Santini tries to convince his lover, Jess Orton, to set him up with some drug dealers – he wants out of Sun Hill, and DS Timpney, his friend in Area Drugs, has promised him a place in the squad if Santini can get him evidence on them. However, before he has the chance, the Ortons' club is firebombed, and Santini is shocked when one of the officers assigned by AMIP to investigate the explosion is his old nemesis, DS Rosie Fox. Fox is convinced that Santini is linked to the events in question, but her AMIP DCI, Richard Pallister, believes otherwise. When Santini manages to locate Jess Orton, he persuades her to make a false confession to bombing the club in order to gain the trust of the suspected drug dealers.

On temporary assignment to the Serious Crime Group, DC Lennox is surprised to find Liz Rawton is Acting DI at SCG. The body of a young girl, later identified as Hayley Mills, is found in a concrete slab in a cement works. Rawton and Lennox question the new owner of the cement works, Digby Leake, and Rawton tells Lennox off for his aggressive approach to the case. Hayley's ex-boyfriend tells them of a modelling agency which doubled as an escort service where Hayley worked and that Hayley was pregnant, and the owner Leon Walsh is certainly suspiscious, especially when the police find a car of his containing Hayley's blood. Forensics reveals that Hayley died of an ectopic pregnancy, and was not murdered, Leake admits that he was the father and that his assistant Harry Rawlings dumped the body when Hayley died from the complications. Lennox forms a bond with Hayley's friend Karen, who confides to him that Rawlings and Leon are involved in smuggling heroin from Hong Kong, and the pair are