Ex Detective Chief Inspector 'Sandy' Sanderson may have been gored to death by his own guard dogs, but it was still murder. An unknown marksman, 'The Last Tramp', is compiling a roll call of the dead. Old mysteries and conspiracies have violently resurfaced and threaten former policemen, gangsters and mercenaries, unaware of their part in a history best not told; DI Andy Wallace, a displaced Scotsman of misplaced humour; Edgar Marshall, private soldier, survivor of an Angolan prison from Hell; 'Mad' Lennie Lester, 1960's gangster, torturer, wrongly convicted of the murder of his old Boss, Jack 'Handle' Stein, who's ghost has returned to haunt them. Only the cold-blooded extraction of the 'grisly secrets of gruesome old men' from the Fat American may save them. But a heavy price must be paid as a terrible truth awaits them on a South London sink estate primed to explode with racial tension.