Richard Blaney, a former RAF squadron leader turned bartender in Covent Garden, finds himself suddenly without work and plunging into a precarious financial scrape. He laments his luck to his friend, Bob Rusk, who runs a fruit and vegetable stall nearby and offers a gambling tip he can’t act on due to his empty pockets. A visit to his ex-wife, Brenda, who runs a successful matchmaking agency, reveals a mix of unresolved tensions and a glimmer of support: she invites him to dinner, and after a tense but civil exchange she quietly slips him money, a small mercy that hints at a complicated past between them. The next day, a twist of fate places him in proximity to Brenda when Rusk arrives at her office with a disturbing resolve: Brenda’s agency has already refused him, a rejection he takes as a personal slight and a sign that his cravings won’t be ignored.
What begins as a brutal crime spirals into a case of mistaken identity and mounting suspicion. Rusk rapes Brenda and then strangles her with his necktie, revealing himself to be the serial killer the press would christen the “Necktie Murderer.” In the wake of Brenda’s murder, Blaney—who had hoped to speak with her again—finds Brenda’s office locked and becomes the prime suspect. To prove his innocence, he aligns with Babs Milligan, a former coworker from the pub, and the two attempt to stay one step ahead of the police, even sharing a hotel room while they search for a way out of the tightening net.
Desperation drives Blaney to enlist a former RAF colleague for help, only to be thwarted by his colleague’s wife, who refuses shelter to a fugitive. Blaney persuades Babs to retrieve his belongings from the pub, a plan that goes awry when she encounters Rusk. He seduces and murders her too, leaving her body in a sack that is later found in the back of a potato lorry. The killer’s calculated move is chilling: he discovers that a distinctive jewelled tie pin, the initial “R,” is missing from his possession and deduces that Babs must have torn it away during the struggle. With the pin a potential breakthrough, Rusk retrieves it from Babs’s grasp as the lorry makes a rough stop, and he heads back to his Covent Garden flat, heavily dusted with potato debris and guilt.
As the police close in, Blaney becomes the focus of a fresh wave of suspicion when Babs’s body is discovered alongside Brenda’s death. He seeks help from a trusted ally, only to realize that the real danger lies not in a false accusation but in the man who has been playing both sides all along. The truth becomes clearer to an observant Chief Inspector Oxford, who quietly re-evaluates the crime, even as the case heads toward a courtroom confrontation. The inspector’s inner circle—his wife particularly—shares a later moment about surviving the most unappetizing meals served in her exotic cooking course, a small, odd counterpoint to the grim drama unfolding around them.
In prison, Blaney clings to his innocence and plots an escape to avenge himself on the true killer. He engineers a risky ruse, injuring himself under the guise of weakness and being moved to a hospital. There, fellow inmates help him stage a dramatic break. He tracks down Rusk at his flat, only to find the killer absent; Blaney confronts what he believes to be a sleeping target and strikes. The blow is fatal for the person who lies in the bed, revealing a murdered woman, not Rusk, at the scene. Inspector Oxford, who has anticipated Blaney’s move, arrives to discover Blaney with the corpse and to witness a startling interruption: Rusk returns, dragging a large trunk into the flat, ready to seal his deadly game. Realizing his exposure, Rusk faces a final reckoning as Blaney and Oxford close in, and the trunk becomes the symbol of a crime finally laid bare.
The confrontation escalates into a tense showdown that exposes motive, misdirection, and the fragile line between guilt and innocence. The story resolves with the killer cornered and the two protagonists confronting the consequences of a web of deception that began with a bleak financial misfortune and spiraled into murder, manipulation, and vigilante justice. The outcome leaves Blaney’s fate intertwined with the truth about Rusk and the courage—or peril—of those who stood by as the Necktie Murderer’s crimes finally come to light.
