Tom Fletcher has left the police force, and it's cold outside. Working as a private investigator in Cambridge, Tom is dragged back into his own troubled family history by an enigmatic message from his missing father. Somehow, he seems to be connected to the disappearance and murder of a young law student, who was working in a hostess bar. As a massive storm tracks across Europe and begins to batter the low-lying fen country, so Tom's inquiries begin to spiral into ever deeper and darker conspiracies. How is a high-tech American company involved in an officially-suppressed story from the Second World War? Where is the long-disused US Air Force base that seems to be the key to a centuries-old mystery, and who were the haunting, haunted sisters who played such a part in a drama that is still reaching out to claim Tom Fletcher?