A fire at a vacation park on the Northumberland coast destroys three cabins and leaves behind the charred remains of the park owner's sister. The night before, she had been partying with a group of younger people, including her niece's fiancé. When Stanhope learns the victim had been locked in her cabin, she realizes that the blaze was no accident.

The discovery of human remains partially buried in the woods leads Stanhope and Healy back to the disappearance of a local schoolgirl during a coalminers' strike 30 years earlier. At the time, everyone believed she had run off to London after problems at home, and the police had paid little attention to the case. Then evidence turns up indicating the girl was at the scene of the strike.

Stanhope and Healy investigate the murder of a member of the Irish traveler community, found floating in a farm's slurry tank. The farmer reports that two of his laborers, both illegals from Serbia, have vanished, though he is less forthcoming about his family's long-running dispute with the travelers. Could the disappearance of the Serbians and the death of the Irishman be connected?

A well-loved family man plunges to his death from the top of a multistory parking lot--but did he jump, or was he pushed? Stanhope discovers the victim had been drinking, fighting, and lying to his wife and children. He had also made enemies among his coworkers at the docks, who blamed him for a recent fatality. The detectives try to untangle the web of secrets the dead man was hiding.