While wrapping up a small job on the outskirts of Dublin, Jack Taylor finds an itinerant girl, Rosie, seemingly running for her life, covered in blood. It transpires that the girl's mother, Sinead, had been murdered near a traveller's halting site. Sinead's husband is the main suspect. Jack is the only one who senses that Rosie is hiding something, that she saw more than she's letting on.