Though Cnut has the law firmly on his side, when he finds himself up against one of the richest men in the country, Harald Haraldsen, a megalomaniac who has almost every judge in his pocket, and literally owns everyone on his huge estate, he finds himself stymied at every turn. Each piece of evidence he obtains is classed as illegally procured - even after he exhumes the corpse of a man who was obviously strangled to death from the estate cemetery. Worse, Haraldsen deliberately mocks him while the exhumation is carried out.

Despite being pressed by his boss and by the Minister of Justice to give up the investigation of the billionaire, Cnut is determined to bring him down.

Using satellite imagery, supplied by his old friend Ole Olsen, head of the Secret Service, Cnut and his team plot the routes of every vehicle owned by Haraldsen, including those of the Ragnar Shipping Line that he owns, and use surveillance teams for weeks, until they have enough information on his crimes to launch simultaneous nationwide raids, involving dozens of officers.

Those crimes involve the abduction of scores of young girls from Brazil, the carriage of those girls on Ragnar Line ships, their imprisonment, sale to sex traffickers, and personal use by Haraldsen, whom Cnut catches in bed naked with two of them.

He still believes he is beyond the law, and expects that he will be allowed house arrest by a friendly judge, but Cnut arranges for an embittered old judge, close to retirement, to hear the arraignment, and ruins Haraldsen's hopes until the date of his trial - by keeping him locked in a cell.

In the meantime, Cnut travels to Brazil with some of the repatriated girls, and makes certain arrangements with the police chief there.

Haraldsen is in for a shock.