‘Give me a break, Del,’ said Berlin.
‘Have a look,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch soon.’
Berlin put her phone down and opened her new computer, also courtesy of Burghley. They had cleared her credit cards and paid her a handsome bonus, too.
She went to the BBC News site, not The Sentinel, to find the item Del meant. There was an article about a woman in Chigwell who claimed the police wouldn’t look for her missing husband. A police spokesperson stated that as far as they were concerned he wasn’t missing, he just didn’t want to be found. There was no indication of foul play.
But the item of interest that Del had mentioned was buried in a column of ‘New Company Appointments’.
Hirst Corporation was delighted to announce that Alexander Utkin, a former major in the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, had been appointed general manager of their new Russian subsidiary.
They had all been paid off.
She was clean, but felt dirty.
The parcel lay where she had dropped it, forgotten, on the sofa. She took a knife from the kitchen drawer and slit it open.
An old file tumbled out, stuffed with dozens of yellowing pages. A length of string had been carefully knotted around it to keep them secure inside.
She unpicked it.
The symbol emblazoned on the front indicated it was a government file. Some of the documents were typed, some handwritten. It made no difference. She couldn’t read a word because it was all in Cyrillic. But she did recognise the small sepia photograph stuck inside the cover.
It was a young Zayde.
The phone rang again.
Berlin picked up. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Well?’ said Peggy. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’
Bella was right.
94
Berlin watched the moon shimmer and tremble in the wake of a barge. The city seemed different. Something had changed. She scanned the skyline. What was it?
Then she caught her own reflection in the water.
She touched her right shoulder, where she kept a permanent reminder that nothing would ever be the same.
A small blue teardrop.
Acknowledgements
To Daria Volokh of Ruslink, the Russian Language Centre in Melbourne, and Daniel Petrov of Moscow, I can only say a heartfelt ‘Spasibo!’ All errors are my own. To my editors, Tom Avery of William Heinemann and Arwen Summers of Penguin Australia, many thanks for your patience and perspicacity. Sarah Ballard, Zoe Ross, Georgina Gordon-Smith and Jessica Craig, of United Agents, work hard to keep me afloat. It’s much appreciated. Sincere thanks to Ben Ball of Penguin Australia and Jason Arthur of William Heinemann for keeping the faith.
Treachery becomes a habit.
London is in the grip of a stifling heatwave. The city has slowed to a claustrophobic shuffle; heroin-addicted investigator Catherine Berlin suffers while working the lowest of investigations: matrimonial.
The city’s junkies are in the grip of a drought of a different kind. Sonja Kvist, a strung-out ghost from Berlin’s past, turns up on her doorstep. Sonja’s daughter is missing. An unpaid debt leaves Berlin no choice but to take the case of the missing ten-year-old.
Berlin is back, but soon the hunter becomes the hunted: corrupt detectives are on Berlin’s tail chasing drugs she doesn’t have, a young girl is murdered and the matrimonial case takes a fatal turn. And the temperature keeps rising.
PRAISE FOR ANNIE HAUXWELL’S CATHERINE BERLIN SERIES
‘A promising new series.’
Financial Times (UK)
‘A heroine for our bleak new age . . . Catch the wave now, while it’s building.’
The Times (UK)
‘Complex, fast-paced crime fiction.’
Courier-Mail
Everyone is hooked on something.
It’s not that easy to kick the money habit. After the global meltdown forces London’s bankers to go cold turkey, people look elsewhere for a quick quid: the old-fashioned East End. So when investigator Catherine Berlin gets an anonymous tip-off about a local loan shark, the case seems straightforward – until her informant is found floating in the Limehouse Basin.
In another part of town, a notorious doctor is murdered in his surgery, and his entire stock of pharmaceutical heroin stolen. His death leaves Berlin bereft in more ways than one. An unorthodox copper is assigned to the case, and Berlin finds herself a reluctant collaborator in a murder investigation.
Now Berlin must find out who killed her informant, her doctor, and, most urgently of all, where to find a new – and legal – supply of the drug she can’t survive without.
PRAISE FOR ANNIE HAUXWELL’S CATHERINE BERLIN SERIES
‘A promising new series.’
Financial Times (UK)
‘A heroine for our bleak new age . . . Catch the wave now, while it’s building.’
The Times (UK)
‘Complex, fast-paced crime fiction.’
Courier-Mail
MICHAEL JOSEPH
Published by the Penguin Group
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(a division of Penguin Australia Pty Ltd)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014
Text copyright © Annie Hauxwell 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover and text design by John Canty © Penguin Group (Australia)
Cover photographs: St Basil’s Cathedral – Demetrio Carrasco/Getty Images
Woman in parka – Sean Gallup/Getty Images
penguin.com.au
ISBN 978-1-74348-526-2
THE BEGINNING
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A Morbid Habit Page 26
