Two teenage aristocratic brothers, Otto and Pieter, keep their friend Theo locked up in a turret because they’ll fear they’ll get into trouble if he is discovered. The police want to talk to Theo about the theft of a scooter, but the brothers also had him steal a valuable object for them – which he did in order to become their friend.

At first, the atmosphere is jovial: we’ve got someone in hiding, we can outsmart all of them. But hiding Theo becomes increasingly dangerous and the brothers are repeatedly confronted with this.

The situation becomes untenable; hiding becomes captivity. In the heat and isolation, things get more and more out of hand, until it all comes to a head in a brutal murder – of the wrong person. Unforget­table and chilling to the very last page.