Ros Green, owner of a second hand shop is furious when Bert Blackaby -- small trader -- fails to show up at the Bootsale with her laptop but when he is found murdered and she is picked up by the police, she knows she must act quickly. For some reason known only to himself Bert had named her as joint beneficiary in his will, and she discovers that he owns a valuable house packed with antiques and she sets out to discover more about him.
Her partner Detective Sergeant Jack Russell is sent on other duties and is not able to help as much as he would like. She finds he came out of a POW camp with four friends and she visits them all -- an Older Citizens club in Wales, a beautiful house in Chelsea (where the wife of a member of parliament denounces all knowledge of Bert and refutes all claims to his property), and to an aging pop star who tells her Bert was a brilliant electronics man, and finally to a millionaire author.
The mystery leads her back to the river estuary and a post war murder, to stories of smuggling and a final confrontation with some very eminent members of local society and her own near death. She is saved by Jack but only after some highly revealing confessions. As usual her path is crossed by innumerable characters -- Meg (Pegrug) McNally, Karen and Pearl two girls from school with dreadlocks, Helen Dixon, single parent, Joe Maxwell, and the very proper Heather Browne -- tortured by a secret from her past.