Flying home after a brief trip to Florence, Kate Power engages in a pleasant but trivial conversation with the businessman sitting next to her. Two days later he's found hanging from a canal bridge - with Kate's business card in his pocket the only means of identification. It looks like a clear-cut case of suicide - but Kate isn't so sure. And as her subsequent investigations prove, the cause of Alan Grafton's death - and its consequences - are more serious than she and her colleagues could ever have imagined. Still regarded as a newcomer in the Birmingham police force, still fighting to prove she's got what it takes, Kate is determined to stick to her guns until she finally uncovers the shocking truth.