Dalziel and Pascoe investigate when the skeleton of missing miner Billy Farr is found in a mineshaft in the Yorkshire coalfields, four years after his disappearance. At the time, a seven-year-old girl was murdered, and initially, a serial killer who confessed to killing five other girls was suspected. However, she was good friends with Farr, and due to the fact they both went missing on the same day, certain townsfolk believed he was somehow responsible.
The funeral of an elderly Italian woman is interrupted by the arrival of her son, thought missing since 1944. Her relatives suspect that his abrupt appearance is only to collect his inheritance, as he is her sole beneficiary. Not all of her relatives are convinced he is who he says he is, but a fraudster. Meanwhile, Wield's private life nearly hits the front page when a friend of his ex-partner threatens to blow the whistle on his sexuality, if he doesn't help him find his missing father. The chief constable is not best pleased when the news gets back to him, and asks Dalziel to expose his friend.
Dalziel is the sole witness to a death by gunshot in his neighbourhood, with the two involved men protesting that they were simply trying to stop the victim killing herself. Dalziel believes her husband, Philip Swain, murdered her, viewing him as the embodiment of evil. Theatre director Eileen Anstiss casts Dalziel as God and Swain as Lucifer in a community mystery play, while Dalziel is sent a series of letters from a woman contemplating suicide.
A group of animal rights protesters break into a medical facility, where they find more than they bargain for when one escapes into the nearby woods, only to find the remains of a dead body. Dalziel's displeased when he is forced to give up watching his rugby match to attend the scene. Meanwhile, after his grandmother's abrupt death, Pascoe tries to find out what happened to his grandfather who, during WWI, apparently deserted from a medical hospital to sail to America.