Jingle bells on the Kiel Fjord: while Commissioner Borowski and his colleague Sarah Brandt are celebrating Julklapp in the Presidium, a murderer is preparing a dark crime in neighboring Schleswig. At the Lucia Festival parade at a Danish school, a man suddenly caught fire. Kriminalrat Schladitz, who spent his childhood in this place, becomes an involuntary witness to the brutal attack. The dead man, Michael Eckart, was the headmaster here and is a member of the Danish minority. At first everything indicates that the murderer can be found in the immediate vicinity of the dead man.

In the middle of an event at the police college, a young student freaks out and stabs her buddy. He still dies at the scene in the arms of the helpless main commissioner.

Alarm in Kiel: In an uprising in the forensic clinic, the woman killer Kai Korthals manages to escape from security custody. Korthals, who crept and killed numerous women in their homes, became Borowski's personal nightmare six years ago when he kidnapped his fiancée Frieda Jung.