When ex-mercenary Max Iversson is introduced to nightclub owner Roy Fowler he senses immediately that the mans trouble. Fowler wants security for a meeting with a group of businessmen who are looking to buy his club. Five grand for a couple of hours work is too tempting a proposition to turn down so Iversson who now runs his own firm of freelance bodyguards takes the job. But when he and two colleagues accompany Fowler to a deserted north London industrial estate to exchange the deeds for the money it turns out to be not so much a double-cross as a bloodbath. Three men end up dead and Iversson only just gets out alive. Now he wants to know whos behind the killings. So begins a hunt for answers that will take him into dangerous territory and also into direct conflict with Detective Sergeant John Gallan. Gallans investigating the fatal poisoning by snakebite of a doorman who worked at Fowlers club. Leads are scarce and when they do appear so do bodies. But Gallan keeps digging away unearthing in the process a murderous conspiracy that could provide the solution not just to this investigation but to another more heinous murder thats been lying among the ranks of the unsolveds for a long long time. Unknown to each other he and Iversson are also heading towards a final confrontation from which neither man is likely to emerge in one piece.