Geiger's business is extracting information. A meticulous torturer, his methods range from the brutal to the psychologically complex, and he will stop at nothing to get the job done. His clients are referred to him from international corporations, government agencies and organised crime; his skills are in worldwide demand. He calls his company Information Retrieval.

Geiger only has one rule: that he will never work on a child. So when a client presents Geiger with a twelve-year-old boy, his instinct is to walk away. But the alternative - the unknown horror that might await the boy elsewhere - is too awful for him to contemplate.

Geiger's history is a blank page - even to him. In accepting this assignment in an attempt to save the boy, he will discover that history, no matter how torturous that proves to be…