Three lives harbouring long-cherished dreams. Three lives headed for tragedy.

Lin Hui and Cheung Mingzhu from Shenzhen, China win scholarships to study in Belfast. Alina Balauru departs a poor farm in Romania for well-paid work in Northern Ireland.

Detective Sheehan and his Serious Crime Unit are faced with their most harrowing case when they discover the body of one of the young women in the garden of an upmarket residence.

Confronted with violent Chinese racketeers, brutal human traffickers, and a fiendishly clever killer called The Shadow, they are baffled by a case that seems to lead in two entirely different directions. It's not long before they realize how the Shadow works — or who his next victims are.

But time is not on their side — can they capture the Shadow before more young women are murdered?