Charlotte Lindholm is driving through the night when suddenly the silhouette of a little boy and the shadow of a man appear on the road ahead of her. Charlotte dodges, crashes into a tree and wakes up in the nearby county hospital. The boy, the unknown man whom she thinks she hit, the puncture mark on her arm - pipe dreams of an overtired police officer or puzzle pieces of a conspiracy? In search of lost time, Charlotte drives back to her personal 'crime scene', in the small town of Volsum. Its residents are shocked when they see Charlotte Lindholm for the first time: Apparently she looks like a large farmer's wife - the woman who died in an accident with her family at the same place where Charlotte had the accident.