Lost On The Range

A riding stables owned by Helen Davison is vandalised. Vincent Batten, who owns most of the horses in the stables, wants CBS to provide security cover to satisfy his insurance company. Then Sultan, one of Vincent’s stud stallions, is stolen while Rocky is watching the stables. CBS are made to look like amateurs. Harry offers to do a free security survey of Vincent’s house by way of recompense and volunteers Ken’s services to investigate the vandalism and the theft of the horse. While Harry is doing the survey, he sees Jordan, Vincent’s business manager, loading up the Land Rover with water and horse feed. Harry and Laura follow Jordan to a derelict cottage where is secretly meeting Vincent’s wife, Greta: they are having an affair and Greta knows that Vincent would divorce her if he ever found out.

Ken is suspicious of Meia, one of the stable girls who lives with a group of gipsies nearby. Bull, Meia’s father and leader of the travellers, resents the fact that whenever any crime is committed, the gipsies are always the first to be accused. In the middle of the night, Rocky is patrolling the stables and catches Meia prowling around. He locks her in a stable but she escapes through the roof... straight into the arms of the police. Ken and Rocky find a bottle of medicine in Bull’s caravan. At the police station, Meia vigorously denies stealing Sultan. She says that Helen gave her the medicine for her own horse, Nell, which has gone lame. The police charge Meia with the theft of the horse. To clear her name, Rocky and Bull search the surrounding countryside, looking for the horse.

Harry and Laura find Jordan and Greta plotting to run off with Vincent’s money. Greta hands Jordan a document, “our little insurance policy”, which he hides in the stove of the derelict house. Later, Harry retrieves it and discovers that it is a report from a horse racing forensic laboratory. The report describes how a horse that Helen was training a few years ago had tested positive for drugs; the owner took most of the flak but Helen had to give up training for a while.

It emerges that Sultan has become impotent, and Helen and Vincent are working together to defraud his insurance company by pretending that the horse has been stolen. Helen was forced to “steal” the horse, under threat that Vincent would reveal the contents of the forensic report. She was supposed to kill the horse but she tells Vincent that she couldn’t bring herself to do this. Helen takes Ken to a derelict barn where she had hidden the horse... but it has gone! Has Vincent taken it already?

The insurance loss-adjuster arrives, but to everyone’s surprise the horse is back in its stable – Rocky and Bull had found it in the derelict barn and returned it. Vincent and Helen are arrested for fraud. Helen vows to Ken that she’ll tell the truth from now on. Meia is released.

In “Tales From The River Bank” (Series 5), David Dixon’s character was called Don Speed. Now his surname has changed to Swift!

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1997

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48