Desperately lonely teenager Monica has little idea of what she is getting herself into when she begins an affair with her mother's latest partner. Months later a woman's strangled body is found decomposing in her flat and it isn't long before the police realise the perpetrator may have killed before, and is likely to do so again. Meanwhile former Chief Inspector Van Veeteren finds himself drawn into the mystery when a priest, who has learned dreadful secrets, appeals to him for help but falls beneath the wheels of a train, leaving the police with more dead ends than leads.