DI Kate Simms is on the fast track to nowhere. Five years ago she helped a colleague when she shouldn't have. She's been clawing her way back from a demotion ever since. Professor Nick Fennimore is a failed genetics student successful gambler betting agent crime scene officer chemistry graduate toxicology specialist & one-time scientific advisor to the National Crime Faculty. He is the best there is but ever since his wife & daughter disappeared he's been hiding away in Scotland working as a forensics lecturer. In Manchester drug addicts are turning up dead & Simms' superior is only too pleased to hand the problem to her. Then a celebrity dies & the media gets interested. Another overdose victim shows up but this time the woman has been systematically beaten & all identifying features removed. The evidence doesn't add up; Simms' superiors seem to be obstructing her investigation; & the one person she can't afford to associate with is the one man who can help: Fennimore.