A violent storm blusters around the island of
Heligoland and cuts off the island from the rest of the world. Linda, a 24-year-old cartoonist, is temporarily staying on the island. She is threatened by her ex-boyfriend Danny, who is stalking her. Once again in a situation where she feels like she needs to flee from him, she falls down an embankment while fleeing and comes across a corpse on the beach. At the same time, Prof. Dr. Paul Herzfeld, a medical examiner working for the Federal Criminal Police Office, is engaged in an
autopsy at the
Charité University Hospital in
Berlin. He finds a capsule in the head of a female corpse whose jaw is missing. The capsule contains a small slip of paper with the cell phone number of his 17-year-old daughter Hannah, whom he rarely sees since separating from her mother. He calls the number and has to find out that his daughter has been kidnapped. He is told to wait for more information which he will get from a man called Erik. Mr. Herzfeld is advised not to call the police if he does not want to risk the life of his daughter. While Linda is standing next to the corpse, the mobile phone of the dead man found on Heligoland rings. She answers the call and talks to Mr. Herzfeld. She explains that he cannot come to Heligoland because of the storm. He tells Linda to search for Ender Müller, who is a friend of his and the caretaker in the local hospital. The two of them should bring the corpse to the autopsy room. At the same time, Mr. Herzfeld and his new trainee Ingolf von Appen begin their journey to
Cuxhaven in von Appen's car. The trainee became rich by selling his website which he had invented by the age of 14 but working in
forensic medicine is not one of his strengths. During the ride, dr. Herzfeld urges Linda on the phone to examine the corpse she found on the beach. As he searches for his daughter, we seemingly witness the rape and torture of Hannah, who is goaded into suicide by Sadler, who leaves behind a noose. Linda, who is disgusted and a
vegetarian, only approves of an external
necropsy, which she performs following Herzfeld's instructions, while Ender tries to lighten the mood with jokes. However, when she finds a yellow object in the corpse's throat and is asked to cut the throat open, she resists the request. Only after talking to Herzfeld about her ex-boyfriend Danny, she changes her mind. The object turns out to be the plastic capsule of a
Kinder Surprise and contains a photograph depicting the retired judge Friedericke Töven who lives on Heligoland. According to Jens Marinek, she once passed a too lenient sentence on Sadler, who had raped Marinek's only daughter who was underaged and later committed suicide because of Sadler. Herzfeld and Marinek were colleagues and friends at that time. At the time, Marinek had urged Herzfeld to give a false testimony so that Sadler got a tougher punishment, though Herzfeld refused to. Linda and Ender break into Töven's house in Heligoland and find a woman's corpse there, which they also bring to the autopsy room. Meanwhile, Herzfeld and his intern have reached the secluded house of his colleague, Jens Marinek. There, next to a dead pig, they find evidence relating to the
sadist Jan Erik Salder, the man who is holding Hannah captive. During the search for clues, Ingolf falls into a frozen lake near the house, though he is saved by Herzfeld. Ender wants to secure the electricity supply at the Heligoland clinic, and comes back to the autopsy room, in which Linda has locked herself, with a knife in his shoulder. A block of wood sticks out of Töven's rectum. Herzfeld has seen equivalent images in a video. There are numbers on the wooden block, which Linda forwards on via her phone. They are
geo-coordinates which lead Herzfeld and his trainee into a forest. There, Herzfeld is overpowered by Marinek, who shoots himself after swallowing a
memory chip. Herzfeld gets it out and sees a video on it showing the boss of a moving company Philipp Schwintowski. In it he explains his and Marinek's actions. Both Marinek's daughter Lily and Schwintowski's daughter Rebecca had been abducted by Sadler. In desperation, both girls had committed suicide after being raped by him. Marinek and Schwintowski decided to take justice into their own hands. They arranged for Hannah's abduction because in their eyes Herzfeld, as part of the justice system, was also responsible for the death of their daughters. In addition, they kidnapped Sadler, took his tongue, then let him loose on the judge, who Sadler killed. They then planned on killing him, setting him up as "Erik" and leading Herzfeld onto the mystery. Schwintowski then kills himself; Herzfeld not seeing the final seconds of the tape which shows Sadler apparently still alive. In the forest, Herzfeld deliberately causes a car accident to alarm a rescue helicopter via the car's automatic emergency call system. The helicopter takes Ingolf and him to Heligoland. When he arrives, he saves Linda and Ender, who had been attacked by Sadler, which left Ender severely injured. Herzfeld recognizes that the dead person found on the beach was Schwintowski. Schwintowski had failed to kill Sadler, so Sadler set up his corpse in same manner in an effort to fake his death. The reference to
Alcatraz leads the group to a bunker system under the Lighthouse of Heligoland, that the Nazis once built. There, Herzfeld finds Hannah watching a pre-recorded tape of Rebecca's rape, captivity, and ultimately, her suicide. Hannah was never raped nor was intended to be; her abduction being only a means by two grieving fathers for Herzfeld to feel their pain. Herzfeld takes his daughter out of the bunker, while Sadler is able to hide and escape unnoticed. Before he flies back in a helicopter with Hannah and the corpses, the forensic doctor thanks Linda and Ingolf for their assistance. As the helicopter is flying over the
North Sea, a knife cuts through one of the
body bags. Sadler attacks the group before Herzfeld manages to push him out of the helicopter. Sadler is clinging on to the helicopter with his fingers. Herzfeld, after thinking of Lily and Rebecca, and knowing what could almost have befallen Hannah, cuts Sadler's fingers off with a knife, causing him to fall to his death. ==Cast==