When a quantity of drugs signed out in his name goes missing, Jack Kempson smells a rat and becomes a whistle blower — he just can’t accept the corruption anymore. This is his first big mistake, because the department turns its back on him, banishing him to the purgatory of supervising data entry into a new computerised crime tracking system. He is sent to rot in the basement. The system being established uses new technology to solve old cases. The data base is not yet complete, but allows Jack to work at what he loves best — solving crimes. Jack works outside the system — unauthorised work — but the crimes he digs up are still crying out to be solved. Jack is driven by the despair of the parents of a boy kidnapped and never found 30 years ago, and the memory of the loss of his wife. As he seeks to find answers from long ago, his journey into the past teaches him that he is not the man he thought he was.