The fire at the carpet factory near the battlefields of the First World War took the life of a manager in suspicious circumstances. Tim Simpson, pitchforked into a Bank project involving a Belgian businessman, a Lancashire mill owner and a French entrepreneur, finds clues from Robert Graves' poetry, paintings by Nevinson and the haunting legacy of two world wars, all of which add to personal danger and violence. It needs all his skill and rugby-formed muscle to solve the case.