Commissario Alec Blume, on leave for health problems, fleeing his partner Caterina and their newborn daughter, retreats to a villa in central Italy, where he enrolls in a natural remedies class conducted by a young woman named Silvana. But rather than finding comfort, Blume becomes increasingly ill--and ill at ease--in his new environment, and immediately makes an enemy of Niki, Silvana's ambiguous fiance. Then a Romanian girl who works in Niki's nightclub comes to Blume and asks for his help in finding her disappeared friend. Blume, isolated and sick, unadvisedly delves into the dark histories of the people around him.