Madrid, 1941: Carlos Lombardi, ex-police officer and now a political prisoner for his loyalty to the Republic, spends his sentence in Cuelgamuros working at the mausoleum in El Valle de los Caídos. Just before Christmas, Lombardi is unexpectedly released and transferred to the Police Department, where he is met by his former boss, Balbino Ulloa, for whom he did a favor years ago by providing him a fake Popular Front card to save his getting fired. Now the police need him to solve a potentially scandalous case that has somehow yet to be leaked to the press: the murder of a priest who has been tortured, castrated, and beheaded. The horrendous crime seems to have been committed by the same murderer Lombardi was tracking in 1936, before the war. Ulloa urges him to take charge of the investigation with the promise of a possible reprieve in the future.