Pediatrician Dr. Dipper is found dead, hanged from a tree on the grounds of the Hassloch racetrack. Around his neck, he wears a cardboard sign with the ambiguous inscription "Bet on the wrong horse." Shortly thereafter, an assistant doctor from the Ludwigshafen children's clinic is also murdered, leaving Inspector Reiner Palzki with no doubt that there must be a connection between the two cases. He discovers that a patient of Dr. Dipper's had died just a few days earlier from a pseudocroup attack. Similar deaths have also occurred in the clinic. Palzki senses that he is on the trail of a full-blown scandal...