Army sergeant Nichols is a real bastard. Especially towards the black private Ken Marston. During a survival exercise on the moors Nichols starts shooting at Marston who jumps him in self-defense. The fight ends with Nichols falling off a rock and Marston makes a run for it believing he has killed his superior. He goes to Aidensfield to see an old friend Tom Sandford and befriends Tom's son Daniel. PC Rowan gets on his case when he breaks into a farm. Meanwhile the Sandfords are in trouble because Tom has died and the social services think his widow Helen is unstable and unable to take care of Daniel.

Ron Cooper is an old army veteran with enough illegal weapons, ammunition and explosives to run his own militia. He gets injured when a rifle backfires and is taken to hospital. Unknown to him four boys have found his collection and they "borrow" a box of ammunition not knowing how dangerous it is. Furthermore Greengrass buys some hand grenades from Cooper's helper Morris and cleans out lord Ashfordly's entire stock of trout. Meanwhile Kate Rowan's work at Radcliffe's surgery in Whitby is taking its toll on their marriage and they start to drift apart, when Kate discovers that she is pregnant.

Thanks to Claude Greengrass the famous wrestler The Masked Marvel is coming to Aidensfield and as usual he challenges all locals to a match with a prize to anyone who can unmask him. Alfred is afraid of the wrestler and bites him so that he cannot wrestle. Since nobody knows what he looks like without the mask, Greengrass and his manager Pat Starr makes The Masked Marvel train one of the locals, Ken Fairbrother, to fight instead of him. But Starr plans to make the switch a bit more permanent than that. Tim Phillips makes trouble because his mother Sylvia is leaving his father for the pub owner Mike Scott and PC Rowan is called to deal with domestic disputes in the family. The next morning Sylvia Phillips is found dead on the moors. Murdered!