"Gas on!" is the unmistakable command. When the medical examiner Dr. Joseph Roth is about to leave the crime scene when he feels the barrel of a pistol on his temple. The man in the back seat of his car means business. Two masked men had robbed and shot a jeweler in the parking lot of a luxury hotel in Cologne. One of the two perpetrators is now in Roth's car. At this point, inspectors Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk had no idea that their colleague was kidnapped. They are already achieving their first search successes. The couple Heiner Wolff and Marie Menke are urgent suspects. On the video of the hotel's surveillance camera, the youngReceptionist Julia Hirsch recognized her two vacation friends. She had casually told them about the regular guest with the valuable luggage.
Are the stolen gems already in circulation? Ballauf and Schenk listen to the fence scene and investigate the suspects' surroundings. They meet Marie's older sister Sophie Menke, a professional musician who has just returned from a long stay in the USA. But there was radio silence between the two sisters for years. And a former friend, the acting teacher Christof Rüter, also explains that he hasn't seen Marie for a long time. A woman's body is found in the Rhine...