Sweden 1994: On a cold autumn morning, a woman finds a haggard, speechless child in her garden. It’s the 10-year-old boy from next door. His parents have disappeared overnight without a trace.
Twenty years later, a body is discovered in Växjö, in the Swedish province of Småland, during a construction project. All signs point to an Eastern European who had been missing for many years. Commissioner Ingrid Nyström and her young colleague, the German-Swedish Stina Forss, take on the case. The trail initially leads them to Baltic smugglers who operated in southern Sweden after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when the body in question suddenly disappears from the department of forensic medicine, the investigators realize that the case is far from over.
As Nyström struggles with her health and Forss cares for her gravely ill father, a second body is found. Here, too, the clues lead to the past – to the sinking of the Estonia in 1994, the worst shipping accident in post-war European history. The two dissimilar women are trapped behind a wall of lies, political intrigue and wild conspiracy theories.
