Jane Tennant is not the kind of person who walks toward police tape.

  Tonight she makes an exception.

  Mostly because six officers, three vans, and a section of pavement that looks like someone tried to fold the city in half suggests something interesting happened five minutes ago. And Jane has spent the entire evening doing paperwork that was aggressively not interesting.

  Curiosity wins.

  She ducks under the tape while one of the officers is busy talking into a radio.

  The first thing she notices is the crack.

  It runs straight across the plaza like someone scored the stone with a blade and then changed their mind halfway through the job. The edges are too clean to be a collapse and too deliberate to be random damage.

  Jane slows and crouches slightly, studying the line.

  “Huh.”

  The word slips out before she can stop it.

  A voice behind her says, “Oi.”

  Jane turns.

  A tall man with a hammer is staring at her like she just wandered into a room he locked five minutes earlier.

  “You can’t be in here,” he says.

  Jane gestures toward the ground.

  “That seems unlikely.”

  The man blinks.

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  “What does?”

  “That you’ve put police tape around a broken city and the rule you’re enforcing is ‘please don’t stand on this particular bit of it.’”

  He stares at her for a moment longer.

  Then he sighs and rubs his forehead.

  “Right,” he says quietly. “It’s going to be that kind of night.”

  Jane straightens.

  “Jane.”

  “Tony.”

  She glances down at the hammer.

  “That seems excessive.”

  Tony looks at it like he has only just remembered he is holding it.

  “It’s decorative.”

  Jane nods thoughtfully.

  “Of course it is.”

  Behind Tony, another man is tapping rapidly at a tablet.

  Jane notices the screen is blank.

  He does not look pleased about it.

  Tony follows her gaze.

  “Private equipment,” he says quickly.

  Jane smiles.

  “Ah. Secret pavement. Secret tablets. Secret hammer.”

  Tony stares at her.

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  “A little.”

  An officer walks past them carrying a handheld scanner. The device emits a short rising tone as it sweeps across the fracture.

  Jane watches the light crawl over the stone.

  “That seems encouraging.”

  Tony glances at the officer.

  “It’s fine.”

  Jane tilts her head.

  “That was not the tone people usually use for ‘fine.’”

  Tony points toward the street.

  “Right. Time for you to forget everything you just saw.”

  Jane folds her arms.

  “That seems optimistic.”

  Tony lowers his voice slightly.

  “Look. You didn’t see anything. You didn’t hear anything. You definitely didn’t walk under the tape.”

  Jane studies him.

  “You know the polite way to end a conversation is goodbye.”

  Tony gestures toward the road.

  “Goodbye.”

  Jane takes a few steps away.

  Then she stops and turns back.

  “Out of curiosity,” she says, pointing at the fracture, “did the pavement usually do that before tonight?”

  Tony pauses.

  “…no.”

  “Good to know.”

  She begins walking again.

  Tony watches her go.

  Lenny appears beside him.

  “You let her leave?”

  Tony shrugs.

  “She was leaving already.”

  Arthur finally looks up from the tablet.

  “Did she record anything?”

  Tony thinks about it.

  “…probably.”

  Arthur groans quietly and returns to the blank screen.

  ---

  Jane reaches the edge of the plaza and slows.

  The night feels oddly spacious.

  London is rarely quiet, but the usual background noise has thinned out. The river moves slowly beyond the buildings, catching reflections from streetlights and windows.

  Jane glances back once.

  The officers are still circling the fracture. The tall man with the hammer is talking to the tablet guy now. Neither of them looks especially thrilled with the situation.

  Jane pulls out her phone.

  A message window is open.

  She types:

  You will not believe the weird thing I just walked into

  She pauses before sending it.

  Her eyes drift back toward the plaza.

  For a moment she has the strange impression that the air above the crack is slightly thinner, as if something passed through there recently and the space has not quite settled yet.

  Jane frowns.

  “Odd,” she murmurs.

  She pockets the phone.

  Then she continues down the street toward the river, hands in her jacket pockets.

  Behind her the containment vans shift position, quiet and methodical.

  The plaza returns to its careful, uneasy stillness.

  Jane disappears around the corner.

  The night resumes.

  ---

  END CHAPTER