Four oil workers are kidnapped from an oil installation in a remote part of the Niger Delta, Nigeria. One of them is Mark Unwin. Back in the UK, his wife Claire is assured by his employers Krielson International that his speedy release is just a formality. Mend, the militant group responsible, depend on the ransoms to finance their operation - so the workers are always returned alive and in good health. Nonetheless, Claire travels to Nigeria - against the advice of the Foreign Office. Krielson PR exec Alice Omuka is given the task of managing Claire until her husband is returned. When a ransom is agreed and details for the hostage handover arranged, Alice suggests that Claire could come along. Some shots of the joyful reunion between Mark and Claire would be great PR, she argues - and Krielson agree. But after journeying deep into the creeks to the wellhead at the handover point, they are greeted by the most gruesome and macabre sight imaginable - the bodies of Mark and his co-workers, fly-blown and oil-spattered, hanging from the wellhead.

Claire's investigations into her husband's activities lead her to a bar frequented by her husband and his friends, which she learns is actually a brothel. Here she learns that her husband was having an affair with Angel, a local girl; and when she tracks her down, Angel tells her that Mark had asked her to marry him. The Foreign Office inform Claire that her husband had been involved in a plan to smuggle prostitutes from Nigeria to London - but Noel, a local journalist, tells Alice that this is just a ruse to get Claire to go home. There is a bigger secret to be unearthed, he is sure.