For decades, Pity Wood Farm has been a source of employment for poor workers passing through Rakedale. But now it seems a far worse fate may have befallen some of those who came upon this isolated community. Routine building work at the farm has unearthed a grisly discovery: a human hand preserved in clay. When police dig up the farmyard, they find not one, but two bodies - and several years between their burials. In a case as cold as the ground, Cooper finds himself drawn to a desperate theory: that somewhere, there lies a third body which holds the key to these dreadful crimes.