Seventeen years ago, Inspector Evert Grens of the Crime Squad was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family was murdered and only their five-year-old daughter survived. The girl entered a witness protection program and the case went cold, but years later Grens is still haunted by the seemingly random murder and the girl who lived. So when he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a mysterious break-in, he fears that someone intends to silence the only witness. He struggles to find the girl... before it's too late...

Meanwhile, someone in the Stockholm underworld is executing arms smugglers and has put the family of former police informant Piet Hoffmann in serious danger. He must reveal the secret threat to his family while keeping his own secrets. Soon, in their quest for answers, he becomes entangled with Grens and the two men find themselves caught in a criminal conspiracy that is more complex - and dangerous - than they could have imagined.

It's good to close the five. And then close a few more days and nights. I sing again. "Live, girl, and many years..."

The little girl had locked herself in her own world. She had turned off the switch. For her, time had started over from the beginning. A month later, she disappeared from Grens' world, after first embracing him and whispering that she was thirty-two days and five years old, as if the five years were something completely different. Grens remembered the anger that had consumed him then. He had been forced to close one of the few cases he was convinced he had found the killer but had failed to keep him.