In shabby south Oxford, men clearing the debris of a burned-out garden room find something unusual among the ashes: a human ear. The two young women who seem to have been living in the garden room have disappeared. Who were they? What were they doing there? The new Superintendent of Thames Valley, a middle-aged lady with apple cheeks, looking more like grandmother in a children's story than an officer of the law, suspects organised crime. But the investigation is soon overtaken by other events.
Out on Oxford's Science Park, where high-worth businesses provide cutting edge technologies, the offices of Agile Bionics have been under attack from student protestors, whose fury has been provoked by the false rumour of deal between the company and the Israeli military. Now Agile's director, the flamboyant Rt. Hon. Guy Hobhouse, is murdered in his north Oxford townhouse, with the protestors' usual slogan spray-painted on his kitchen wall: Count Your Victims.
It seems a straightforward case of terrorism. Then his watch turns up with Fat Phil the fence, his daughter goes missing and the soft-featured Super shows an unexpectedly vicious streak.
To everyone's surprise, the badly behaved DI Ryan Wilkins has kept his job. His partner, the impeccably behaved DI Ray Wilkins, has quit. It seems to be the end of their ramshackle partnership. But, it turns out, Ray is now Communications Director of Agile Bionics, and when he's arrested on suspicion of a violent assault on a student protestor, it seems their relationship is set to continue, if along very different lines.