Ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts is hoping to ease gently into his new role as Brighton's first Police Commissioner but is hit with a shocking scandal involving the director of the Royal Pavilion. In the subsequent investigation, Detective Inspector Sarah Gilchrist and Detective Sergeant Bellamy Heap are bemused by the discovery of looted antiquities from Cambodia's Angkor Watt in the tunnels beneath the Pavilion, but the further discovery of a corpse gives their investigation a darker hue. As does the arrival in Brighton of a man who was once caught up in the horror of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, a man for whom redemption has become retribution.
