Guilty. One word on a beggar's cardboard sign. And now he is dead, stabbed in a wintry Copenhagen street, the second homeless victim in as many weeks. Dagbladet reporter Jensen, stumbling across the body on her way to work, calls her ex lover DI Henrik Jungersen. As, inevitably, old passions are rekindled, so are old regrets, and that is just the start of Jensen's troubles

When ninety-year-old Irene Valborg is found brutally murdered in an affluent suburb of Copenhagen, her diamond necklace missing, it looks like a burglary gone wrong. When two more victims are attacked, the police lament a rise in violence against the elderly, but who is the young girl in the photo found by DI Henrik Jungersen on the scenes of crime? Impatient to claim her inheritance, Irene’s daughter hires former Dagbladet reporter Jensen and her teenage apprentice Gustav to find the necklace. Henrik finds himself once more pitched in a quest for the truth against Jensen, the one woman in Copenhagen he is desperate to avoid.

June, and as Copenhagen swelters under record temperatures, a headless corpse surfaces in the murky harbour, landing a new case on the desk of DI Henrik Jungersen, just as his holiday is about to start. Elsewhere in the city, Syrian refugee Aziz Almasi, driver to Esben Nørregaard MP has vanished. Fearing a link to shady contacts from his past, Nørregaard appeals to crime reporter Jensen to investigate.

Matilde Clausen, 9, vanishes from a crowded playground in the middle of Copenhagen, triggering a frantic search across the city. When a possible link emerges to the disappearance of Lea Høgh, 10, six years ago, DI Henrik Jungersen is thrown back into the nightmare that almost finished his career. Desperate for redemption, but barred from reopening the old case, Henrik turns to his estranged lover, Dagbladet chief crime reporter Jensen, for help.