When Julian Schaeffer is shot in front of his son in a London park, suspicion falls on his estranged wife. The woman has a seemingly watertight alibi, but Carlyle, trying to make the best of a difficult relationship with his new sergeant, Umar Sligo won’t stop digging.

Focused on the Schaeffer case, the inspector is not too interested when Daniel Sands is hauled in to Charing Cross, accused of kidnapping. Then he discovers Sands’s back-story and finds himself propelled forward in a quest for justice for two fathers and their destroyed families.