Bodies are being exhumed to higher ground at King's Lynn's cemetery to avoid flooding. But when the coffin of murdered pub landlady Nora Tilden is hauled up, the corpse of a young black man is revealed; killed by a billhook blow to the head and dumped in the grave when Nora was buried, twenty-eight years earlier. Was he the victim of a racist crime? When DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine investigate, they are led to The Flask, Nora's pub just along the riverbank, where her family hides more than one dark secret. It's soon clear that no one can be trusted. Can Shaw and Valentine discover the truth behind the murder before it's too late and ghosts from the past claim another victim?