Every Thursday for a quarter of a century, a group of friends, some of them policemen, met up for a game of five-a-side football. One day the corpse of Alec Smith is discovered. Bob Skinner, must travel through the cases he'd worked on trying to find a clue to the motive behind murder.
A mid-air explosion kills both the British and American Defence Secretaries and Bob Skinner finds himself leading the biggest investigation of his career. The investigation quickly becomes puzzling and then sudden violence puts Skinner out of the picture and on the brink of death.
As a country club is due to open on Witches' Hill, a body is discovered with its throat cut. The next day a fragment of a legendary witches' curse upon anyone who desecrates their place of worship is sent to a local paper. As Robert Skinner begins his grizzly investigation, a second murder occurs.
A murder in an affluent Edinburgh suburb leaves Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner baffled. Then a case of property fraud takes Skinner in a new direction. Moving from Scotland to Spain to a climax in Edinburgh, this thriller follows a trail involving vice, corruption and the merchants of death.
An explosion rocks Princes Street in the midst of the Edinburgh Festival. Responsibility is claimed by a group supposedly demanding political separation from Britain, but as atrocities escalate, Head of CID Bob Skinner realizes this is no gang of fanatics, but a highly professional team.
