Investigator Petric makes his living from the dead. Lately business has been slow, what with the siege around Sarajevo. Condoned killing has displaced the crime of passion; his services with the civil police as a homicide investigator have been less in demand. Unluckily one premeditated death does land on the detective's desk. It is no abused lover or a distant sniper's victim but a government official - the chief of the interior ministry's police - shot dead at close range.