Early one morning, a men’s rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer walked off with a multi-million-dollar corporate retirement fund and disappeared without a trace. Now, the discovery of this body has reopened that cold case. Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has his own evening at the theater upended by the discovery of a dead body just a few seats away. Two decades ago, Eliza Chapel, a 14-year-old student at a girls boarding school in Cornwall, disappeared in the middle of the night under dubious circumstances. A second body and a second cold case reopened. As Caius investigates these parallel missing persons cases, he finds himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting.

Rupert's 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's --- catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush. All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who. Or is it "whom"? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't sure. Sharply dressed, smart and thoroughly modern, he discovers Clemmie's body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it's even begun.