This time the crime scene is an Italian restaurant in Duisburg. Schimanski happens to witness an armed robbery of the landlord Giovanni Salvatore. He intervenes and experiences a fiasco: his girlfriend Renate is pushed into the line of fire by one of the gangsters and dies. Knowing that he has killed an innocent person, he puts down his weapon. Thanner joins the manhunt for the two perpetrators and pays dearly for it: Schimanski finds him unconscious, with serious injuries, after a car accident.

Chief Detective Bernd Flemming, Inspector Mariam Koch and Chief Inspector Max Ballauf have their hands full while the carnival is in full swing in Düsseldorf.