New boss Robert Strickland asks the team to reopen the case of David Barrie, a barrister found dead, bound and gagged, in his car in the 1980s. The case was a rare instance of officer-in-charge Ronnie Ross's not getting his man. Chief suspect Michael, now a transsexual called Michaela, had an alibi, but Michaela is involved with Elaine Wanless, a former brothel-keeper who reveals the dead man's penchant for bondage. The team is convinced that both know more about the death than they claim.

UCOS reopens the case of a woman who has been left comatose for eight years.

In 1992, 18-year-old Hannah Taylor was kidnapped, and now a body, once believed to be hers, is proven to be another girl's. Hannah's mother, Madeline, an ex-alcoholic G.P., is prickly but admits to paying a twenty-thousand-pound ransom delivered by an-ex cop who was, in fact, her married lover. Jack suspects that this was a scam to part Madeline's former husband from twenty thousand pounds. The mystery intensifies when Jack traces Hannah, now married, who states that she left her mother a note to say she was going to a pop festival where she met her husband. It intensifies even further on the discovery that Madeline already knew Hannah's husband.

Sandra is approached by a tabloid editor who believes that former TV cookery queen Kitty Campbell poisoned her husband Bertie. Kitty obviously denies this but the Campbells' former assistant reveals that Bertie was a closet gay, much to Kitty's disgust. Esther Lane is bedridden after accidentally cutting herself while washing dishes and Brian realizes the extent to which he depends on her, the more so as, whilst watching archive film of the Campbells, she discovers the key to the mystery.

A friend of Jack Halford has a diamond that would appear to have been stolen.

The team is supposed to be investigating the conviction of Stanley Ackerman, whose wife is continually protesting in front of the station. The man was convicted of setting his factory on fire, but Jack sees a number of anomalies in the evidence. But having lost £10,000 in a poker game, Gerry is given the possibility of wiping out the debt when the winner asks him to investigate his father's murder 20 years earlier. The man, Joe Jacobs, had been attacked on the street, but it was put down to a mugging, with no arrests made. Gerry tries to investigate the case on his own, but his colleagues, including Supt. Sandra Pullman, are soon on to him. Jacobs was in debt to bookie George Morton, but they determine that his death was related to the kidnapping of a champion greyhound racing dog.

The UCOS team investigate the kidnapping of two 10-year-old boys over twenty years ago. Brian thinks it may be related to a current spate of kidnappings. What they know is that two boys, Daryl and Alan, were taken while fishing at an old pit. A few days later, they managed to escape unharmed, but the police never made an arrest in the case. One of the survivors agrees to undergo hypnosis, which reveals some additional clues. They soon learn that others fishing at the pit were either threatened or attacked over the years, including a champion fisherman who had held the record for catching the largest carp. As Brian spends more and more time by himself fishing at the pit, his wife, Esther, seeks Sandra Pullman's advice.

The team investigates the murder of an unidentified young woman who was found in the woods some 18 years previously. The original pathologist on the case, Professor Mears, has kept all of the evidence in the case and has longed for it to be reopened. He has even given the girl a name, "Millicent". Working with what little information they have (the young woman had red hair and had syphilis), they first seek to identify the girl. She also had been cut up by an expert carver. Throughout this time, Gerry Standing is going a bit mad, as he has given up gambling, but every horse he would have bet on has won.