. “You hear like no one else. You map sound. That makes you dangerous to people like me.”
“Then why not kill me now?” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt.
His eyes crinkled faintly above the scarf. “Because sometimes the most dangerous pieces… belong on the board. Until they don’t.”
Before she could answer, he reached into his coat and held out a small velvet pouch. “For you.”
She didn’t take it. “What’s in it?”
“Proof,” he said. “That Hale’s death wasn’t the first move.”
Something shifted behind him—a shadow peeling away from the darker wall. Clarke. Gun up, silent.
The man’s eyes flicked past Lena, saw her, and in that instant the stillness broke. He shoved the pouch into Lena’s hand and stepped back into the darkness, vanishing into the corner of the alley like he’d been practising for years.
Clarke was at Lena’s side in seconds. “What the hell did I tell you about—” She stopped when she saw Lena’s face, the pouch clenched in her fist. “What is that?”
Lena opened it. Inside was a single spent bullet casing, polished until it gleamed. Around its rim, etched in neat letters:
F.M.Q.
Clarke’s jaw tightened. “Father Michael Quinn.”
The safe house didn’t feel safe anymore.
If you like, I can take Part 6 into the point where Clarke confronts Quinn, and the investigation rips open an entirely different layer of betrayal—shifting the story into a much more dangerous territory. That’s where the second act truly begins.
Part 6 — The Shepherd’s Shadow
Clarke didn’t waste time. By mid-morning, Quinn was in an interview room at the station, sitting with the composure of a man who believed walls bent around him rather than enclosed him. He wore the same neat black shirt and collar, but his jacket hung over the back of his chair, a casual touch that seemed calculated.
The bullet casing sat in the centre of the table, sealed in an evidence bag. Its polished surface caught the light, the engraved letters F.M.Q. flashing like a tiny signal. Quinn’s gaze dropped to it only once, and then moved back to Clarke.
“Tell me,” Clarke began, “why would a casing with your initials be delivered to my witness by a masked man linked to Thomas Hale’s murder?”
Quinn’s expression was somewhere between amusement and mild disappointment. “Initials can be… misleading, Inspector. They are hardly proof of anything.”
“They’re proof someone wants me looking at you,” Clarke said. “And I’m not in the habit of ignoring invitations.”
Quinn folded his hands. “Then perhaps they want you distracted. Chasing priests while the real wolves eat well.”
From her seat at the far end, Lena watched him closely. Every word was warm, even the evasions, but it was the rhythm that caught her—the way he slowed on key phrases, gave space for his listener to step into the pause. It was almost… instructional.
“You were at the gallery fundraiser three weeks ago,” Clarke continued. “You were in the same room as Thomas Hale and Elliot Ward. And you chaired a committee that handled over two million pounds in art donations last year. That’s more than enough motive for someone in your circle to silence a man asking questions.”
Quinn leaned back, a faint creak from the chair. “You’re suggesting I shot Thomas Hale in his own gallery?”
“I’m suggesting,” Clarke said, “that you have access. And access gets people killed.”
When the interview ended, Clarke pulled Lena aside in the corridor. “He’s not rattled. That tells me one of two things: either he’s clean, or he’s buried deep enough to believe we can’t touch him.”
“Or,” Lena said quietly, “he thinks the man in the mask is working for him.”
Clarke looked at her. “You really think that?”
“I think…” Lena hesitated. “The way they nodded in the church. It wasn’t strangers recognising each other. It was an understanding.”
By late afternoon, Clarke had a plan. Not to arrest Quinn—that would never stick without more—but to put him in a place where the masked man would have to reveal himself if they were connected.
The bait would be Lena.
It would happen that night at Bridgehouse, the youth charity’s headquarters, during an open community dinner Quinn hosted every month. Lena would arrive unexpectedly, carrying a decoy package marked Evidence — Private, in plain view. Clarke and Rees would be embedded among the guests, plainclothes, eyes on every entrance.
Bridgehouse smelled of warm bread and fresh paint. Long tables were set with mismatched crockery, the chatter of volunteers and street kids filling the hall. Quinn moved between groups like a conductor, his hand on shoulders, his smile perfectly tuned to each face.
