Journalist Philip Dryden is shocked to be informed by police that his father has been killed in a car accident – he drowned during the fenland floods of 1977, 35 years before. At the same time, two unrelated cases are demanding Dryden's professional attention: a body riddled with bullets found hanging in the middle of a lettuce field, and a couple protesting that the local council has buried their baby daughter in a pauper's grave without permission. As Dryden pieces the clues together, he realizes that the three cases may be related after all . . .