Some years after her wealthy father died of a heart attack confronting an intruder - who fled empty-handed - Vicky Anderson asks Sandra and the team to intervene, since clairvoyant Sebastian Carter, having supposedly communed with the dead man, claims he knew the assailant. Sandra is sceptical, feeling Carter is in league with the would-be burglar and using Vicky to get at what he wanted that night. The trail leads to Penny, Vicky's adopted sister, taken in by Anderson after her father died in prison serving a sentence for fraud, and Simon Beswick, the cell-mate, who tells the team he thinks Anderson was also guilty of fraud and the burglar a double-crossed partner-in-crime after the spoils. Sandra is still unsure if Carter is an accomplice or an innocent dupe though, when the case is closed, his interpretation of her father's feelings brings her closer to half-brother Tom.

In 2007 lecturer Richard Symes fell off a roof at the university where he taught and died. An open verdict was recorded but Brian feels that suicide was unlikely as Symes had just taken a whole load of books out of the London Library. Brian loves going undercover at the library ("It smells of books") where he is befriended by the Urquharts, a couple of elderly lecturers who knew the dead man. Symes' widow Paula tells Sandra her husband was regarded as a dinosaur and sacked by vice-chancellor Ventham,but he claims that Symes was stealing books from the university library to sell in Paula's shop,which Paula admits. Her young lover Tim was also part of the racket. Brian works out that the Urquharts are trying to locate one of the books Symes stole,a priceless first edition which he hid somewhere in the London Library. But several other interested parties are also after it - including the murderer.

Sandra does not believe recently released paedophile John Davies when he owns to killing 5-year old Yasser Gorton-Blackledge, who disappeared after going on a Free Palestine march with his left wing parents Anne and Fred in 1985. Now divorced, Anne still campaigns for liberal issues but Fred is a hard right reactionary and misogynist. Davies eventually admits to Sandra that he was bullied into confession by Anthony Vernon, a violent disciple of Fred who once hoped to make his name in journalism from Yasser's case. Another ex-activist, kindly nurse Gillian Withall, adopted a little boy at much the same time that Yasser disappeared and, as Gerry and Brian read through the files MI5 compiled on the Gorton-Blackledges it becomes more than likely to them that Yasser is still alive.

A recent sexual assault on Helen Vestry in her cake shop is identical to two unsolved rapes which occurred ten years earlier at the Pyramid Chocolate factory,run by unpopular Duncan Miller. All the victims were blonde and the attacker smelt strongly of sweat. The team's investigations also uncover a trilogy of seemingly unrelated disasters which befell the factory at the time - the suicide of a female worker,who was not raped,the discovery of a severed finger in a chocolate bar and the prosecution of contract cleaner Alex Close for using illegal immigrants in his work force. As the connection between the three events emerges it seems likely that a murder also took place in the factory,though the rapist is still very much alive.

The team get involved when graffiti claiming 'I Killed Flak' appears around London, Flak being tag artist Danny Tyler, killed four years earlier. He was part of an artist collective the Maze Group which broke up when Danny received patronage to go solo from art lover Sir David Bryant, a fact which caused resentment from others in the group. Gallery owner Sara Hamlyn admits responsibility for the current graffiti, a publicity stunt for her Flak exhibition but draws the team's attention to a theft from her gallery of one of Flak's works before he died. The team are led to believe that Sir David stole it as he needed money and killed Flak during the resultant argument. Another ex-Maze group member Kevin Humphreys has been blackmailing Sir David as a result. But then Bryant's wife Catherine gives Sandra information which puts things in a different light. Brian has all the while been enjoying a following on Twitter as Top Cop 99, a fact which almost puts the case in jeopardy.

Eight years previously clothes designer Ritchie Levene was murdered, stabbed in the neck with a pair of his scissors. For years his ex-wife Sarah has wanted the case reopened and sees her chance when Gerry comes to her for a change in his sartorial image.She suspects Ritchie's younger brother Adrian who assumed control of the fashion company and took it to new heights. Sandra discovers that married Adrian is having an affair with Ritchie's second wife Alison, though they claim it only began some time after Ritchie's death. Then there is Melanie, the nervous P.A. who found Ritchie's body, and Colin Beck, a financier who encouraged Ritchie to invest money in his scheme and also had a motive...

The team is asked by Dawn Abbott to reopen a fourteen year old case of a fire at the Union drinking club, which killed gangster Mark Johnson and three staff members. It was thought to be an accident but Mark told Dawn days before the fire that he thought somebody was out to kill him. Mark's brother Danny resents any suggestion that he was involved but fire investigator George Mackie tells the team that he thought at the time that the blaze was suspicious and the widow of the painter whose materials were supposedly to blame for the fire recalls that he was handsomely paid soon afterwards. Ultimately the culprit proves not to be a person with a grudge but a serial arsonist hoping to get away with as many fires as possible.

Would-be Euro MP Fintan MacEntee, a former member of the Irish Republican Front, approaches Sandra regarding Barbara, teen-aged daughter of a wealthy arms manufacturer Kenneth Linden-Warner, who was kidnapped in 1983 and, though the ransom was paid, was never seen again. At the time the Front admitted responsibility but MacEntee now claims that it was purely a publicity move and the Front never took Barbara. Sandra's belief that it was an inside job is confirmed when it is discovered that Barbara's brother Michael, who did not get on with his father, shared a squat with MacEntee and helped him prepare the ransom note to get money from his father. Barbara had also rowed with boy-friend Greg Hampton, now married to Barbara's supposed rival but in fact anything but. The family did indeed have secrets and Miss Jones, Linden-Warner's loyal former secretary, knows all of them as well as the actual fate of Barbara.

In 1999 promising young boxer Eddie Mayfair was shot dead but his rival in the ring and chief suspect Milton Joseph had an alibi and other likely suspects have all since died or disappeared. Now the murder weapon has been found at last. Eddie's widowed mother has moved in with his former agent Harry Gallo and his old sweetheart married his sparring partner Danny. Jack discovers that Eddie was in a rival street-gang to Milton, long before they met in the ring and Milton's gang members were the men who have now all disappeared. The biggest breakthrough, however, occurs with the knowledge that Eddie was meant to throw the fight with Milton as certain people had money on that result - the same people who killed Eddie to stop him talking.

Detective inspector Frank Paterson joins the team to reopen a thirty year old bullion robbery after he has tracked down the getaway car. Two guards died, allegedly at the hands of vicious Michael Denby - the fourth man in the robbery, who, unlike the other three, was never accounted for and is still at large. Frank and Sandra do not get on and she is sceptical when he claims that John Felsham, now a deputy assistant commissioner, was a bent copper who tipped Denby off, Felsham telling her that Frank has long held a personal grudge against him. However Felsham arrives unexpectedly at a back street pub once used by Denby where Frank and Gerry are following a lead and Frank fights him. As a result Felsham wants UCOS disbanded. But the team are determined to carry on and, backed by Strickland, they make sure that they get their man.