When an unfamiliar pigeon flew into Ruben Nilsson’s dovecote, no one could have known yet that this bird would prove fateful. Infected with bird flu, it becomes the cause of a terrible epidemic that struck all of Gotland. The local authorities are caught off guard: there is a shortage of medicines and vaccines, and the sick die one after another. Amid the panic that gripped the island, it would have been easy to overlook the strange death of a nurse from a major medical center and the mysterious disappearance of a local reporter. But police inspector Maria Wern and her colleagues do not give up, and in the end they not only identify the killers but also expose a far more large-scale criminal project.