Help Me Make It Through The Night

Ken is in the process of moving into a derelict cottage in the village of Upper Ridley. He has arranged with the owner that he will live there rent-free in exchange for renovating it.

John Pritchard approaches Harry and wants CBS to provide security guards for the launch of his new health club. He wants the guards to wear tracksuits, which he will provide, so they will blend in with the punters. Harry promotes Rocky to “executive” and gives him the task of employing suitable college students: no mean feat when all the tracksuits are extra small! One of the students, Vicky “Mouthpiece”, gives Rocky a hard time, quoting the Factory and Sex Discrimination Acts as she attempts to do as little work as possible. However Rocky soon puts her in her place.

John Dewar, the owner of a dairy, suspects that his wife, Melissa, may be having an affair and asks Ken to investigate. Ken is reluctant to do so, firstly because he wants to get on with moving into his new house and secondly because he hates working on “hanky panky cases”. He watches Dewar’s house, “Harmony House”, but Melissa soon spots him waiting outside in Harry’s Jaguar, and invites him in for a cup of tea and a chat. She seems to be a respectable woman who spends most of her time doing charity work for the parish, but Ken suspects that she is very lonely.

Ken and Harry follow her to a park where she seems to be innocently whiling away the afternoon listening to a brass band in the bandstand. However they eventually see her going off with a man. Ken follows him to a hotel and learns that his name is Paul Lyle. By conning his way into Lyle’s hotel room, he finds (and copies) a map of the countryside to the south-west of Nottingham on which routes, timings and locations are marked. Lyle seems to be planning with two friends, Milne and Preston, to abduct Melissa. He has also been keeping a close watch on Dewar at the dairy.

Harry and Rocky watch an innocuous van arrive at Harmony House. When they go to investigate, posing as stranded motorists, they are forced at gunpoint to go into the living room where Melissa is being held. Lyle arrives at the dairy and abducts Dewar and the staff wages, under threat of killing Melissa. Milne and Preston take Melissa to a deserted farmhouse, as arranged, and leave her there. Lyle eventually releases Dewar in the middle of a wood and drives off, but not before Dewar has caught sight of a plane ticket in Lyle’s car. After walking across the fields for only a few minutes, Dewar arrives at a country police station and reports the abduction. The police arrest Milne and Preston as they are about to catch a flight from East Midlands airport, but realise that the “accidental” clue of the plane ticket and the fact that there was a convenient police station nearby is no accident – Lyle has set up his accomplices.

Ken rescues Harry and Rocky, who are still tied up at Harmony House. He and Harry visit all the places marked on Lyle’s map and soon find Lyle and Melissa at the deserted farm. Lyle and Melissa make their escape by helicopter, with Melissa keeping Ken at bay by threatening to shoot him. However Harry has already retrieved the briefcase containing Dewar’s money from the helicopter.

According to the brief glimpse of Lyle’s map, Dewar was abandoned in West Leake Hills wood between the villages of Gotham, East Leake and West Leake.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1997

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48