The carefully draped corpse of 16-year-old student and talented pianist Rita Koehler is found on a grand piano in a concert hall, her body apparently embalmed. Could it have been assisted suicide? The body of an old man, also prepared, is then found - Karl Hahnemann, born in 1923. What did Rita and Hahnemann have in common? Both had a talent: Rita in music, Hahnemann a gifted chess player. A third victim makes it inevitably clear to the investigators that they are dealing with a serial offender: when the seven-year-old, highly talented Björn disappears, Borowski, his colleague Alim Zainalow, and police psychologist Frieda Jung urgently need to decode a pattern in order to track down the perpetrator.