With a contract on his life after giving evidence against former associates, retired gangster Harry Peck is guarded by an emotionally vulnerable policewoman, Alex Shaw, whose career is overshadowed by the unsolved murder of a young delinquent. Accompanying Peck into hiding is his senile mother who lives increasingly in the past, but Lilly Peck's new surroundings prompt suppressed and sinister memories about Harry's childhood.  Peck's unwelcome interest in Alex Shaw's problems shatters her certainties about right and wrong when Harry Peck persuades her to take the law into her own hands.

"very witty, especially the comic double act of the old East End crook and his decrepit mother"