Endeavour finds himself policing a lonely country patch and back in uniform, but when he discovers the dead body of missing schoolgirl Ann Kirby, it opens the quiet backwater to the roar of Castle Gate CID, now staffed by Thursday and an old adversary. With the former's hands tied, Endeavour resolves to prove a teenager's innocence, and to uncover the truth behind the young girl's death and to solve the three-year-old case of missing schoolgirl Emily Bayard. When yet another schoolgirl, Rosie Johnson, disappears from a country fete, Morse thinks there is a connection.