After suffering a gunshot wound at the end of the last season Dalziel returns to work and is quickly caught up in a serial killers death, he is amazed to learn that the main witness in the strange death is Abbie Hallingsworth - a woman who went missing as a young child 18 years before (Dalziel even put someone in prison for a murder). Dalziel also manages to get off on the wrong foot with new Assistant Chief Constable Rebecca Fenning.