After a night of drinking, Anna Janneke (Margarita Broich) and Paul Brix (Wolfram Koch), badly hung over, are called to a crime scene: a man was apparently tortured and murdered in a lonely forest hut. To her amazement, police chief Ansgar Matzerath (Peter Lohmeyer) confesses at the scene of the crime. He claims to have killed the man because he kidnapped and raped his wife seven years ago. He doesn't value mitigating circumstances and demands a harsh punishment for himself. Complicated by extensive renovation work in the police station and parallel coaching sessions, the police officers begin their interrogation. Is Matzerath reallythe perpetrator? Is the victim really the rapist of his wife? What does the long-retired detective Elsa Bronski (Hannelore Elsner), who worked on the case at the time and never solved and who is still chasing her own demons, know? Piece by piece, they put the pieces of the puzzle together and come up against new questions that affect their own work and shake their self-image as police officers.
In addition to Margarita Broich and Wolfram Koch as the Frankfurt investigative team, Peter Lohmeyer and – in one of her last roles – Hannelore Elsner can be seen in "Tatort: The Good and the Bad" in the lead role in the episode. Hannelore Elsner died a year ago on April 21, 2019.