Pharaon De Winter is a police lieutenant who lives with his mother in Bailleul, a working-class town in Northern France. With astonishing and raw sensitivity, Pharaon agonizes over the evil he must confront every day during the course of his work. His latest case is the brutal rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, a crime so barbarous that Pharaon reels from the madness of it, struggling to grasp its meaning. Pharaon is deeply attracted to his neighbor and factory worker Domino, who in turn is carnally drawn to her boyfriend, Joseph. Accompanying them on their sojourns to the country, Pharaon struggles with the pain he feels every time the two physically communicate their affection for one another. So too must he struggle with his emotions and sense of inadequacy as he pieces together the evidence and eyewitness testimony to track the killer of an innocent girl. As the investigation proceeds to its climax, Pharaon's profound humanity is tested to the limits.