Seventeen and pregnant, Felicia travels to England in search of her lover and is found instead by Joseph Ambrose Hilditch, a helpful catering manager whose kindness masks an unsettling secret.

DC Lenny Milton (Winstone) is not as ambitious as his best friend and popular boss DCI Michael Love (Dunbar), but the pair are drinking partners and their wives and children are close. However, this goes very wrong over the space of 7 days, when Milton is approached by the police complaints division asking him to go undercover and investigate allegations of corruption against his friend. Milton finds this difficult at first and tries to dismiss the evidence building up. But as his suspicions begin to take shape his position appears to be in danger.

Two years after the events of Tough Love, Lenny Milton has been transferred, but still finds that he is hated by his colleagues, who have branded him a grass. Meanwhile, when a friend of his Lenny's son dies during a heroin-related overdose, a drug-related gang war breaks out, and Lenny seizes his opportunity to re-ignite his feud with drug trafficker Barry Hindes. Obsessed with bring Hindes to justice, Lenny ignores the advice of his colleagues as he sees a chance for vengeance.