For sixteen years, Klaus-Peter Mahler served time for a murder he did not commit — until he retracted his confession on his deathbed. Inspector Ida Ruf, who knows the case well from her first years of service, reopens the investigation. But the deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes: the trail leads directly to her own family. For the first time Ida must decide whether to follow the truth even if it destroys her own brother — and risk everything she has built over a quarter of a century as a police officer. The final case of the Ida Ruf series, in which all the open threads of the previous three volumes come together.