The discovery of a body on a local allotment site re-opens an unresolved cold case for Monika Paniatowski and her team.
''He was going to have to terminate Monika, he decided. It was a pity, but there it was.''
The body has lain buried for years, and has no face and no fingertips. Monika Paniatowski''s team have no real leads, but when they discuss the case at her hospital bedside - where she lies paralysed - Monika begins to see possible links with a case she closed four years earlier.
Are the two cases connected? Did the first murder make the second almost inevitable? She doesn''t know, but she does know that she is being watched by an old enemy who will kill her if he decides there is ever any chance of her sharing her thoughts and information with her team.
