DCI Banks assigns DS Cabbot as SIO when the mutilated body of a woman is found on the Yorkshire Moors, while he investigates the murder of a teenaged girl whose body has been found in a storage room. Annie discovers that her victim was Lucy Payne.

An armed robbery ends up taking a much darker twist after the culprit is brutally murdered in his own home. Before DCI Banks can start to unravel the case, Chief Superintendent Gerry Rydell, makes a personal plea for Banks to look for his missing teenage daughter.