UCOS reopen the thirty year old murder of porn king Jim Hockney when his daughter Sara reveals that a DNA test proves she is not his daughter. Her mother Jane cannot provide any answers as she and Jim both had several sex partners. Jim's girlfriend at the time, singer Angela Gold, was charged but acquitted of the murder and now seems to have disappeared. Brian's replacement Dan Griffin arrives, albeit late and is initially treated with hostility by Gerry, who thinks he is a spy. Nonetheless Dan tracks down Angela though in the meantime Sandra learns that Jim's brother Colin sold Jim's porn empire very shortly after his death to his main rival Gavin Reason. Furthermore Jane and Gavin were lovers, Gavin proving to be Sara's father though he was unaware at the time. However it is Gerry's collection of some of Jim's old films, supposedly confiscated by Vice Squad, that identifies the murder weapon and leads to the culprit. The case closed the team watch Angela perform at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.

Fresh from her successful SWAT raid on a group of Russian gangsters DCI Sasha Miller arrives at UCOS to replace Sandra. She is friendly and informal but initially fails to win over Gerry, who misses Sandra. Her first case involves the twenty-five year old murder of Italian Allesandro Manzini, reopened when a knife is found at the allotment he once tended. Massimo, whose son married Allesandro's daughter Giulietta, tells the team that there was anti- Italian feeling on the allotment, especially from two World War Two veterans, whilst lorry driver and druid Ray Barlow is also suspect, having disappeared after the murder. This suspicion is heightened when Giulietta and Ray admit to an affair but Dan's research into wartime Italy changes everything, leading to a confession. Sasha's private life, however, does not run so successfully.

When the recently deceased pathologist Dr Hatton's findings are discredited the team looks into the 2005 drowning in his bath of cricketer AJ Da Silva, a suicide according to Hatton though AJ's father and brother are convinced he was murdered. Ted learns from coach Keith Ainsworth and former captain Ryan Reed that AJ was thoroughly disliked by the other cricketers in his side as an arrogant, drunken womaniser. In fact his affair with a team mate's wife was held responsible for the man's suicide. After another person is found dead the key to AJ's demise is found to be match-fixing and its consequences and, the case solved, Ted springs a surprise on his colleagues.

In 2011 private investigator Dave Hooper was murdered in his office, assumedly the victim of a botched robbery but now his secret notebook, written in shorthand, has come to light though ex-girlfriend Carmen Cresswell could not decipher it. Alison Downing hired Dave to pursue a thieving boyfriend Jason Sharp as did cancer victim Barry Warnock following the burglary of a rare stamp known as the Russian Cousin and worth £40,000. Consequently the progress of the stamp holds the key to the identity of Dave's killer.