The last person to see Lee Han before his flat was torched had been Jude Craig, and she seems the likeliest suspect to the police. But they find no forensic evidence to link her to the fire and Inspector John Bright thinks her guilty demeanour merely means she is desperate to stop her husband learning about her affair with Lee. Bright turns his attention to Lee's professional life and discovers he had drafted an article about the murder of a witness in another case. It was a case Bright was in charge of and it still rankles that a heavyweight villain, Brennan, is still at large because of that murder. He learns one new fact from Lee's research - that the murder weapon had been removed from the scene by a police officer. Unable to trust his superiors yet determined to do everything by the book, Bright intuitively and methodically builds up the evidence. Then Lee's life support machine is mysteriously unplugged, Jude Craig's husband disappears, Lee's ex-wife flees clandestinely to Hong Kong and Bright knows he has to use all of his considerable intellect to bring the whole case under control.