When an old house is being demolished, builders find in the basement a mummified body of a young woman who has been there for about sixty years. Judging by the position of the remains, she was stabbed during some kind of occult ritual. Tony Maclean, a police detective inspector in Edinburgh, realizes that a case from that long ago is practically impossible to solve—yet he can’t stop thinking about it.
Meanwhile, the city is hit by a series of bloody murders. The investigation soon goes nowhere, because there are no obvious clues or motives, and the victims aren’t connected in any way—though each has had a part of an internal organ taken.
Maclean is convinced all these events are somehow intertwined. He has only suspicions and indirect evidence for his theory—but it will lead him to a confrontation with a terrible and very ancient secret.