Stephen Harrington, a friend of Leo, is concerned that his daughter Rachel, an aid worker, has gone missing in Zambia. Leo and his colleagues fly to Africa where Rachel's corpse is discovered. It seems that she was investigating the deaths of local villagers and may have been silenced. In the absence of the local coroner, the team get involved but find that uncooperative police officers are not exclusive to Britain.

With another aid worker now dead, the pathologists are trying to piece together just what Rachel was up to. Dr. Andrews tells them that Rachel had been trying to trace the source of an infectious disease that she believed had been affecting many of the local villagers. She had originally believed that the disease was water-borne but all tests had proved negative and was therefore looking at other possible sources. Yet another death however strikes the local ex-pat community. With tensions rising, Nikki finds herself in jail and and Harry getting the cold shoulder from the local coroner.

The pathologists travel to South Africa, Nikki Alexander's childhood country. Nikki has been there for a short while and with the help of a now imprisoned official from the former regime, they've uncovered the grave of five activists who were eliminated. The problem is that they find a sixth body in the grave. Nikki is also developing feelings for the man who has hired her. Meanwhile, Harry is working with a local pathologist investigating the murder of a young girl. Leo is a bit late in arriving as he was trying to help a young girl who had requested asylum in the UK. He arrives in South Africa only to learn that the young woman has been deported.