Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.
In present day St. Petersburg, police major Igor Grom, an honest and skilled cop with unconventional methods, pursues a vigilante murderer in the mask of a plague doctor.
A writer in 1930s Moscow has his work banned and is expelled from the official union, leaving him without income. He then writes a novel about a mysterious dark visitor and gradually starts confusing his real life with the story.
