Skint, on the skids, reduced to life in skid-row shelters, Trevor English, petty thief and habitual blackmailer, is apprehended shoplifting by store-detective-cum-freelance-investigator Leonard Bellow. Turning a blind eye to his theft, Bellow offers Trevor a job doing shutterbug reconnaissance work-an opportunity Trevor jumps at (if already with his own ends in mind). But in the world he has cornered himself in nothing remains what it seems...