It’sa policemen'sjob to look death in the eyehowever sinister a form it takes Sarah Pepper is deadkilled by her boyfriend in a drunken rage. He has confessed, but he can't remember exactly where he dumped her body. The police appeal to the public for help finding Sarah's remains. They're looking for a field with a wooden gate, an empty bottle of vodka by the roadside. She will be partly concealed beneath a hedge. Shocked by the news, Alex Connor travels halfway round the world to say goodbye to Sarah, the friend who helped him through his darkest days. When he arrives, however, he finds only a mystery. The field has been located, butsomeone else has got there first. Sarah's body has been taken. On the other side of the country, a killer is preying on young women. When a girl called Rebecca Wingate vanishes, Detective Paul Kearney knows they only have a week to find herbefore her body turns up, drained completely of blood. Kearney seemingly gets a break when a man confessesbut Rebecca's body isn't where it should be. In their hunt to find the living and the dead, Kearney and Alex are drawn together into a sinister world of death fetish and "murderabilia," where relics and mementos of killers are traded, and life is only the first thing a victim will lose.