Dalziel and Pascoe attend a retirement party for a senior colleague, Donald Fitzgerald. Dalziel's distinctly unhappy. He cannot forgive Fitzgerald for losing a recent court case against local villain and long standing adversary Danny Macer. He's even angrier when Macer turns up to celebrate, but anger turns to suspicion when Fitzgerald's found dead on a golf course the following morning.

As the team examine Fitzgerald's soured personal life, including his affair with physiotherapist Rachel Waller, Dalziel goes after Macer. Pascoe tries to keep the investigation on course, but Dalziel's obsession soon leads him into confrontation with both Pascoe and his boss. ACC Stella Applegarth orders him back off duty on grounds of ill-health. Pascoe takes over, but soon finds evidence - a key leading to a bank vault and a suitcase full of money - which suggests that Dalziel's instincts about Fitzgerald may have been right.

As Pascoe explores the implications, a second murder, that of Rachel Waller

A bus with a football team collides with a train, it crashes, three team members die. The bus driver escapes from the scene of the crime. Dalzil and Pascoe believe that the accident was not accidental and that the bus was killed. In addition, an old case of the unsolved murder of a little girl that occurred during the football riots comes up.