Spring 1950. The city of Bristol is broke, the scars of World War Two slow to heal. Good people are struggling to get by, while an organised criminal underclass is thriving. Days before his repatriation home, American GI Ed Grover visits a family who had shown him extraordinary kindness nine years earlier. The family's only son Harry has disappeared. In a bed sit, Grover finds the body of a young man with his throat cut. Harry becomes the prime suspect. After spending five years in Berlin since the end of the war, Grover knows more than most people about chancers, black marketeers, extortionists and killers. He decides to stay in Bristol to find Harry.