VETERAN CID boss Vic Pollard drinks too much, thinks too much (about the childhood he lost because of his war-damaged father), and hits rock bottom when he is overlooked for the top job he thought had his name on it - in favour of a rank outsider.He quits the Northumbria police force but there is no escape when a dismembered body is found in a giant petrol storage tank being drained of leaded petrol as part of the quiet, green forecourt revolution which ended the four-star era at the advent of the new millennium.It has been hidden away in time and perfectly preserved for decades and is to plunge Vic back in to the past which haunts him, dragging all manner of skeletons out of the cupboard.With the man who pinched his job gunning for him, he must fight for the living and the dead…and his own sanity. The only way is to fight dirty.