A suspected armed robber dies after his car crashes during a chase with police. He is identified as Alain Savoie, a French national, and the body of an English woman is found in the boot of his stolen car. The woman is identified as Carol Archer, and scorch marks on her back indicate she was electrocuted in her bathtub, and Savoie was trying to dispose of the body. According to Carol's mother, Carol's husband Peter was in France looking for her. DI Chris Deakin, a fluent Francophone, suggests they send officers to interview Savoie's sister in France. DCI Jack Meadows insists on making the trip himself, and Deakin suggests he take DC Rod Skase with him. Once they are on the ferry, Meadows and Skase realise neither of them can speak French. With some trouble they manage to find their hotel, and despite the language barrier, Meadows clearly hits it off with the landlady Claudette. CID hear that Peter Archer is headed back to England, but he does not board the ferry, and Interpol reports t

Boyden, Ashton and Santini head out for a night in a club, and Boyden bets his PCs that he can pull any girl in the club. Approaching an attractive young blonde, he ends up taking her home. The following morning, Boyden attends an assault on the girl's stepfather and discovers she is only 15. The case soon escalates when the girl's younger sister claims she has been abused by her stepfather's friend, and when Boyden's conquest runs away, she tracks him down and demands he provide her an alibi for the assault. When Boyden refuses, the girl is arrested for trashing a pub, and uses the interview to mention her night of illegal passion with the Sun Hill lothario. As CIB interview Boyden, Hagen is tasked with taking the girl to a children's home, but she cons her way out of the car and runs off. An off-duty Boyden then goes after the girl, but is unprepared for a discovery during his search.

Tension between DS Boulton and PC Garfield over Dave Quinnan's stabbing reaches boiling point on an obbo with PC Hollis. Garfield explodes when pushed too far, and he headbutts Boulton, nearly breaking his nose. It's up to Reg to step in and help Garfield come to terms with his feelings of helplessness over the incident. PC Dave Quinnan, still at St Hugh's, resolves to help Juke, a fellow patient who claims the police have done nothing to find the person who stabbed him, although he soon comes to realise that Juke's wounds are self-inflicted.

PC Eddie Santini tries to convince his lover, Jess Orton, to set him up with some drug dealers - he wants out of Sun Hill, and DS Timpney, his friend in Area Drugs, has promised him a place in the squad if Santini can get him evidence on them. At parade, Sgt. Bob Cryer assigns the relief a door-knocking campaign to warn the elderly residents of the area about two bogus callers posing as social workers who are responsible for a string of robberies. Leaving PC Hagen to cover for him, Santini meets Jessica, but not before hearing the culprits have been following the local Meals-On-Wheels van. Jessica has met up with an old friend, Ferguson, who is a big-time drugs importer. She wants Eddie to pose as her husband when they next meet to seal the deal. When Eddie returns to duty, Cryer is furious. An old army Major has had all his medals stolen by the bogus callers, and Santini had neglected to warn him. A desperate Santini gets Hagen to investigate the Major, and finds his claim is a scam.

Insp. Monroe is skeptical but cautious when a young woman, Emma Crawford, rings Sun Hill and says she thinks her boyfriend may have hidden a bomb in the station. At Emma's flat, Ackland and Stamp find bomb-making equipment and a faxed warning due to be sent on a timer. PC Carver discovers a suspiscious paint can hidden in the ceiling - enough to trigger the evacuation of the station and the calling in of the Bomb Squad. The suspect, Ben Wallace, has been in trouble with the police before, and he is apprehended by DCI Meadows when he returns to the flat. As the Squad begin defusing the bomb, Ackland and Stamp visit Ben's parents whom he despises. The bomb is dismantled and the station declared safe, but Ackland and Stamp watch in horror as Ben's father is killed by a car bomb planted by his son.

Deakin's surveillance on convicted kidnapper Frank Tully's release from custody is immediately blown out when Tully spots them, revealing his already released partner in crime told him he was also under surveillance. Deakin then confronts his partner, Richard Hackett, demanding information on a missing ransom payment from a kidnapping 8 years earlier. Deakin sends Holmes undercover as Hackett's girlfriend, but when they set up an observation, Tully pulls a gun on Hackett and Holmes after discovering there is no money in their safety deposit box. Tully is arrested when Hackett reveals the gun is empty, and suspicion turns to bank manager Roger Carlson, who decided to go on holiday the day of the raid. However, when all he is found with is a small bag of heroin in customs, they discover he may have been framed for someone else to steal the money without Hackett or Tully's knowledge.

