Pathologists investigate three deaths in one night in the same ward and suspect hospital staff of their murder.

In her efforts to help Naomi, Nikki believes that Silverlake was self-medicating with an untried depression cure though his widow denies it and a representative of the pill company, posing as a health inspector, tries to have Nikki taken off the case. After she is arrested for shop-lifting and feels perpetually tired, Nikki is referred to a psychiatrist who diagnoses depression. Naomi is highly supportive throughout but, at the hospital, the police make a frightening discovery which questions Naomi's motivation. Even after the real murderer is punished another death occurs, leading to closure for Nikki.

Nikki's archaeologist friend Patrick is excited when a woman's body,apparently a thousand years old,is unearthed on a Yorkshire moor. However dental records show she is a more recent murder victim and Leo,who once worked in the area,believes she is Jodie Fisher,who went missing in 1985. Three other girls were murdered and the killer,Karl Bentley,caught and jailed. Leo,unsuccessful in his efforts with Janet to make a baby and applying to adopt,reencounters Jodie's mother,old flame Carol,before visiting Bentley,who creepily says that his actions were 'out of love'. Then another woman is killed.

Janet travels to Yorkshire with Leo where she identifies the murder of the fresh victim,Kelly Summers,as being a copycat of the Bentley killings,suggesting that Bentley had an accomplice still at large. This is confirmed when Sonia Hardwick,the investigating officer,finds a letter to Bentley from a boyfriend in the original file. A television crew visits the Fosters' farm house,where Carol's husband Bill snaps,attacking a journalist. He is arrested and interviewed by Sonia regarding his relationship with Karl Bentley. Between them Sonia and Leo deduce that Bentley had a male lover responsible for the unsolved murders and that that man is Bill Fisher. They are only partly right. Harry,meanwhile,has to baby-sit the teenage son of an irresponsible old college friend.

At Hillsdon Army base,a training camp for soldiers fighting in Afghanistan,young soldier Mark Blakefield is still recovering from the death in action of his friend Danny Ferris and argues with Lieutenant Lockfield,who was having an affair with Danny's girl-friend 'Cats' Felton,a fact which Lockfield's wife Claire has also discovered. Cats' body is pulled from the river some time after she was talking to the lieutenant and Nikki suspects foul play. Then Lockfield is shot,an apparent suicide,but Harry,accompanying Inspector Suzy Harte to the base,finds from the post mortem result that the man was murdered.

Nikki links Cats to the Lockfords via her phone and,at her flat,sees photos of her with her boy-friend Danny,whose father identifies her corpse. The police catch a man skulking at her flat,Dennis Croft,a former soldier cashiered for drug peddling who says there was a cover-up over Danny's death. At the request of Danny's parents a further post mortem is carried out,ultimately proving that he was killed by 'friendly fire'.Consequently it transpires that Lockford was not seeing Cats for sex but seeing her right financially. CCTV evidence shows that Cats' death was due to a bizarre accident but who killed the young lieutenant and why?

Nikki and Harry are called to the Dutch Embassy in the wake of a gunman killing three people,including police constable Barlow and the brother of ambassador Van Buren,though the latter officially died three years earlier. Van Buren's son Jacob went missing fifteen years earlier and now his grandson Jack is missing, Jack's mother Klara and young policeman Whitehead being among the wounded. Curiously the CCTV cameras were switched off at the time of the shooting but,recovering in hospital,Klara claims the murderer was Jacob. The news coverage has a strange effect on telephonist Mary Olivant,who is found hanged,though Leo finds the death suspicious. He is also wary when another pathologist,Sabiston,whom he once trained,is called in to carry out the post mortems at the ambassador's request.

Mary Olivant turns out to have been the Van Buren's nanny at the time of Jacob's disappearance and a body unearthed near to where her corpse was found is identified as that of the little boy. Diederick Van Buren had been paying her thousands for years but she had recently seen Klara and told her the true fate of her brother. The so-called bodyguard was actually Diederick,allegedly working for MI6,and the pathologist who pronounced him dead three years earlier was Sabiston,working with Superintendant Mansfield in a cover-up on behalf of the embassy. Harry finds Jack,who has gone into hiding and who saw all that happened on the night of the shooting,for which reason he is protecting the killer.