After almost a decade, Ed Northcote emerges from captivity to find his world changed beyond recognition. In fact, the only person he recognises is Camilla, his wife. Only it isn't Camilla, it is his daughter Hannah, now aged twenty. Ed tries to take in all that has happened while he has been away, but there is one piece of news which he finds too horrific to absorb. Camilla has been murdered. There was a trial. The man convicted of attacking her, an insurance investigator, was sent to prison for life. In his cell, Jonathan Swann reads the news about Ed's release - 'HOSTAGE RETURNS TO FIND WIFE MURDERED' - and tries to write him a letter explaining that he was framed.

Because Ed had been 'missing, presumed dead' for eight years, the Foreign Office had decided that, for the purposes of his life insurance policy, he should be declared dead officially. Jonathan had been sent to go through the formalities with the widow. In his experience, these matters were rarely straightforward. People can turn up again many years after being presumed dead. They might have been in a fugue state, or a coma, or they might have faked their own death as an insurance scam. When that happened, the legal implications were huge.