 Deputy Assistant Commissioner Charlie Hillian is killed the night of his retirement party. Hillian was at one time a senior officer in Oxford and was in fact Morse s boss. He was also writing a book about his most memorable cases, including one about the unsolved death of an 8 year-old girl some 18 years. The suspect in that case, Frederick Redpath, was at Hillian s house the day he died and that chapter from the manuscript is missing. There are other suspects however, including Hillian s ghost writer who will now receive all of the book s royalties; a handyman who was working on the property; and Redpath s daughter, who knew the little girl who was killed all those years before. Morse comes into conflict with with a colleague DCI Dawson, who was one of Hilliard s protégés, as they again look into the little girl s death.