地狱是一座城市

　　重犯越狱后即犯下滔天罪行，有众多目击者见过其人，警方却仍束手无策，逃犯犹如鬼魅般穿行于城市之中...

Inspector Harry Martineau (Steve Baker), a hard-nosed detective stationed in Manchester England, feels that an escaped thief Don Starling (John Crawford) is going to return to town to retrieve a cache of stolen jewels that he hid before he was convicted. Martineau has domestic troubles as he and his wife Julia Martineau (Maxine Audley) bicker about his role as a policeman and their childless marriage. The escaped criminal Starling arrives in town and immediately forms a gang to rob a bookmaker Gus Hawkins (Donald Pleasance), of what they think will be the minimal amount of money to get the crook out of town but what they steal is a large amount of money marked with a green ink by the bank to prevent theft. Starling accidentally kills a young girl during the robbery and while dumping the body at a deserted location the gang is spotted and Martineau instinctively knowing who is responsible, takes steps to track down as much information as he can, in many instances only steps behind the crook. On the run Starling starts going to as many places as he can for refuge, at one point hiding in the attic of the bookmaker he robbed Gus Hawkins, threatening his philandering wife Chloe (Billie Whitelaw). Starling manages to knock Hawkins unconscious sending him to the hospital and Martineau, following up on his hunch, figures out the truth and squeezes more information from Hawkins wife Chloe. At a large coin-flipping gambling game, where some of the tainted money exchanges hands, Martineau catches up with the accomplices in the robbery and gets closer to the murderer. When Starling recovers the cache of stolen jewels from a furniture dealer he confronts a young girl Silver Steele (Sarah Branch) and draws the attention of the neighborhood and Martineau who pursues the thief to a final showdown on the rooftops above Manchester.