Week beginning 1st February (Date and time to be confirmed )

1969: six months since the shootings in Durham Cathedral. Gently's injuries in the shoulder and the leg are healed and he is pushing himself back to full fitness. Bacchus, shot in the stomach and seriously injured, has been completing his recuperation in a police convalescent home.
Gently is shocked when he learns of Bacchus’ resignation and annoyed that John hasn’t told him directly. He visits Bacchus in the convalescent home where he has been recuperating and realises that his sergeant has lost his confidence. Still suffering his own mental and physical scars from the Cathedral, Gently sets about fixing Bacchus - by insisting that he helps him with a case while he serves out his notice. Gently has been tasked with investigating a death in custody.

The death has taken place in police cells in Newcastle and was discovered by WPC Rachel Coles and reported to the station sergeant, Dawson. They say the victim was one of several people arrested after a street protest and had to be manhandled into the cells. His body shows signs of injury, but there isn’t yet a clear cause of death.

The victim, identified as Simon Thomas, is discovered to be a university drop-out, a drifter with some mental health problems, probably living rough. His middle class family is horrified that he has died in police custody and his mother asks Gently, "aren’t the police supposed to protect the vulnerable?"

Gently and Bacchus learn from the police shift team Baird, Stockdale and Sidwell that Simon’s death happened on what had already been a difficult day for the police. They came under attack during protests at a slum clearance and the victim was arrested there. The incident shows the changing attitudes of the general public to the police force. Where they were once the trusted, familiar, local ‘Bobbies on the beat’, police officers are now beginning to be seen as agents of the state.

Even the kids they meet on the street, like eight year-old Robbie and his brother think of them as ‘pigs’. Another police officer, Ashton, was attacked and seriously injured during the protest. His colleagues are angry and Gently ponders whether Simon’s injuries indicate that they decided to take justice into their own hands.

As Gently and Bacchus put together more detail about the events leading up to Simon’s death, they explore events at the police station, the circumstances of his arrest, and attempt to discover what happened before the police arrived at the slum estate.

Rachel is ‘fitted up’ by her male colleagues in the force – and Gently and Bacchus find themselves in danger once again on the streets of Durham...