Movements inspector Walter Brock recognized a man when observing a theft, but at the police he does not acknowledge to have identified him. He gets more and more introverted and asks for dislocation. Erwin Runge, the thief, makes his young friend and accessory Frank Reißner, talk to Brock's daughter Vera and point out that her mother had not been killed during a bombing. Frank and Vera begin researching about the past and fall in love with each other. they find out, that Brock and runge knew each other from times when they lived in the same house in Küstrin when Brock was still named Walter Merkel. Brock's wife had hidden a Jewish refugee and Runge found out, shot the man and betrayed the woman to the Gestapo. Brock did not intervene and fight for his wife, so he felt ashamed and changed his identity. Now, years later, Runge also kills Frank Reißner, as the young man had digressed from him, by positioning a point the wrong way.