Tension, drama and comical mishaps abound as Brownlow, Meadows and Conway head to the Yorkshire Moors for an orientation course alongside the top brass from Barton Street. The tension builds as Conway backs out of the rock climbing due to his fear of heights, and Meadows is reprimanded by the instructor for both abandoning Conway to complete the test alone and his continual attempts to contact Daly as he tries to keep abreast of the investigation into an armed robber, who has stunned CID by suddenly handing himself into custody. Meanwhile, Brownlow clashes with his Barton Street counterpart Guy Mannion, a fast-track young go-getter who is prime candidate to rival Brownlow for the Borough Commander post. As the teams are tasked with crossing the Moors, Meadows plots an escape, but they unite in their determination to beat the Barton Street contingent after discovering they have used the Stafford Row team's knowledge of the course to give them an edge.

Vicki Hagen finds Eddie Santini's tickets to Amsterdam, and questions him about them, but he is evasive. DCI Pallister takes DS Fox off the Jessica Orton case after her accusations against Santini, but she decides to do some investigation of her own. Santini, meanwhile, acquires a gun and some Class-A drugs to plant in Ferguson's boss's house when DS Timpney and the Area Drugs Squad raid it. Fox stumbles upon the house and is captured by Ferguson. His boss Mr Sherman is displeased that Santini allowed a police officer to find them. When Area Drugs arrive at Sun Hill for the raid, CID realise that both Santini and Fox are in trouble. Sure enough, Ferguson's radio scanner warns him of the forthcoming raid and he locks Santini in the same room as Fox. The two argue, but are pulled apart when Santini attacks Fox. She manages to escape, and Sherman's men are intercepted by SO19. Back at Sun Hill, Fox realises the keys in Hagen's possession are Jessica Orton's - and she arrests Santini for m

DS John Boulton is determined to catch a pair of brutal thieves, and he is certain that local crook Mick Glover is one of them. Ignoring protests from Uniform, who already have Glover under surveillance, Boulton leads a disasterous raid on Glover's flat, which puts PCs Quinnan and Garfield's informant Janie in grave danger. When Quinnan and Garfield find Janie's flat on the Jasmine Allen estate vandalised, Quinnan pursues the suspects, but finds himself seperated from Garfield, who can only watch in horror as his friend is beaten and stabbed by a gang of youths.

Jessica Orton is brought in for questioning, but is released without charge. When she returns home, PC Santini is waiting for her, desperate to know if she grassed him up. They fight, and Santini hits Jessica, knocking her down the stairs and killing her. Realising her house is being watched, he escapes out the back. Vicki Hagen finds a set of keys under Santini's bed which she brings to the station to return to him.

Boyden recruits an SO10 officer to go undercover in order to expose an illegal poker ring running out of a local Turkish café. However, when they raid fails, the officer goes missing. As Meadows takes over the investigation, he identifies a Turkish national he failed to arrest during his days at AMIP, and discovers he has been flagged by the Drugs Squad for an importation operation. However, Meadows leads a raid on a warehouse and blows the Drugs Squad's surveillance operation. Joining forces, they discover a scam in which a deliberate crash was caused in Germany so an apparent good samaritan could have "a mate fix the car" in order to hide drugs in the chassis and smuggle it into the UK undetected. Realising the scam has been rumbled by the SO10 officer, the team fight to track him down before he's silenced.

With PC Quinnan in a critical condition in St Hugh's Hospital, the police descend on the Jasmine Allen estate, determined to catch those responsible. PC Garfield manages to identify most of the gang, and a young boy, Kevin White, bought in for questioning names them as the 'Sun Hill Massive'. Garfield and DS Boulton come to blows when Boulton denies any responsiblity for the attack on Quinnan. Acting on a tip-off, the police raid Mick Glover's flat again, finding he is responsible for the burgleries, and that his son Ben and Kevin White were the ones who stabbed Quinnan.

Burnside's failure to inform Sun Hill of a Crime OCCU stakeout on a local museum leads to Page and Harker blowing their cover. The group arrest three of the four robbers, but one is admitted to hospital for trying to swallow stolen gemstones. Meanwhile, Meadows sends Boulton on the trail of stolen war medals, but the robbery at the museum puts Boulton back on the trail of known villain, Atul Roy, who he hunted for a kidnapping two years earlier (Shades of Gray S13). To spite Boulton and Burnside, Roy's brother Amit leads a second raid on the museum. Forced to admit he has been running a 15-year-old informant, the boy tells them where to find the ringleader for the raid. As Amit is arrested in possession with the museum artifacts, Henderson tells them their informant has gone missing, forcing them to cut a deal for the boy's safety.