Lena stepped through the door, the decoy package under her arm. Quinn saw her, and his smile widened just enough to acknowledge her without making her the centre of attention.
“Good to see you,” he said. “Join us. There’s food.”
“I can’t stay long,” Lena replied, letting the package shift in her arms so its label was visible. She caught a flicker in Quinn’s eyes—tiny, but there.
From the corner of her vision, she saw Rees lean forward slightly, hand near his concealed radio. Clarke was further back, pretending to check her phone.
Dinner passed without incident—until the lights flickered. Just once, long enough for every head to lift. When they came back on, the chair beside Lena was occupied.
The man in the scarf. Pale eyes. Close enough she could smell rain on his coat.
“Hello, listener,” he murmured.
Her heart thudded. She didn’t turn to Clarke. She didn’t move at all.
“You’ve brought me something,” he said, glancing at the package. “I’ll take it now.”
And then, with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes, he added:
“Or I take you instead.”
If you want, I can push Part 7 into the break point where the dinner turns into a lockdown, the masked man makes his first violent move in public, and Lena realises someone inside the police has been feeding him her location. That would be the start of the real betrayal arc.
Part 7 — The Lockdown
For a second, the noise of the hall seemed to thin, as though the air between Lena and the man in the scarf had stolen the sound from the room. His eyes were fixed on the package in her arms, the pale grey-blue irises steady, unblinking.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Lena said under her breath.
“I go everywhere I’m not supposed to,” he murmured back, echoing his line from the alley like a private joke. “But you… you walk right into my hands.”
A chair scraped loudly somewhere behind them. Clarke was moving. Lena didn’t look—didn’t dare give him that cue—but she could feel the change in the room, the way tension spreads like ink in water.
He placed a gloved hand lightly on the table between them, fingers long and still. “Slide it over,” he said, nodding toward the package. “No fuss. We both leave with our skins intact.”
“I don’t have it for you,” Lena whispered.
He tilted his head slightly, like she’d just spoken in a language he didn’t care to learn. “Then I take you instead.”
Before Lena could react, his hand shot forward—not at her, but at the leg of her chair, dragging it sideways just enough to unbalance her. The package slid from her grip onto the floor.
That was all Clarke needed.
“Police! Everyone stay seated!” Her voice cracked across the hall like a whip, the metallic click of her firearm following an instant later. Rees was already moving in from the far side, hand to his ear, signalling the door team.
But the man didn’t run toward the exits. Instead, he reached down, scooped up the package, and in one clean motion, vaulted over the table into the gap between two startled volunteers. He was halfway to the kitchen doors before Rees closed the distance.
Then the lights died completely.
Shouts filled the dark—volunteers, kids, chairs tipping. Lena dropped to the floor instinctively, heart hammering in her throat. She heard the heavy double doors slam, then the metallic scrape of a bolt shooting home.
The emergency lights flickered on, pale red glows casting long shadows. Clarke was at Lena’s side in a heartbeat. “Are you hurt?”
“No—” Lena’s voice shook. “He locked himself in the kitchen.”
From the other side of the bolted doors came the sound of breaking glass, the hollow thump of something heavy hitting the floor, and then… silence.
Rees and another officer forced the doors open. The kitchen was empty, one of the rear windows shattered, cold night air spilling in. On the counter, the package sat untouched, the tape slit neatly.
Inside wasn’t evidence.
It was a photograph.
Lena herself, asleep in the safe house bed, hair spread across the pillow.
They moved her out within minutes, Clarke’s hand firm on her shoulder all the way to the unmarked car waiting outside. The streets of Shoreditch blurred past, neon and rain smeared into ribbons.
In the back seat, Lena couldn’t stop staring at the photo. “He was in the room,” she said quietly. “While I was sleeping.”
Clarke didn’t answer immediately. When she did, her voice was tighter than Lena had ever heard it. “He’s getting your locations faster than I can set them. Which means…” She let the sentence hang.
“Which means someone’s telling him,” Lena finished for her.
Rees met Clarke’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Inside the department?”
Clarke’s jaw worked. “Inside my team.”
