Newly arrived in Aberystwyth, DCI Tom Mathias is called to a scene of carnage: a 64-year-old woman has been brutally attacked, but she's nowhere to be found.

When an elderly man is bludgeoned to death, Mathias must solve a jigsaw whose pieces include eerie photographs, the German Wehrmacht, and a love story spanning 70 years.

When divers find a young man's body in a quarry lake, the investigation pulls Mathias into the complex web of a close-knit community that lives by its own rules.

The body of a young woman in a scarlet dress is discovered at the center of a marshland. Mathias becomes too emotionally involved in the case, a fact that Mared notices.