Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small star as a mismatched New Scotland Yard team of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. An old school friend asks for Lynley's help in finding a boy missing from an independant boarding school. When the schoolboy is found murdered, Lynley is well placed to understand the tensions of this closed society, which reminds him of his own boyhood. Meanwhile, Havers has problems with her senile mother and Lynley with his love life