'They are going to f***ing kill my husband...they have my son, they are going to kill him. Give me back my son, I beg you'

The absolute control of Rochdale’s criminal underworld is portrayed in harrowing detail in tonight’s episode of The Detectives.

The BBC documentary, which follows a specialist Greater Manchester Police unit trying to bring down the now-notorious ‘Adam’ OCG in the town, aired yesterday (October 30), with a sickening 999 call from a tree surgeon who had just witnessed the gang nearly chop off a workmate’s hand following a road rage incident.

It then leads DS Martin Soutter and his officers to discover a dark underworld where members of the gang bribed witnesses, groomed children and used extreme levels of violence to assert their authority on the Newbold Estate.

READ MORE: 'They've cut my mate's hand off': The horrifying gang violence which blighted Rochdale

READ MORE: The Detectives: Who was Skinny and what happened to him after the Rochdale axe attack?

The second episode, airing on Tuesday night (October 31), sees the team progress their investigation, and follows the axe attack victim Cameron Brooksbank through court. Its most stomach-churning moment comes in the form of a distressed phone call.

“They are going to f***ing kill my husband,” a woman can be heard pleading in desperation. “They have my son… they are going to kill him. Give me back my son, I beg you.”

The audio is an excerpt of a phone call made from a man, who had been dealing drugs for the gang but stopped, and his wife. Gang members had just kidnapped the man with his son from a barbershop, after putting a £5,000 bounty on his head.

The gang then uses his phone to call his wife to tell her they have forced her husband and child into a car.

“Listen, your kid is at the end of the road. Com pick him up at the end of the street,” the gang member