It’s Yorkshire in 1974, and fear, mistrust and institutionalised police corruption are running riot. Rookie journalist Eddie Dunford is determined to search for the truth in an increasingly complex maze of lies and deceit surrounding the police investigation into a series of child abductions. When young Clare Kemplay goes missing, Eddie and his colleague, Barry, persuade their editor to let them investigate links with two similar abductions in the last decade. But after a mutilated body is found on a construction site owned by a local property magnate, Eddie and Barry are drawn into a deadly world of secrecy, intimidation, shocking revelations and police brutality.

Nine years on, another Morley child has gone missing on her way home from school. Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson is forced to remember the very similar disappearance of Clare Kemplay, who was found dead in 1974, and the subsequent imprisonment of local boy Michael Myshkin. Washed-up local solicitor John Piggott becomes convinced of Myshkin’s innocence and begins to fight on his behalf, unwittingly providing a catalyst for Jobson to start to right some wrongs.