DCI Vera Stanhope and DS Joe Ashworth investigate a suspicious death in an army barracks. Although the scene has been made to look like a suicide, Vera quickly establishes that Staff Sgt "Dev" Deverson was murdered. Sensing a connection to a soldier named Ollie who was killed in Afghanistan, Vera interviews Dev's loyal comrades and Ollie's grieving family, exposing a deeply concealed trauma at the heart of the crime.