Detective Inspector JOHN TONIN has seen violent death before, but the body he is identifying now is much more than just another case to add to his workload.

You've done it all 

BRIAN TONIN has done it all. He was there at the Lyceum Ballroom in his best loons and platforms when Bryan Ferry and David Bowie were all the young dudes. He knows a lot about life. He even got his ear pierced once. But that was all before he settled down to semi-detached domestic bliss with VAL his childhood sweetheart. Of course he's happy to pass on his experience to the younger generation - people like the "youngsters" at Royston Hart, the insurance company where he works, his "little brother" John, and the boys in his Sunday League football team. But youth culture at the beginning of the new millennium isn't about the innocent cockney rebellion of Steve Harley and life still has a lot to teach Brian Tonin.

Make me a deal and make it straight

Brian needs to start making more of himself and he has plans - big plans. Together with his best mate the corpulent pub genius CHARLIE HOGAN, he is about "to set Chingford on fire" with a new Property and Investment Company. He wants to live before he gets old. But is he wishing too hard?

Teenage rebel of the week

Brian's world of sales leads and commission is blown apart by the arrival at Royston Hart of SARAH PARKINSON - a twenty-year-old hippy chick with a passion for the Greek Islands and Ecstasy-enhanced clubbing. She doesn't need any advice from Brian. When she knows what she wants she takes it. And there is something in Brian that Sarah wants. To Brian, Sarah is a glimpse of a whole new exciting world - but as the newspapers and television keep telling him, clubbing and drugs are the road to Hell. He certainly can't sacrifice his family life for that, but the more he gets to know Sarah, the more Brian worries about her hedonistic lifestyle. As their friendship becomes deeper and more dangerous, Brian's view of her world gets ever more grotesque, and when he discovers that his policeman brother John is investigating the drug-related death of a girl Sarah's age, his grip on reality becomes very fragile.

This town ain't big enough for the both of us

Brian then finds out that Sarah's flatmate, ex-lover and fellow raver GARY PRICE, is a policeman. Burning with jealousy, he tells his brother John that he knows of a young copper who is "going to Clubs, taking drugs, encouraging young girls to".

When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes

John's refusal to act upon this information leads Brian into a world a million miles from Sunday morning football matches and playing with the kids; a world of revenge and jealousy, of violence and lies; a world populated by the likes of RAY MARLOW, a bizarre but deadly night-club owner, who can't work out whether he is Al Capone or Robert De Niro and by the mysterious Drugs Barons his brother is searching for. A world populated by Sarah.

I wonder who's kissing her now

As someone once said "first it takes your self respect, then it takes your self control, then it takes your money, friends, family and eventually your life."