A man is found dead in a dark corner of a Barcelona bar late on a Saturday night. He arrived that day from Australia for his first ever visit. He is middle-aged in a bar for teenagers. Why murder a man who apparently knew no one in the city? Even for the legendary Chief Inspector Rojas this is a puzzle with no obvious clues. Yet immediately the body offers some bizarre evidence that leads to the ancient city of Salamanca via the remote Australian desert. An incident there 14 years before is strangely connected to the most audacious breach of security of private Swiss banking accounts. Slowly, Rojas unearths a story of a tender love affair cursed by events. He meets a beautiful half-Chinese woman in the ancient Salamanca University and he enters a world of international organised crime threatened by one, very brave, tragically lonely man. That man is now dead and others will follow him unless the legendary detective can solve the puzzle. Rojas is helped in his quest by the lecherous, apparently dissolute lawyer, Moran, whose image conceals a brilliant, devious mind that outsmarts governments and criminal masterminds. Both would happily frustrate him and Rojas. Finally, in the heat of Salamanca, does Rojas at last meet the woman who can tempt him out of the ivory tower of his celibate solitude?