A Morbid Habit (Catherine Berlin)

Blood turned to ice and sealed the nostrils.

It’s the week before Christmas. Catherine Berlin sits alone gazing at a bank of monitors, each capturing a slice of a vast industrial estate. A van appears: two men delivering crates, moving quickly. Her boss tells her to ignore them, but she can’t.

Berlin’s scars have faded, but she still walks with a limp. Broke, she’s working nights as a relief CCTV operator, and looking for something more substantial. Her heroin habit is under control – only just.

The night shifts end, but now Berlin herself is being watched. When an old friend offers her a job in Russia, she quickly agrees. The details are vague: an oligarch with a shady past, a UK company offering a high fee for Berlin to investigate. Easy enough.

But Berlin arrives in Moscow to find that her problems are only just beginning. A body is found at the airport: a man clutching a sign reading ‘Catherine Berlin’. There are figures following her, and her guide, a Brit named Charlie, has secrets to hide. When Berlin’s oligarch goes missing, she finds that she cannot trust anyone or anything, even her past, if she is to survive.