It's autumn in Gothenburg and an anxious mother calls the police; herlittle boy was lured into a car by a man offering sweets. The child isreturned unharmed but then the same thing happens with a little girl, andthen another. Each child attends a different nursery, and each parentcontacts a different police station, so, at first, no connection isestablished between the incidents and the reports are filed and forgotten.Meanwhile DCI Winter is investigating a series of random attacks onstrangely uncooperative university students, but when a four-year-old boyis abducted and found injured, the forgotten files resurface and a linkbetween the stories becomes apparent. As Gothenburg prepares forChristmas, Winter is in a race against time to prevent a horrificcatastrophe.