PC Bradley and PC Ventress are forced off the road by a blue lorry. They locate the lorry at the house of Tom Lowson, his new bride Mandy and teenage daughter Sandra. PC Ventress, who is acting sergeant in Craddock's absence, is convinced that Lowson is up to something, because he was the biggest black marketer in the North Riding area during the war. To prove it he orders his colleagues to inspect Lowson's lorries whenever they get the chance. Meanwhile Sandra is having a bad influence on her friend Alison Hartley, who is certain that she is pregnant. Sandra arranges for Alison to have an abortion, but the girls are late for the appointment and steal nurse Bolton's Land Rover. Faith Trueman is ill and ask her friend Greengrass to sell a valuable Georgian clock and other stuff for her so that can stay at the same hotel, where she and her late husband spent their honeymoon, once more before she dies. Only the stuff is not nearly as valuable as expected.

Roy Brooks receive a 6-month sentence for horse theft, but the sentence is suspended because he has to keep his family together after his wife's recent death. But it is an uphill struggle because he has a serious drinking problem. The following night the race horse Rio Boy is stolen from Lord Ashfordly's stables and Brooks gets under suspicion because his lorry matches the description of the one used by the thieves. Bernie Scripps accidentally tells Greengrass that he has psychic powers. When the old scoundrel has stopped laughing he gets the idea that they might as well cash in on it. Understandably Scripps does not agree. Phil Bellamy is babysitting Maggie Bolton's son Sam, but when he wakes up from a little nap to feed the baby Sam has gone missing.