Siggi Baumeister could have enjoyed quiet winter days in the seclusion of the Eifel. Snow is falling, the cat is expecting kittens, and firewood needs to be chopped for the stove. But then a news magazine sends him to investigate in the Bonn government district, and suddenly a nightmare begins for him. He stumbles into the hectic hustle of a murder investigation. A homeless man has been killed, which would typically warrant at most a ten-line report. However, Baumeister's journalistic instinct raises alarms. It quickly becomes clear that the deceased was not who he was thought to be. Inconsistencies pile up, and research is to be unofficially suppressed; he realizes almost too late that the price for his inquiries could be his own life and that he has crossed paths with people from whom he would find no refuge even in the Eifel.