Carole Taylor is a party girl, a solo mother of meagre means trying to mend her ways and make a secure home for her two young children. But her past, in the person of former boyfriend Tony Michaels is threatening to shatter the security of the fragile world she has built. Carole has given Tony the push but he refuses to take no for an answer and keeps coming back. Carole tells herself she has the situation under control, but then he turns up at her home in the early hours one morning in blood soaked clothes and everything changes. Drug importer Alan Sheridan has been brutally murdered and Detective Inspector Andrew Hunter has Tony and his associate Freddie Prichard in centre frame for the crime. But in 1985 Auckland, police investigation is a laborious time-consuming process. This is a world before DNA profiling, personal computers and mobile phones.