When detective Varg Veum takes a telephone call in his office, his mind is suddenly thrust back 25 years, to his days as a child protection officer and the case of a small boy who was separated from his mother under tragic circumstances. This same boy has surfaced in several other casesin connection with a sudden death in his new foster home and, a decade later, in a dramatic double-murder in Sunnfjord. Now that boy is an adult on the run in Oslo, determined to take revenge on those responsible for destroying his lifeamong them his former child protection officer, detective Veum.