The play opens with three men in overalls picking up something from the ground in the middle of the night.  They could be park-keepers or council workmen but they are not.  They are in fact policemen at the scene of a horrific suicide on a railway line putting pieces of human torso into a bag.  Their attitudes to the gruesome task are vastly different, their sergeant can't cope and the play concludes with a symbol of hope for the future, a runaway child coming on the scene and wanting to know what's in the bag.