Midwinter. A child is found wandering in an ancient woodland, her hands covered in blood. But it is not her own.
Unwilling - or unable - to speak, the only person she seems to trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective Sergeant Lucy Black.
Soon afterwards, DS Black finds herself moved from a high-profile case involving the kidnapping of another girl, a prominent businessman's teenage daughter. As she tries to identify the unclaimed child, Black begins to realise that her case and the kidnapping may be linked by events from the grimmest days of the country's recent history - events that also defined her own trouble childhood.