Corruption - theft - deception - perverting the course of justice - police misconduct.
How low will senior members of a large Metropolitan Police Force, the Ministry of Defence and the Secret Service stoop to protect their careers and reputation?
It's Christmas Eve 1974 in Leeds.
Esther Grey, a Holocaust surviver, suffers from depression and shuns any social contact with others. She finds solace only by walking alone in the shadows of the streets in Leeds at night. But tonight she will never return home. As Esther crosses a dimly lit avenue, she is knocked down and killed by a suspected drunk driver who, together with the three passengers in the car, remove her body from the scene and dump it several miles away.
Inspector John Evans is a member of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police Internal Discipline and Complaints Department, known cynically by his operational colleagues, as 'Rubber Heelers' who would lock up their own Grandmothers.
Evans is contacted by DS Downing, a colleague he previously worked with, who informs him of an anonymous caller claiming the driver and passengers in the car involved in the fatal RTA were, in fact, serving senior police officers of the Force. Downing reports this to DCI Bell, his boss, who swiftly takes him off the case. But when the caller contacts him again, naming Bell as a co-conspirator, he realises he cannot trust anyone except his old friend John Evans. How far does this corruption go up the ladder?
Together with two other colleagues, Evans forms an unlikely team and embarks on an unofficial investigation to identify those responsible. However, they are totally unprepared to deal with the dangerous onslaught of underhand tactics unleashed by those in power.
Will they survive and will there ever be justice for Esther? Or are these secrets too damning for the Establishment to concede?
