Fisher has returned to Cairo after leading a murder investigation in Europe. Obviously traumatised by the experience he remembers little, is obsessive and is plague by crippling headaches. He seeks the help of a therapist, and under hypnosis travels back into his memory, his pain....back to Europe Europa is much changed. Decay and dereliction prevail. Fisher visits Osborne, his former teacher at the police academy. Osborne is now retired living in his own seperate world. His book The Element of Crime has remained essential to Fisher's philosophy, but Osborne now vehemently rejects his original theories as dangerous fiction. The latest in a series of bizarre murders - The Lotto Murders - has occured in Innenstadt harbour. Fisher is to lead the investigation under the command of Police Chief Kramer. Kramer's methods differ greatly from Fisher's Kramer's priority being control not solution. At Police headquearters Fisher realizes that osborne previously led to The Lotto Murders investigation and that he established a link between the murders and a surveillance report on a man called Harry Grey. The file on Grey, however, only contains blank pages. On a return visit to Osborne's house Fisher stumbles across the missing Harry Grey file. This and Osborn's insistence that Grey no longer exisists only increase his desire to resolve the mystery.