Mark Unwin is one of four employees of Krielsen International oil company captured by militant group MEND whilst they are working in Nigeria. His wife Claire flies out with Alice Onuko, Nigerian-born,British-raised P.R. for Krielsen. When the women arrive in Port Harcourt they are told a ransom has been agreed - as is the norm since MEND depends on ransoms to fund itself. However when civil rights worker Keme, acting as go-between, escorts the women to the handover place they find only the corpses of Mark and his co-workers. Next day Claire meets a journalist who tells her the men were killed by the Nigerian government after their release by MEND and he is himself later found dead. She also learns that he was having an affair with Angel, a prostitute,whom she confronts but who is whisked away in a car before she can say anything. Alice is equally shocked to find that her father has made his money less than scrupulously from oil...

The horrors of war are examined from the view points of lifelong friends (Linus Roache, Vincent Perez)...

In February, 1975, in Northern Ireland, seventeen year-old UVF member Alistair Little kills the catholic Jimmy Griffin in his house in Lurgan in front of his younger brother Joe Griffin. Alistair is arrested and imprisoned for twelve years while Joe is blamed by his mother for not saving his brother. Thirty-three years later, a TV promotes the meeting of Alistair and Joe in a house in River Finn, expecting the truth and the reconciliation of the murderer and the victim who actually seeks five minutes of heaven.