When Paul Runge, a soldier of the Red Army, returns home to Koordi after the war, he sees that, despite the new regime, life in Koordi hasn't changed. It's still a abandoned, uncultured Estonian village, where rich landlords still oppress the population. Runge starts talking about founding a kolkhoze.

Lida Baburova, a tour guide of an architectural museum, unexpectedly receives a warrant for a two-room apartment in the new district of Zarechye, among the new settlers called "our Cheryomushki". Lida and her father go to inspect the apartment, but it turns out that it doesn't exist. The manager of the house, Barabashkin, conducted fictitious documentation, and the Baburovs' apartment merged with the neighboring one, owned by the head of the construction trust Drebednyov.

Police captain Aleshin is investigating a case related to the theft of opium at a chemical factory warehouse. Everything suggests that the offender must be sought among the employees of the enterprise. One of the workers, Frolov, is familiar to Alyoshin in another matter. And although Aleshin is confident in Frolov’s honesty, he suspects something was wrong, seeing how he hides something from him and himself suffers from it. At the dacha, the factory director Vasiltsev killed his stepfather, who turned out to be an unnecessary witness. A trace brings Aleshin to a plant employee, a certain Olga ...