Back at the station, Clarke didn’t take Lena to an interview room. She took her to the evidence lab, where the bullet casing still sat under a lamp. “F.M.Q.,” she read aloud again. “It’s a message, but not just initials. It’s a key. I think we’ve been reading it wrong.”
“How?” Lena asked.
Clarke tapped the letters. “Not ‘Father Michael Quinn.’ Could be a code. Dates. Locations. Or an abbreviation only a small circle understands.”
Lena’s mind flicked back to the choir, the nod, the rhythm of Quinn’s speech. “Then he knows exactly what it means. And he’s not telling you.”
“That’s about to change,” Clarke said, heading for the door. “We’re bringing him in again—tonight.”
But as they stepped into the corridor, a uniformed officer intercepted them, holding an evidence bag. Inside was a plain white envelope.
“Just came for you, DI Clarke,” the officer said.
Clarke opened it, read the single sheet inside, and went still.
STOP HUNTING HIM. OR THE NEXT PICTURE IS YOU.
The handwriting was the same blocky print from the Polaroid and the safe house photo. Only this time, beneath the words, was a perfect black circle with a single red dot in the centre.
Lena’s voice was barely a whisper. “That’s what was on the gallery wall.”
Clarke folded the paper slowly, as if buying herself seconds. “Then he’s telling us something very simple,” she said.
“What?”
“That the game isn’t about Hale anymore. It’s about you.”
If you want, I can take Part 8 into the moment where Clarke sets a counter-trap using Lena as the visible bait in a public location—only for the killer to turn the entire setup against them in front of witnesses. This would be the point where the cat-and-mouse flips.
Part 8 — The Counterfeit Net
By the following afternoon, Clarke had made her decision: they would flip the hunt. If the man in the scarf wanted Lena in public, then they’d give him Lena in public—but on Clarke’s terms.
The location had to be open enough for the killer to approach, but contained enough for her team to lock down instantly. She chose Chancery Arcade, a covered Victorian shopping passage with two street entrances, one fire exit, and a security office positioned dead centre. The shops closed early on weekdays; at seven p.m., the arcade would be half-lit, half-empty, perfect for a controlled snare.
Lena would walk through carrying a new decoy—a weathered leather satchel marked Case Files: Audio Analysis. The plan was simple: the satchel would draw the killer in, Clarke’s plainclothes team would close in from both ends, and Rees would be in the security office to cut the gates and seal him inside.
Simple.
The drizzle was steady as Lena stepped into the arcade’s tiled corridor that evening. Her footsteps clicked off the high glass ceiling, the sound both amplifying and trapping her inside it. Shop shutters were down, their windows dark except for one—the lone café still open at the far end, its yellow glow spilling into the passage.
She kept her pace steady, satchel hanging at her side, eyes forward. She knew Clarke was somewhere behind her, knew Rees was watching through grainy black-and-white feeds. Still, the space felt too large, too quiet.
Halfway down, a figure peeled out from a shadowed alcove between shops. Not masked, but the hood and scarf were there, the same pale eyes. He walked toward her without hesitation, as though the arcade belonged to him.
“You bring me such thoughtful gifts,” he said.
Her voice didn’t shake this time. “It’s empty.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “That’s not the point.”
From her earpiece, Clarke’s low voice: Hold him there. We’re closing.
The man stopped three steps from her, head tilting just enough to study her face. “You’ve been listening well,” he said. “But you’re still hearing only what I let you.”
He shifted his weight, and Lena caught the faintest sound—a click, metal on metal—coming from beneath his coat.
From the café end, two plainclothes officers moved in, slow and deliberate. Clarke advanced from behind, hand near her jacket. The arcade’s atmosphere changed, the invisible geometry of the space tightening around them.
The man smiled faintly. “Do you really think I walked in without knowing the exits?”
From the corner of her eye, Lena saw movement on the mezzanine above—the narrow service balcony that ran the arcade’s length. A second figure stood there, dressed like him but bulkier, holding something in both hands.
“Clarke—” Lena started, but the shout from the mezzanine drowned her:
“Lights out!”
The arcade plunged into darkness.
When the emergency lights flickered on seconds later, the man in front of her was gone. The mezzanine figure was gone. And the satchel in her hand was lighter—unzipped, empty.
