Each year, at Hallowe'en, high on the Cornish cliffs, a life-size effigy of a man is strapped to a blazing wheel and run into the sea - a re-enactment of a hideous, ancient legend where the figure had been a living sacrifice.<BR>So when Jonathan Riddle, a well-known and respected local builder and undertaker, disappears it seems all too likely that his corpse has gone the way of the historic 'scapegoat'.<BR>As Chief Superintendent Wycliffe begins to investigate the family life of Riddle, more and more unpleasant facts begin to emerge until eventually he is left with an incredible, and seemingly impossible, solution ...