Janek Mitter stumbles into his bathroom one morning after a night of heavy drinking, to find his beautiful young wife, Eva, floating dead in the bath. She has been brutally murdered. Yet even during his trial Mitter cannot summon a single memory of attacking Eva, nor a clue as to who could have killed her if he had not. Only once he has been convicted & locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane does he have a snatch of insight
- but is it too late? Drawing a blank after exhaustive interviews, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren remains convinced that something, or someone, in the dead woman`s life has caused these tragic events. But the reasons for her speedy remarriage have died with her. & as he delves even deeper, Van Veeteren realizes that the past never stops haunting the present.