Clarke’s voice was sharp in her ear: Seal the gates now!
From the security office, Rees hit the controls. The heavy metal grilles began to descend over both street entrances—until halfway down, they stopped with a metallic judder.
“Jam on both ends!” Rees barked. “Someone’s cut the track.”
Clarke swore, moving past Lena toward the far entrance. “They planned this from the start. It’s not about the satchel—it’s about—”
The café door banged open. A man in an apron stumbled out, eyes wide. “There’s a bag in my kitchen. Said it was for her.”
Lena’s stomach sank. She crossed the tiled floor, Clarke at her shoulder, and pushed into the small café kitchen. On the counter sat a canvas courier bag, damp from the rain. She unzipped it.
Inside were three Polaroids.
The first: Clarke, standing at her desk, reading a file.
The second: Rees in the station car park, phone to his ear.
The third: Lena, at this exact moment, bent over the bag.
She turned it over. The timestamp printed along the bottom edge was one minute ago.
The radio on Clarke’s hip crackled. “We’ve got eyes on a black van leaving the service alley behind the arcade—plates obscured. Two occupants.”
Clarke didn’t answer immediately. She was staring at the Polaroid in Lena’s hand, her jaw tight. “He’s showing us he can be inside our perimeter while we think it’s locked.”
“And?” Lena asked.
“And,” Clarke said, “he’s telling us the next time we try this, someone on our side won’t make it out.”
If you’d like, I can push Part 9 into the moment where Clarke sets a desperate off-the-books meeting with a single informant who claims to know the killer’s name—but the meeting turns into an ambush that finally exposes the mole inside her team. That’s where the noose tightens for real.
Part 9 — The Name in the Dark
Clarke didn’t take it back to the station. She didn’t trust the walls there anymore. Instead, she drove Lena out to a weathered riverside pub in Wapping, the kind of place where the bar staff didn’t ask for names and the regulars pretended they hadn’t seen you. They sat in a corner booth, the Thames sliding black and silent beyond the rain-streaked windows.
“He’s not just feeding us misdirection,” Clarke said, voice low. “He’s feeding someone on my team a playbook. Every time I move you, he’s there ahead of me. Every time we set a trap, he’s one step inside it before we are.”
“Then you already know who it is,” Lena said.
Clarke gave a small, humourless smile. “I have a list. And one name that isn’t on it—but should be.” She slid a folded note across the table. “Got this from an old contact. Says he knows who our man is, and he’ll trade the name for cash and immunity. But it has to be off-the-books.”
Lena opened the note. A single line: Footbridge, Limehouse Basin. Midnight. Alone.
“That’s a trap,” Lena said immediately.
“Of course it is,” Clarke replied. “But it might also be the only way to flush the mole.”
It was raining harder by the time Clarke parked near the basin. The footbridge arched over still water, the streetlamps casting warped halos on the slick boards. The place was deserted except for a single figure leaning against the rail at the centre of the span, hood up, hands in pockets.
Clarke told Lena to stay in the car. Lena didn’t. She followed at a distance, the hiss of rain on her hood masking her footsteps.
The man on the bridge was older, with the kind of gauntness that came from long years of looking over his shoulder. “Inspector,” he said as Clarke approached. “You’re late.”
“You’ve got a name for me,” Clarke said.
“I’ve got more than a name,” he replied. “I’ve got your leak. Standing right behind you.”
Clarke spun—too slow. A shadow broke from the darkness at the far end of the bridge, resolving into someone Lena recognised instantly.
Detective Sergeant Callum Rees.
He didn’t look surprised to see her. In fact, he looked relieved. “Finally,” he said to the hooded man. “We end this.”
Lena’s stomach dropped. Clarke’s hand hovered near her sidearm. “Rees,” she said, “step away.”
“Can’t do that,” Rees replied, moving closer. Rain streamed down his face, his eyes flat. “You kept her alive too long, Clarke. She’s heard too much.”
From the shadows beneath the bridge, another voice emerged—calm, perfect consonants, the faint electronic undernote that made Lena’s skin crawl.
“She’s been my favourite piece,” the masked man said, stepping into the dim light. “But the game’s over.”
