Pascoe is rushed to hospital with serious injuries following a car crash, and slips into a coma. Dalziel keeps a vigil at his bedside and realises just how much his partner means to him. Meanwhile, when a local fisherman reels in a gruesome catch – a human foot – and police divers discover other body parts amongst illegally dumped waste in a nearby lake, Dalziel finds himself at the centre of a potential murder enquiry.

As the case unravels, Dalziel discovers an uneasy relationship between Wetherton's leading hospital physician, Dr McKenzie Mansfield, and neurology consultant Mr Alisdair Collinson, not to mention a snake pit of political wranglings with local business tycoon, and the main source of the hospital's funding, Barry Jemmerson. Dalziel finds himself torn between trying to cope with Pascoe's continuing deterioration and his duty as a policeman to throw himself into this very intricate and gruesome case.

While investigating the death of a wealthy entrepreneur, Dalziel is reunited with old flame Kay Miclean, whose estranged husband was the victim. While all the evidence points towards the fact that he committed suicide, the victim's son and Pascoe believe that it could be murder. Dalziel believes otherwise until another death occurs.

A bus with a football team collides with a train, it crashes, three team members die. The bus driver escapes from the scene of the crime. Dalzil and Pascoe believe that the accident was not accidental and that the bus was killed. In addition, an old case of the unsolved murder of a little girl that occurred during the football riots comes up.

Dalzil and Pascoe arrive in Amsterdam at a conference of police detectives. Local police greet them with undisguised irritation. Dalsil meets a young singer and spends the night with her, and in the morning he sees that her throat was cut. Andrew becomes a suspect in this murder.