Varg Veum is summoned by Chief of Police Hamre to a hostage drama on a farm outside Bergen: A married couple has been brutally murdered, and all evidence points to their foster son, 16-year-old Jan Egil. The kid refuses to talk to anyone except Veum, who has known him since childhood. He swears he didn't kill his foster parents. But there are a couple of social workers at the welfare home for stray kids, where Egil landed when he was a year old; they are deeply touched by the drama as defenders of the young population of the social home, for it's been plagued by a new drug called GHB (Hydroxybutyric acid) which killed several kids, When Egil declares himself guilty of the murder, Hamre asks Veum to get his hands out of a solved case. But Veum discovers that Egil is been forced by the knowledge of a disturbing reality concerning his foster father and this drug.