A beautiful carved wooden Madonna, sealed tightly into a lead coffin is discovered in a plague graveyard in the sleepy village of Castleboyne - a fascinating, but routine call-out for archaeologist Illaun Bowe. That is, until they take the coffin out of the ground and a black liquid oozes out from the casing, accidentally spilling over one of the workers, Terry Johnston. After a couple of days, he begins to display symptoms of an odd, and distinctly unpleasant illness, which will kill him in 24 hours. But not before his skin breaks out in pus-filled lesions, and his organs fail, one by one...Soon hysteria breaks out in Castleboyne, with a quarantine being imposed on the town by the Dept of Health and nasty tabloid speculation that the disease has been brought to the area by the new immigrant population. Illaun has to get to the bottom of what was in the coffin to reassure herself that a deadly disease hasn't been unleashed upon the community because of her carelessness. Then a young boy is brought into the hospital, with the same symptoms as Terry...As the summer temperatures soar, the hysteria is fuelled by the finding of a torso floating in the River Boyne, which would appear to be that of an African woman, killed for ritual purposes. Meanwhile, someone is making it dangerously clear to Illaun that they want that statue...