Novelist Catherine Tramell is once again in trouble with the law, and Scotland Yard appoints psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass to evaluate her. Though, like Detective Nick Curran before him, Glass is entranced by Tramell and lured into a seductive game.

Mean, gritty, dirty, and low - and that's just Policeman Gary Keltie (Ken Stott) out for retribution for the horrendous crimes against the helpless people of Edinburgh, Scotland during the 1970s by notorious, torturous, and killer debt collector Nickie Dryden (Sir Billy Connolly). This is as hard as they come; giants of their professions, one with a trade that needs to be kept secret, and the other holding a grudge. Shot around the City of Edinburgh, with its coarse language and criminal underclass, we see the wrath of spite, hate, jealousy, and violent vengeance all in the final showdown of justice, and with it, its uncompromising final debt to society.

Two robbers are persecuted by the law, whose servants are not much better and even worse.