Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James's idyllic holiday at his family's home in the Cheshire countryside is interrupted by murder both past and present. A teenager drowns in a local canal, the remains of an infant are discovered in an old canal-side barn, then a troubled former social worker is found murdered in her boat. As Duncan and Gemma investigate they realize that the lives of the three victims were intertwined in unexpected ways, and that the claims of the past will not be silenced until old wounds are healed. Soon they find that the all-too-present dangers only underline how the past never truly dies, and that not even Kincaid's family is safe from harm.