As he and PC Quinnan investigate a burglar alarm, PC Eddie Santini sees Jessica Orton meeting covertly with Ferguson. Making excuses, Santini borrows the panda car and races to the Ortons' club where he confronts Jessica. As she storms off, there is a huge explosion. Santini is shocked when one of the officers assigned by AMIP to investigate the explosion is his old nemesis, DS Rosie Fox. Fox is suspiscious of Santini's involvement, but her colleagues put it down to the animosity between them. As Santini returns to his flat, where his lover PC Vicky Hagen is waiting, he is kidnapped by Ferguson who assigns him the task of picking up a consignment of drugs from Amsterdam.

Daly and Rawton are seconded to a women's prison run by a friend of Brownlow's after an inmate is savagely assaulted, and things soon escalate when doctors reveal she isn't expected to survive the attack. Suspecting a drugs smuggling operation inside the prison is at the centre of it all, Holmes is sent undercover to get on side with the prime suspects, Rita Davis and Jo Merton. Holmes uncovers a scam by Davis to steal phone cards from inmates to sell them back. Holmes identifies a prison officer she thinks might be responsible, but further investigation reveals she has been blackmailed by Davis to smuggle phone cards in. Holmes has Davis transferred to another wing, allowing her to get initiated with Merton, who brings her onboard with the drugs scam. As she prepares CID for a raid to catch the next shipment, she identifies the real prison officer involved, who is immediately suspicious of Holmes getting initiated so quickly. Will she be exposed before her colleagues can intervene?

Skase and Lennox enlist the help of Burnside as they investigate a series of robberies at local business conventions. Burnside is reluctant to admit why but he identifies their suspect through a tattoo described by a victim of theft, a former prostitute using the alias Victoria Smith. He later admits to Holmes she tied him up and left him in nothing but a raincoat while she robbed him during an undercover op when Burnside was a newly-promoted DC. Lennox and Skase go undercover at the latest convention, and while Skase pulls, he is forced to abandon his attractive companion at the revelation she is an innocent who was actually attracted to him. Lennox has better luck, but when he and his companion go back to the hotel room, she drugs him and steals his laptop. When the woman is found in hospital, having been attacked by one of her victims, Burnside launches a raid to arrest her and Smith.

Carver is devastated when his final transfer appeal is turned down, ending his hopes of remaining a DC and avoiding tenure. The news that the system is due to be scrapped is even more of an annoyance to Carver, who faces leaving Sun Hill after 14 years. Determined not to lose his local knowledge and experience, Ackland implores him to seek a voluntary transfer to Sun Hill's uniform and exit CID early. His final day in CID sees him pressed by Daly to investigate two cases at once, assisting a bank security manager over disappearing money and a gang of shoplifters running amok. Carver is furious that Skase is insistent on pursuing the case at the bank as a priority, telling him he's only interested because he fancies the security manager, and events escalate when the gang hospitalise a shop owner. However, Skase continues pursuing the bank case with Rawton and they end up uncovering a major fraud, while Carver teams up with McCann to track down the shoplifting gang.

Meadows is furious when a joint operation with Area Drugs to arrest local dealer Danny Rickman is blown out. Stamp and Quinnan attend a library where the attendant has discovered an emailed suicide note. When the IP address identifies the informant for the failed drugs raid, Meadows investigates it as a potential murder. The man's wife is quick to mention his terminal cancer diagnosis, but his daughter claims her step-mother was talking to him about euthenasia. Daly is suspicious when he spots Beech with Rickman, but while Beech and Meadows explain it was an authorised visit, Daly can't shake his suspicions that his colleague is up to no good. As Daly pursues Beech to a meet with Rickman, his cover is blown, and despite Beech revealing Rickman's driver is having an affair with the informant's wife, they end up coming to blows and Daly ends up in a riverside accident. As Daly tries to prove Beech is corrupt, his nemesis tries to track down the informant's true killer.

Boulton and Rawton attend the scene of a house fire, and not only does the chief identify the building as a brothel, he points at evidence that the girls were held hostage by the building owner. Hollis and Page attend when a girl is apprehended by shop security for stealing a jacket, and she admits to being a Turkish refugee who has been held against her will to work in the brothel. However, when Boulton identifies needle marks on her arms, he plays the brute to identify a friend of the girl's Maya, who he suspects started the fire to rescue the girls. Identifying a yellow sports car with black writing at the scene, suspected of being Maya's getaway car, and he soon calls around local brothels to identify a rival pimp who took Maya in. He identifies a pair of Turkish brothers, and when Rawton visits a potential witness, she finds herself in unexpected danger.

