A young girl stands at a window in the middle of the night, looking across the street at a man with a Bible. A stained-glass Jesus in blue looks down on the lost church. A woman hangs by the neck from a bridge in the public park, angel's wings on her back. A teenage boy lies in a bath, the water turned blood red. Four church congregations have been told to unite, with unholy consequences. One by one the victims fall, as DS Hutton and DCI Taylor are drawn into the troubled and duplicitous world of the Christian Church, as its numbers fall and members fight over the scraps of diminishing power. And for Hutton, at last, it seems there may be the chance to receive absolution for past sins.