Part I: A simultaneous attack on horses on the same night on three separate continents baffles the police until a Japanese student confesses that the assaults were occasioned by a perverse fantasy web-site called 'Amathus',exhorting people who wanted to belong to it to commit wilful acts from attacking horses to murder. Part II: When a local student is reported missing and is later found dead Creegan and the OSC's investigations lead them to a group of sixth-formers who are addicted to 'Amathus'. The pattern of the killings seems to echo the manner in which Justine Barber, a prostitute,killed seven pimps fifteen years earlier,for which she is now serving a life sentence. Creegan discovers that the 'Amathus' web-master Leonard Stoker,is obsessed with Jusstine and arranges for her to be released from prison to help him trap Stoker - though he also has to stop his colleague D.S. Kreitman from taking the law into his own hands.