Why did fourteen-year-old Helen Bassam fall to her death from a tower block? A gesture of despair? Or does the blurred, shadowy figure of a young boy captured on CCTV have a role in the tragedy? DI Joe Faraday is on the case, but almost before he gets started he is fighting for resources. The body of a small-time drug dealer is found hanging from a tree and the head of a Major Crimes Squad pulls in all the manpower he can get. Faraday plunged into Portsmouth's bleak netherworld of wrecked families and children cast adrift in a society too fragmented to care. But as he tracks down the 10-year-old boy who may hold the key to Helen's death, he is faced with a crisis much closer to home.