In his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's solitary life is disturbed by a call from his estranged wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by a rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in London, the capture of a violent criminal goes badly wrong, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked.

Maddy and Frank have a connection, a brief and clumsy encounter years before. Now their lives connect again when a second phone call persuades Elder out of retirement, only to find that a cold case has a devastating present-day impact...