It's midsummer in the Spreewald. The heat affects everyone. A man throws himself in front of a truck on a lonely country road to commit suicide. His name is Gottfried Richter. An emergency operation is performed. A lot of someone else's blood is discovered on the clothes of the prisoner on remand. The man in the accident has apparently committed a serious crime. While commissioner Thorsten Krüger and Fichte are looking for the actual victim of the bloody crime and puzzling over a motive, the past of the man is gradually revealed in flashbacks, who once found his great love in the canoe maker daughter Irene and married her. But the happiness of the young couple cracked over the years by degrees.