Detective Sergeant Jason Smith is days away from the end of his sick leave after his girlfriend was murdered when he gets a call from an old friend. His friend has been arrested for the murder of a student. He wants Smith to investigate the murder and prove his innocence. Smith is persuaded return to work. The student was killed with a bread knife. Ladybirds were scattered on his dead body. When another man is found dead with ladybirds on his body, Smith enlists the help of an insect doctor, the enigmatic DR Karen Wood, to try and understand the significance of the ladybirds. As Smith gets drawn closer to this mysterious woman and more and more men wind up dead with ladybirds on their bodies Smith quickly realises that Dr Wood is not who she seems to be. Smith and his team unearth a terrible secret from twenty years earlier; a brutal attack took place and now it seems as if the past is coming back to the perpetrators. Somebody wants justice and, as more and more men die, Smith realises he is running out of time to find out who.