It happened fast. Rees moved toward Clarke, the masked man toward Lena. The hooded informant bolted, vanishing into the dark. Clarke drew and fired once—Rees staggered but didn’t fall. The masked man reached for Lena’s arm, his grip iron, pulling her toward the bridge’s edge.
Rain hammered the boards, the water below black and deep. “Time to go quiet,” he said.
Lena twisted, the reflex born not of training but of sheer refusal. Her knee caught the inside of his leg; his balance faltered just enough for Clarke to close the distance. She slammed into him, driving them both into the railing. The mask clanged against metal, tilting just enough for Lena to see pale skin, a scar running from temple to jaw.
“Name!” Clarke barked.
The man only smiled. “You’ll dream it soon enough.” Then he pushed off, twisting over the railing into the water below.
By the time the marine unit swept the basin, he was gone. Rees was in custody, bleeding from the shoulder, his expression unreadable.
Clarke stood on the bridge, rain pooling on her coat, watching the ripples where the man had vanished. “We lost him,” she said.
Lena didn’t look at the water. “No,” she murmured. “He’s still here. Somewhere. Listening.”
Part 10 — The Final Card of Act One
Rees sat cuffed to the interview room table, his shirt still damp from the rain, shoulder bandaged. He stared at the far wall as though it had more to say than Clarke did. Lena stood behind the one-way glass, her breath leaving faint marks on the cold pane.
Clarke stepped inside and closed the door softly, no folder, no notes—just her. She didn’t sit. “You’ve got one chance, Callum. Give me his name.”
Rees’s lips curved slightly. “You think you’re in control because I’m in cuffs.”
“I think you’re in control of nothing,” Clarke said. “The man you’ve been feeding is already circling back. You’re just another piece on his board. And when he’s done, you’ll vanish without a body to bury.”
Rees finally looked at her. “You don’t get it. He doesn’t kill his own.”
“You’re not his own,” Clarke said flatly. “You’re his leash.”
That drew something—maybe pride, maybe irritation. “You want his name?” Rees leaned forward. “It’s not the one you’re chasing. The mask isn’t him—it’s just a voice. The man behind it—”
The room phone rang. Sharp, sudden. Clarke didn’t move, but Rees’s eyes flicked to it, just once.
“Answer,” he said.
Clarke picked it up. “Clarke.”
The voice that came down the line was a whisper, familiar and perfect.
“Put her on.”
Clarke’s gaze shifted to the glass. Lena froze, her stomach twisting.
“She’s not part of this conversation,” Clarke said.
“She’s all of it,” the voice replied. “Tell her the number.”
“What number?” Clarke asked.
The line went dead.
Rees smiled faintly. “You just missed your only safe handover.”
They moved Lena into the secure observation suite, but she couldn’t shake the echo of those words. Tell her the number. It gnawed at her until she asked Clarke, “Could it be the casing? The F.M.Q.?”
Clarke nodded slowly. “Maybe a cipher. Letters as numbers. Or coordinates.”
A tech printed the casing’s engraving in high-res. Under magnification, tiny pinprick dots appeared between the letters. Morse code.
The message read: 37 04 55.
“Coordinates,” Clarke said, pulling up a map. The numbers landed on a derelict warehouse in Deptford, down by the river.
They took no backup—Clarke didn’t trust anyone. The warehouse loomed in the fog, corrugated metal walls rusted, windows blind with grime. Inside, the air was damp, smelling of rope and diesel.
Halfway across the floor, Lena saw it: a single chair beneath a hanging work lamp. On it, an envelope.
Clarke opened it. Inside was a Polaroid—Lena again, but not asleep. She was sitting exactly where she was now, in the chair under the lamp. The angle was from above.
“How—” she started, but the light above them flickered.
The voice came from the shadows, not behind them, not ahead—everywhere.
“You’ve both been excellent players. Now we start Act Two.”
A door slammed somewhere deep in the warehouse, and the sound of footsteps began—measured, deliberate, coming closer.
Clarke drew her weapon. “Stay behind me.”
Lena didn’t move. Her eyes were on the darkness beyond the lamp, where a pale mask was slowly taking shape in the gloom.
END
