 Jane Tennison s promotion to Superintendent turns out to put her in charge of an investigation and search for an abducted baby. She gets more involved in it than she intended considering that she just had an abortion. However, she turns out to be the one of most cool headed of her team when the prime suspect seems to be a man who was a child molester recently released from a clinic. As people start to investigate him, emotions get in the way and terrible mistakes are made that seem beyond Supt. Tennison s ability to correct.