A Queen's Messenger is tortured to death in Latin America - but when Peter Ashton starts to probe deeper into the messenger's background and what he was carrying, he comes up against nods and winks urging him not to look too closely. Jill Sheridan, Ashton's one-time lover, knows something she isn't saying; so does a shady former police detective.

Then an innocent housewife dies during a botched burglary in the London
suburbs and the case becomes urgent. Soon, Ashton has teased out
most of the actors in a baffling chain of intimidation and bribery: a
Cuban who was once second-in-command in Fidel Castro's spy service, a
Turkish assassin, a lowly civil servant in the passport office, a would-be
British spy with a Walter Mitty character.
But can he find out how they are connected before more innocents die?