A blue car is parked by a side road in the beautiful landscape of Skåne in southern Sweden. A child sits alone without an adult in sight. The child's father has been reported as missing, while the mother is in a psychiatric institution, unresponsive and apathetic. Kurt Wallander's failing health sees Linda take the lead in the case. It will touch her deeply as she discovers that the child has been unscrupulously tricked, exploited and humiliated.

The national election is approaching, and the Ystad town square is plastered with election posters with local labour party candidate Kenneth Nillson, a politician fighting the fear of immigrants as his electoral focal point. He sees it as his duty to clean Skane's reputation as being racist.

At the same time a train rolls into the train station in Gdansk, Poland. On the train the police find a African male with most of his face shoot away. As the man was murdered in Ystad, the starting point of the train journey this becomes a case for Kurt Wallander and the Ystad police. For Kurt Wallander the case takes an unexpected turn as the murder weapon has ties to a childhood friend.

A motorcycle rider is found murdered by the police, and the trail leads them to a local MC Club. The Club uses other riders to smuggle drugs across the Öresund bridge. Wallander believes that players outside of the MC club are trying to claim the local drug market when all clues indicate that the victim was one of the couriers. Only when Wallander's colleague Isabel gets violently assaulted in her home does he understand the lengths they will go to to achieve their goal.

A Russian concerto Cello player is the victim of a bomb attack after a performance in Ystad. The woman turns out to be a lead witness in a murder charge against a member of the Russian mafia, the son of one of their leaders, Leb Munchin. Wallander and his colleagues find themselves in the middle of a war against a powerful international opponent with ruthless methods. But Walalnder suspects that Leb Munchin’s motives aren’t about money and a quick profit, rather they relate to something much deeper. Eventually Walander stands eye to eye with an aged criminal who is ready to fight his last fight with all the means at his disposal.

Corrupt businessman Filip Pasolic stands trial for bringing illegal workers into Sweden and using them as slave labour. Wallander is injured by a car bomb intended for Kristina,who is prosecuting Pasolic and she is given police protection. At the same time pressure on the illegal Lithuanian work force to re-build Ystad's recycling centre in time for it to get an E.U. grant results in two men being killed,one of whose little sister,Natalia,sees construction manager Zoran bury the corpses. She goes to the police and implicates Zoran but takes off again with Zoran in pursuit. Wallander can link Zoran to Pasilic and needs to find him before he gets to Natalia in order to strong-arm him into testifying against Passilic. He also has to dissuade Katarina from resigning as,due to witness intimidation,the case is going against her.