London, Winter 1956: The Suez Crisis and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by the USSR threaten world stability as established truths give way to new uncertainties.
 
On a dank November day DI Ted Stratton is called to a murder scene – a loner has been stabbed in his Soho lodgings. The victim is Jeremy Lloyd, a man with a taste for esoteric religion. Stratton’s enquiries lead him to Suffolk, where the mysterious Mr Roth has created a Foundation for Spiritual Understanding in a house famed for being haunted.
 
It seems that Lloyd had believed himself marked out for great things. At the Foundation, Stratton meets Michael, a twelve-year-old boy who has been proclaimed as the next incarnation in a long line of spiritual leaders stretching back to Christ and Buddha. He is rumoured to have been immaculately conceived, but the woman who is said to be his mother, and whose photograph was cherished by Lloyd, has disappeared.
 
When a woman’s body is found, in woods nearby, Stratton initially assumes he has found her, but the reality turns out to be far stranger and more terrifying.