In the 1960s, a fire broke out in a village outside Moscow, destroying the dacha of the Kayashev family. The consequences are discovered by an investigative team led by Lieutenant Alexander Cherednikov, which finds the burned bodies of the dacha owner and her daughter. Forensic examination shows that the women were strangled and then thrown into the basement. Cherednikov manages to determine that the fire was only a cover-up for the real crime—and the origins of the tragedy of the Kayashev family go back to the hungry winter of besieged Leningrad.