Dalziel and Pascoe

Dalziel and Pascoe investigate the death of Donald Fitzgerald who is found the morning after his retirement party bludgeoned to death on a golf course driving range with three golf balls shoved into his mouth. He had returned home after the party to tell his wife he was leaving her and then left the house, taking with him a new golf club he received as a retirement gift. Suspicion falls on Danny Macer who was recently acquitted in a murder case with striking similarities. When they find a key on Fitzgerald that leads to safe deposit box with a 100,000 pounds, they begin to wonder exactly what their ex-colleague was up to. A second murder leads them to one of their own.

Inspector Pascoe's grandmother dies, and he sets out to discover the truth about his grandfather: why he disappeared during WWI. Pascoe is falsely told that his grandfather was a deserter but continues his quest. An animal rights group, in a seemingly unrelated incident, attacks a pharmaceutical firm's labs. The leader (Amanda Marvell) escapes to the woods nearby and falls over a skeleton. Dalziel is attracted to Marvell but relentlessly sets out to solve the murder of her disciple, though her Jeep is involved. Flashbacks are used to show the threads linking the two cases. The skeleton is found to have arsenic in the bones; Marvell's brother's death in Africa is suspected not to be accidental; Dalziel discovers the theft of experimental data from the lab, showing it not to have a purely beneficent medical mission in Africa; and Pascoe proves his grandfather was innocent.

Having recovered from his wounds Andy Dalziel returns to the fold just as Peter Pascoe is in the midst of an undercover operation trying to capture a serial killer. Peter corners the man who then jumps to his death but the only witness turns out to be Abbie Hallingsworth who was kidnapped 19 years before and presumed dead. More difficult however is that her kidnapper, Gus Mullavey, confessed to her murder and is still in prison, though now on his deathbed. Dalziel has a great deal of difficulty in accepting the situation and Abbie's family has mixed feelings about her return, especially one of her two brothers who is simply not prepared to accept her claim. DNA testing confirms her identity but the police soon have a murder investigation on their hands when Abbie is found dead. When they learn that one-third of the Hallingsworths' considerable family wealth was in trust for Abbie, they focus on Abbie's brother David as the most likely suspect. It turns out that nothing is as it seems, however. Meanwhile, Peter's private life is in something of a turmoil after he and wife Ellie separate.