A series of mysterious murders shakes Pskov Oblast: several people are killed, including the second secretary of the city party committee and the local police officer. Major of the militia Pavel Zverev and his assistant Veniamin Kostin take on the investigation. They discover that the dead were friends from the front and sometimes met to go hunting. So why did someone decide to kill the veterans? Or was this an act of sabotage against party workers? Zverev and Kostin develop one theory after another until they run into a new, carefully planned terrible crime…