When a woman’s skeleton is discovered in a shallow grave, DCI Andy Gilchrist is tasked with finding her murderer. But a psychic’s warnings and markings on a rusted cigarette lighter found among the rotted remains take Gilchrist on a journey into his own past that brings him closer to discovering the identity of his brother’s killer from a hit-and-run case some thirty-five years before. Dental records from an extracted tooth force Gilchrist to confront the unthinkable—that his brother might have been her killer. He keeps his fears to himself, only to be suspended on suspicion of destroying evidence.