Coverup

Ken makes a start on renovating Orchard Cottage. Pam Strong, one of his neighbours and the widow of a fireman, tentatively asks him for help because her son John has changed suddenly: he has dropped out of college, become sullen and uncommunicative and has started locking himself in his room. She also suspects that he may be stealing from her. Something is wrong – could it be drugs, Pam wonders. John has become friendly with another teenager called Mark who rents room at a nearby farm.

Mark and John steal a car and drive around, terrifying the locals. The car hits a man and woman on a bridge, but Mark drives on, dumping the car in a quarry and swearing John to silence. But John later recognises the man that was knocked down as a local doctor, James Harlon. It was Harlon who got John his part-time job as a porter at the hospital.

Ken visits Dr Harlon, not realising that connection with John and the accident. Dr Harlon describes John as quiet and a bit of a loner, but not the sort to be a drug addict. Clearly his present behaviour is very out-of-character.

Ken visits Rooks Farm where Mark lodges. Both Mark and his landlord William deny knowing John, but Ken becomes suspicious when he sees drug-taking syringes at the farm. He thinks that John will probably talk to someone of his own age, so he gets Rocky to follow him. Rocky is staying with Laura, and her flatmate Hilary is a nurse at the hospital, so he asks her to point out John to him. Rocky sees Mark bullying John into giving him money. It also transpires that John is stealing drugs for Mark from the hospital. Rocky follows them to the bridge and sees them peering over the parapet. Later, he and Ken search the bridge. Maybe this is where Mark and John’s supplier leaves the drugs for them to collect, suggests Rocky. They find fragments of glass and a key by the bridge. Ken snoops round the Rooks Farm, but the key doesn’t fit any of the locks. On the off-chance, he investigates a cottage just across the field from the bridge. The key fits the front door. When Ken sees the owner, Ann Fielding, he notices that she has a large cut on her forehead: he has found the woman.

At the hospital, Laura over hears John asking for details of a woman who was brought in last Friday after “an accident”. Laura learns from Hilary that the only woman who came in after an accident was brought in by Dr Harlon. Why did he insist that he didn’t want anything about the woman to be put on the hospital records? Pretending to be from the hospital records department, Laura visits Mrs Harlon, who is mystified. Evidently she was not the woman who was injured. Mrs Harlon becomes very suspicious and challenges her husband about the accident: she has evidently suspected for some time that he is having an affair. James Harlon and Ann Fielding are very worried that their secret will soon become known. Ann wants to go public about the affair, but this is that last thing that Harlon wants. He storms off back to his wife.

Harry is due to entertain some visitors from Norway that evening and has been practising his Norwegian from a Linguaphone tape – with little success! He goes to collect Ken from Orchard Cottage, but he finds that it has been vandalised... by Mark, who is furious that Ken has been snooping around. While Harry is inside the cottage looking for Ken, Mark steals Harry’s Jaguar, bundles John into the car and zig-zags off down the road.

Ken and Harry go to Rooks Farm. They find William and Mark, but there is no sign of John. They find him hiding in Harry’s car at the quarry, terrified that he will be taken away by the police for being involved in the hit-and-run accident. By this stage, Laura has arrived with Pam. Ken reassures John and Pam that Ann was not badly hurt and that it is unlikely the police will become involved as neither Dr Harlon nor Ann Fielding are likely to want the publicity that they would get if they pressed charges. But he has reckoned without Ann: incensed at being nearly killed for the sake of a man who has now deserted her and returned to his wife, she has decided to cut her losses and call the police. Mark and John are arrested.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1999

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48