When a gunman breaks into South Oxford Nursery School and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy fears the worst. As an armed police presence builds outside the school's gates, the only person the gunman will talk to is Ben Whistler, an MI6 accountant who worked with his lover, Miro. Miro's gone missing, though, along with a quarter of a billion pounds allotted for reconstruction work in Iraq. The gunman refuses to believe that Miro is a thief - though he's always had his secrets. Then again, so does Louise; and so do the other hostages.