DCI Reg Wexford and DI Mike Burden have their hands full. A teenage girl disappears for three days after having accepted a lift from a middle-aged woman. She is apparently unharmed but her parents are convinced she must have been molested. Then a second girl disappears under virtually the same circumstances. At the same time, a 3 year-old disappears from her bedroom just as a 72 year-old pedophile is released into the community. The police are satisfied that he had nothing to do with her abduction, but that doesn’t prevent parents in the working class community from assuming that he isn’t. Two murders however keep them busy as they try to decipher all of the information they are acquiring.