Detective Inspector Peregrine Lang is sickened by the murder of Celia Branston, his childhood sweetheart, in an Auckland multi-storey car park. Hiding his anguish, he leads an investigation dogged by media interest and political interference.
Driven by a desire for justice, he zeroes in on a suspect while piecing together a tangled maze of lies, greed and suffering caused by a sophisticated crime ring, whose ringleader will not surrender at any cost.
He painstakingly follows clues to the vicious murder and solves it purely by chance. However, justice is not served. Angry and bitter, he decides there can only be one outcome.