While out collecting some Portuguese laurel for the formidable flower arranger Mrs Dawes, feisty widow Ellie Quicke comes across a dead body - a corpse without an identity. Next day, Mrs Dawes is discovered by Ellie and her grandson, Frank, badly beaten and close to death. Much to Ellie's dismay, the police think shaven-headed Neil, Mrs Dawes' grandson, is responsible, even after a third body comes to light.

Jen Garner tries her best to be ‘wife and mother of the year’. She helps organise school plays and accompanies her husband to company dinners, all with a big smile on her face. But Jen has started to receive strange gifts in the post...first flowers, then a sympathy card. It could just be a joke; that’s what she tells herself. But then the final ‘gift’ arrives, and Jen has to question why somebody is so intent on shattering her life into pieces....

The derelict house on the edge of the sleepy seaside town was a haven for courting couples, down-and-outs - and someone with altogether more sinister intentions. It was there that they found the corpse of 17-year-old Jenny Hyde. She'd been strangled.

A young woman is brutally attacked on her way home. It looks like she was the victim of a jilted—and twisted—ex-lover. But then two more women, also engaged to be married, are found dead. The press call the killer the "Surrey Stalker". And there’s a stack of similar cold case files. The pressure is on for young, ambitious DI Rob Miller. But with all the time he’s spending at the office, Rob’s also running a fine line trying to keep his fiancée, Yvette, onside as they try to plan their wedding.

Detective Sam Helsdown hasn’t seen his daughter Zoe in two years and he’s excited and more than a little nervous to be at the airport picking her up for a visit. She’s 10 years old and has flown on her own for the first time. Flight BA631 from Athens has already landed and soon a trickle of people begins entering Arrivals. Among them is a little girl who runs towards him, head down, and throws herself into his arms saying ‘Daddy!’. But then he looks at her properly. This is not Zoe. This is not his daughter.