To outsiders, Pete Ponsonby is a professional businessman, the owner of a car repair and respraying concern, a Londoner living in Manchester running a successful enterprise To the men who work with him and know him, he is a professional crook. The garage is a front for his nefarious undertakings and his staff, recruited for their expertise with vehicles and with crime is his gang. Pete is looking for one last job to allow him to retire from a life of crime. That job is to be the robbery of the First National Bank of Central Africa, but for the big finale to go ahead, a series of smaller raids are needed to finance it. The smaller assignments include a Sub-Post Office, an off-license and the home of an Asian Gentleman and a garage/filling station. After one of the smaller robberies, Pete's getaway driver, a violent man with a penchant for sex with prostitutes assaults and almost kills a middle aged hooker. When the hooker is found on a commercial lorry park, badly beaten and close to death, the police become involved. When a reward is offered for the capture and prosecution of the vicious pervert who assaulted the prostitute the private detective, Jake Shreiver and his partner Bill Williams, both ex Greater Manchester Police detectives take up the case and when a young Eastern European call girl is attacked the private detectives realise that there is more to the case than they, at first, thought as it becomes ever more labyrinthine.