When the police do find the body, it doesn’t take long for Inspector Sejer and his team to determine that the man, Egil, died in a violent attack. But Egil has been missing for months and the trail to his killer is cold. It’s as puzzling as another unsolved case on Sejer’s desk: the murder of a prostitute who was found dead just before Egil went missing. Sejer sets to work piecing together these two impossible cases; it's not long before he realizes that they aren’t as separate as they previously seemed.