Lennox and Rawton go to Salisbury to bring in a con-man, George Riordian, for questioning, but he proves to be a slippery customer when he first gives them the slip at a service station, and then later on absconds altogether when the car they are travelling in breaks down and Lennox has to pull over to repair it. The pair manage to find a missing £50,000 which Riordian supposedly stole from one of his victims, Stella Kauffman, but then Riordian appears at the station the following day to hand himself in. When Kauffman then announces she is withdrawing the charges against Riordian, Lennox realises that the whole incident has been a con from the start and that he and Rawton have been had. This episode was broadcast out of production order - using the older closing titles and fonts last used earlier in the series

Boulton and Skase get a major lead from an informant on local armed robber Anthony Payne, who has been off the radar for a number of years. Boulton is determined to nail him, but the rest of CID think he's being excessive in his approach due to Daly being named Acting DI ahead of him in Deakin's absence. The raid nearly goes perfect, but Payne escapes and attacks Boulton while he's in pursuit. Skase ends up split up from his DS, and when he catches up to him, Boulton is pulling Payne's lifeless body out of a creek. After CPR fails, CIB are called in to investigate the death in custody. Rumours and speculation are rife, and Boulton's approach with CIB leads to a reprimand about his attitude ahead of an inquest. His day only gets worse when his informant turns against him after being bought by Payne's brother. Can the rogue DS survive with his career intact?

Boulton prepares to face an inquest for the death in custody of notorious armed robber Anthony Payne. Payne's brother Stephen continues to rile the media as he vows to end Boulton's career, but while Boulton isn't doing himself any favours, his colleagues investigate Payne's brother over claims by a woman identifying his voice from radio and TV, stating Stephen Payne savagely assaulted her now-deceased husband and fatally shot their dog during a burglary two years earlier. While Boulton is skeptical it will do any good at the inquest, the involvement in the burglaries of informant Terry Riley gives them hope that the leverage will make him change his mind about his so called recollection of Payne's death.

Ch. Insp. Derek Conway organises a charity 'lock-up' in the Sun Hill cells - the prisoners for the night being himself, Insp. Monroe, famous boxer Dion Barrie and his manager Max Weir, and Paul Lake, the father of the sick little girl they are raising money for. When Monroe calls in sick, Ch. Supt. Brownlow volunteers to take his place. Sgt. Matt Boyden as custody sergeant must cope with having his superior officers in the cells, as well as a large group of drunken female rugby players. DS Feeney from Barton Street turns up to investigate Barrie for an attempted murder, but Boyden works out that his manager is the man responsible.

Ashton reels after being accused of cowardice by new boy Smithy. The team attend a group counselling session over Smithy's attack, but tensions only rise further between the uniform officers. After Ashton leaves the meeting, Rickman speaks up for him, but Ashton is convinced his colleagues have turned against him. Paired with Quinnan, Ashton investigates claims by a reformed dealer, Larry Moore, that a bag of drugs have been planted at his home. When a local youth accuses Moore of dealing again, Beech arrests him and comes down hard, but his methods leave Moore unhinged. After discovering his wife was responsible for the drugs, he abducts his young daughter. When Moore feels he has been backed into a corner, he snaps and takes horrific action, with a shell-shocked Ashton questioning his capability for the job in the wake of the day's shocking events.

Conway is furious when Meadows asks him to cover for Brownlow due to a bout of flu. Determined to make it to Stamford Bridge for a game between Chelsea and West Ham, he is fuming when he is called in to take a sample for a rape case. To make matters worse, the victim drops the allegation before he arrives. Meanwhile, Hagen and Santini arrest a drunk driver for assaulting Hagen during a pursuit. As they prepare to bail him, Lennox recognises him as a suspect for a series of armed robberies. Conway tries to get on the case but Lennox calls in Meadows, who turns up sick but determined to sit in on the interview. Cryer and Harker investigate claims that an ex-con has been kidnapped by a retired Chief Superintendent, an old friend of Conway's. Enlisting Conway's help, Cryer confronts the ex-cop to get to the truth of the matter. With something clearly missing, it's the retired officer's daughter who supplies the link between Meadows and Conway's cases.