Anthropologist Tobias Schmidt-Eberbach is about to get married. However, a find of a prehistoric skull on his wedding day messes up his plans. So does hitchhiker Uschi Mueller who he picks up merely by accident. It does not help that the police thinks that Tobias is a serial killer and Uschi his next victim, and neither that the real killer is still on the loose…
Set in Hamburg's “Hell's Kitchen,” a waterfront milieu of gangsters, pimps, dealers and prostitutes, the story follows the attempts of an ex-seaman first to insinuate himself into the scene, and then to extricate himself from it. He becomes a small-time pimp, sending his naive girlfriend out onto the streets thinking she is financing their middle-class future. When he becomes involved with an old pal, Nil, he increases his criminal portfolio. But when he steals Nil's girlfriend and things heat up, he leaves for his sister's middle-class home in Berlin, where his attempts to fit in are doomed from the start. Returning to Hamburg, he starts a rapid decline that delivers him into the waiting arms of Nil, whose revenge is merciless.
