A rich German businessman's body is dragged from the water in an idyllic coastal setting in Northumberland in the 1960s. Old school police inspector George Gently and his sidekick Detective Sergeant John Bacchus arrive at the scene to find the man's son and daughter-in-law looking for the man on his ketch, on which they had sailed together from Germany.

Gently discovers the businessman had close connections with a local peasant farming family, with whom he was billeted as a PoW during the war.