The Isle of Mull, three days before Christmas, 1998. Sergeant Ivor Punch is contacted by a frantic caller, Maggie May, about a missing pilot & plane. Respected classical musician Xander Lowry has vanished without a trace after taking off alone in a Cessna Needle from the airfield of a local hotel. For Punch, this strange incident takes places on the tenth anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster, in which his brother was killed. Now aged 45, Punch is a loner who slaughters sheep to unwind & survives on a diet of whisky & The Faces vinyls, & the last thing he needs is to be reminded of the past. Then Lowry’s body is found – but no plane in sight. To make matters even more frustrating, Punch must entertain an overly-keen and bureaucratic new deputy, PC Cluny, despatched from Head Office.