When the body of Lulu Starewski, an elderly eccentric antique dealer, is found in her home in an Oxfordshire village by her friend Tessa Cox, Detective Chief Inspector Roger Hayes is soon on the scene. A specialist in Russian Icons, Lulu owned a gallery in London, which its manager, Raoul Musset, seems destined to inherit, along with her London flat. That is, until an arson attack destroys the gallery. As Roger Hayes probes the case, a tangled network of shadowy Russian contacts emerges. Why should there have been a business connection between Lulu and Tessa Cox's car-dealer husband, Tony? Who tried to kidnap Alexei, his son from his former marriage? And who is the too-good-to-be-true Rory Smythe, who claims close connections with Lulu? In an attempt to obtain answers and tie up the loose ends, Hayes travels to St Petersburg to meet up with British Intelligence. And he is just in time to witness the payoff...