For three months, Inspector August Emmerich has been on the trail of Veit Kolja, the head of a large-scale black market smuggling operation that supplies people with basic needs that remain scarce in a city still devastated by World War I. Emmerich dreams of a reassignment to the elite division that handles homicides and hopes to showcase his deductive skills after his inexperienced new assistant stumbles across a corpse in the woods. The coroner and Emmerich's boss, District Inspector Leopold Sander, are eager to label the death a suicide, even after a second body turns up. Emmerich resists Sander's directives to devote himself to the smuggling ring, even as he grapples with debilitating pain from a war wound as well as a devastating development in his personal life.