When student Meg Hands is found drowned in a Manchester canal, the authorities are only too anxious to classify her death as yet another sad result of alcoholic overindulgence. Her mother, Ruth, an internationally celebrated charity worker, is not so willing to accept this verdict.

Frustrated in her attempts to interest the police, she turns to Dave Cunane, Manchester's last resort of the hopeless. Dave is unwilling to probe but tentative enquiries reveal a hidden world of vice behind the fashionable screen of Manchester's free and easy drinking scene.