634: 'The Rookie'

Dressed smartly in a new leather jacket, Will Fletcher enters the CID office on his first day as a Trainee DC. He is immediately pounced on by DCs Jo Masters and Grace Dasari who trick him into getting comfortable in DS Stuart Turner’s desk, much to the Sergeant’s annoyance.

Brushing off the jokes and sarcastic comments, Will gets his first case when Sarah Bale calls the police to tell them that her house has been burgled and that her husband, Travis is missing. The case takes a sinister twist when the construction site that Travis runs is deliberately set on fire – and Travis is found badly beaten by an open safe in his cabin. The officers soon discover that anti capitalist protester, Desmond ‘Redeye’ Reed had been threatening Travis over the re-development of the land and threatened to burn the site.

At the hospital, Will interviews Travis who explains that he was at home when men in masks broke into his home and dragged him to the site office, forcing him to empty the safe. As the investigation develops, Will and Stuart realise that Travis is being blackmailed by Jimmy Lynch, the head of a security firm. Travis has been defrauding his clients in order to get the money to Lynch, fearing for his family’s safety.

Travis admits that Lynch has given him 24 hours to come up with another payment, so a sting is arranged and Travis, terrified, agrees to help. At the construction site, Will goes undercover, dressed as a builder, to keep a watchful eye on an increasingly panicked Travis, who eventually admits he can’t go through with it. Taking his place, Will meets Lynch and tells him he’s a friend of Travis’s, there to hand the money over. A highly suspicious Lynch shocks Will by pushing a bloodied and beaten Redeye in front of him to show him what he’s capable of. As Will rushes to Redeye’s aid, Lynch strikes him on the back of the head and Will falls to the floor.