DI Dave Creegan is shot and, whilst unconscious, has a near-death experience that leaves him with the ability to sense criminals upon recovery. Joining the Organized and Serial Crime Unit with inspector Susan Taylor, Creegan learns from his friend Cyril, a self-proclaimed psychic, that two recently abducted boys have been murdered 'in the clouds'. In both cases, a daffodil has been left at the scene of the abduction, a fact reminiscent of similar crimes in Stuttgart some years earlier. A car at the last crime scene is traced to pharmaceutical chemist professor Ronald ...
Although Hinks is released Creegan is convinced of his guilt and arranges another interview wherein he gives Hinks a nose-bleed. He uses the tissue that was used to clean up the blood and shows it to Hinks' dog, who then leads him to an abandoned building and the three boys abducted by Hinks. Creegan goes to Hinks' house to kill him but on arrival gets a surprise.
Three patients in an Intensive Care Unit die after being injected with digoxin, a drug that had not been prescribed. Each had a faint tattoo on their arm reading 'Let Me Go', implying voluntary euthanasia was involved, though one of the tattoos actually read 'Let Me go Back.' The chief suspects are Dr Elizabeth Walker, an advocate of euthanasia and Carl Burgess, an obsessive ward orderly who behaves oddly.
Burgess confesses to the murders but it is only to protect Dr Walker, whom he believes is the real killer, and on release commits suicide. Creegan is convinced that all the victims were brought to the brink of death and then resuscitated to tell the perpetrator what life on the other side is like. Using his own near death experience he flushes out the murderer who threatens to kill more patients if Creegan fails to satisfy. He must prevent this from happening.
A simultaneous attack on horses on the same night on three separate continents baffles the police until a Japanese student confesses that the assaults were occasioned by a perverse fantasy web-site called 'Amathus',exhorting people who wanted to belong to it to commit willful acts from attacking horses to murder.
When a local student is reported missing and is later found dead Creegan and the OSC's investigations lead them to a group of sixth-formers who are addicted to 'Amathus'. The pattern of the killings seems to echo the manner in which Justine Barber, a prostitute, killed seven pimps fifteen years earlier,for which she is now serving a life sentence. Creegan discovers that the 'Amathus' web-master Leonard Stoker, is obsessed with Justine and arranges for her to be released from prison to help him trap Stoker - though he also has to stop his colleague D.S. Kreitman from ...
A serial killer is on the loose, murdering young women and then scalping them though before he claims each victim he sends an email to newspaper reporter David Laney. The OSC enlist Laney's help - Susan having an affair with him - and as a result they are able to catch a man called Emerson, about to pounce on his latest victim. They arrest him and he is taken into custody.
Emerson is captured and remanded in custody but Creegan is haunted by the fact that he was unable to arrive in time to save the last victim, Emily Hawkins. Even more disturbing is the fact that, though Emerson is now behind bars, another slaying and scalping takes place, a copy-cat killing, leading Creegan to believe that Emerson has either an accomplice or a warped admirer. Creegan is forced to make a deal with Emerson to catch this new murderer whilst Susan is in danger of becoming the latest victim.
Three men are found dead, each corpse has a hole in the head but has been carefully washed, perfumed and wrapped in a white shroud as if in a ritual burial. The common link is that they all served in the Bosnian war, working for a relief agency. CCTV cameras capture the identity of the possible murderer, Jim Keller, a man who was also in Bosnia but believed to be dead.
Jim Keller goes on the run but when the team speak to his wife Ann, it transpires that he was so haunted by his experiences in Bosnia that he wanted to forget them and in his own perverted way is doing the same for the colleagues he knew there whom he is now killing and ritually 'burying'. They eventually trace him to a deserted warehouse where he has brought his next victim and DS rivers is particularly heroic in attempting to safely apprehend him.
Annie Jordan is arrested when it appears that she has abducted a little boy from his whom but she convinces Creegan that it is her son from whom she was coerced into parting by a child-brokering scheme, a paedophile group who buy and sell children. Acting on Annie's evidence Susan and DC Rivers pose as a childless couple desperate for an offspring at any price. Meanwhile Michael Hawkins, whose daughter was killed by Emerson, holds Creegan responsible for not saving her and comes after him.
The investigation into the paedophile ring leads the undercover police to an orphanage in Albania, where Susan procures a child and flees with her back to England. However she is thwarted and her plan is sadly ended. Meanwhile Michael Hawkins holds Creegan's ex-wife and daughters at his mercy, setting fire to their house. This leads to a showdown in which an innocent victim is claimed.
Creegan returns to duty against official orders as Anthony Matchin, a man he helped convict for killing his wife, is released from prison on appeal, returning to his home town of Ellandon. Shortly afterwards a woman's corpse is found, her heart cut out neatly and left in a nearby garbage bag. The OSC travels to the area as Creegan is convinced that Matchin is not the murderer, only to receive little help from the local force, unhappy at the OSC's intervention.
A second victim is discovered, slain in exactly the same fashion as the first and earning the murderer the tag of the Garbage Bag Killer. Creegan concludes that although the women's husbands were from vastly different walks of life, the killer's motive was not due to hatred of the women but of the men that they left behind - leading him to grief counsellor Michael Lawlor, before another, shocking murder robs the unit of one of their own.
His family having moved following their ordeal at Michael Hawkins' hands Creegan is deemed fit to return to work but both he and Susan are resentful of bright new colleague Martin Simmons, brought in to replace the slaughtered Rivers. A charred corpse is discovered in a disused mental home, bearing the mark Y Me. A second murder occurs committed in the same way and again Y Me is the motive. The victim was last seen in the company of her boyfriend Andy, according to her baby-sitter Lynn Southy and he becomes the prime suspect.
Susan interviews a noted arsonist imprisoned in France, Jacques Dutronc, on the psychology of arson whilst both Andy and another fire-raiser, former asylum inmate Miles Van Der Twemp are cleared as having no links to both murders. A new suspect enters the frame, Susan Etchells, who was in the asylum under her mother's name, Susan Winters - the latest victim being a teacher who sacked a woman by that name. Creegan finds that he has to go back to school, literally, to discover the disturbed woman behind the attacks and risk his life to save another victim.
