A London social worker makes a routine home visit only to discover her client, Michelle Doyce, serving afternoon tea to a naked, decomposing corpse. With no clues as to the dead man’s identity, Chief Inspector Karlsson again calls upon Frieda Klein for help. Frieda discovers that the body belongs to Robert Poole, con man extraordinaire. But she can’t shake the feeling that the past isn’t done with her yet.

The abduction of a five-year-old provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. When his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein can’t ignore the coincidence: one of her patients has been having dreams in which he has a hunger for a child.