Bristol is a city where little happens to calm overzealous DI Alison Harts until she stumbles into a police informant-cum-drug dealer in a bloodbath. Evidence points to gangland turf, until the suspect gang is wiped out in a boat fire. Matters get out of hand when her fellow officers with earlier contact with the slain dealer join fatalities in a car blast that also claims two children. Alison questions the grieving husband of comatose WPC Elaine Morrison, but she is compromised when Ed Morrison himself becomes a moving target of police vendetta. As more officers and associate civilians join the casualties, and the wall of silence becomes even more complicated while separating victims from the culprits. In an elusive lull that follows, Alison is tipped of a child abuser. She knows that Ed is unhitched and dangerous after losing his family, yet she cannot deny the truth that there has been massive police cover up in an earlier rape of a minor. Then she witnesses two brutal deaths involving divided forces very close to her that might have caused her own demise. Her loyalty is again in question. As her troubled past comes under scrutiny by the man she has reluctantly woven her future with, she is torn between duty and love. Not long before the bitter truth comes out, and she has to rethink her new life, realising that all along she had known the truth but had chosen to turn a blind eye. But then, the race is on to avert an even worse bloodbath, and she too is seriously in mortal danger.