The death of a policeman during an armed raid in London in which a number of diamond thieves managed to get away with a large haul, is traced back to Scotland as DCI Taggart and the team have to contend with a gypsy's curse. When the matriarch of a gypsy family is found murdered in her caravan, the case takes an unexpr caravan.

As the robbers begin dying one by one, seemingly victims of the dead woman's curse, Danny, the person who actually stabbed the traveller fortune teller, takes up with Jane Antrobus, a gangster's moll.

Jean Taggart falls into a coma after a car accident just as Danny, the only surviving member of the trio, plans to escape to Spain with Jane Antrobus.

Having persuaded his Aunt Sophie to move into a care home, he's keen to handle the sale of her house. The killer strikes again, and Lena is killed.

After a body is found in Sophie's attic, she's plunged into a great depression, she asks her young teenage helpers for assistance. The killer strikes again.

When a body is found in the boot of a car being crushed in a scrap metal yard, DCI Taggart and DS Jardine are called to investigate. The grisly details are repeated shortly after when a second body is found in the same scrapyard. Taggart and Jardine investigate a link between drugs and the art world.