A city has to give up one of its secrets for a detective to catch a killer. Liverpool is in the midst of an emergency. Several people have been poisoned. But DI Tara Grogan is not on the case. Instead, she has an in-tray full of mundane tasks and jealously watches from the sidelines as the high profile investigation unfolds. One such task is looking into the suicide of a company executive. Probing a little deeper, Grogan begins to smell a rat. All is not well at Harbinson Fine Foods and, with the city on high alert and its people on edge, the detective begins to suspect a connection to the main investigation. Struggling to convince her superiors of her lead, Grogan strikes up a friendship with the deceased's lover and company secretary, the seductive Jez Riordan. Once again, only by overstepping the boundaries between work and pleasure, can Grogan begin to see the whole picture. With more murders inevitable and the main investigation stalled, the detective enters the ring, and must parry the moves of powerful and motivated people to nail the suspect.