A middle of the night call to a burnt-out house is pretty much routine for Devon Fire Brigade photographer Gus Tavender. Discovering a charred body locked in a secret room is not. But from that moment on, very little in her life can be classed as routine. The following day, at an incident on Dartmoor, she meets Judith, an old acquaintance from college days. A strange girl then, she seems equally strange now - but Judith has an agenda. She has come to learn the truth about her aunt's death. The old lady fell into a quarry while walking on the moor; a tragic accident, according to the police. But Judith has good reason to think otherwise - she has found her aunt's diaries. Living alone in the aunt's remote house, she enlists Gus's help and as the two women uncover more information - leading Gus to suspect a connection between the aunt's death and the body in the locked room - they are drawn into a murky world of corruption and violence, a world that someone will do anything to protect.