Sgt. Cryer is taking half the relief out on Sun Hill's annual fishing trip. P.C. Smith and D.C. Dashwood go to serve a warrant on Russell Archer over a non-appearance in court on a poaching charge. Archer manages to escape from Dashwood and Smith, and is later seen menacing a milkman with a sawn-off shotgun. He later holds up a bookies and a greengrocer, until he is spotted by P.C. Carver and P.C. Frank. who give chase. Frank is shot and wounded during the chase, and Archer ends up taking an elderly woman hostage in a retirement village. With the fishing trip cancelled, D.S. Roach takes charge of the siege operation until D.I. Galloway and Ch. Supt. Brownlow arrives. Attempts to contact the increasingly unstable Archer fail, until he asks to speak to Sgt. Cryer whom he saw in the betting shop. Cryer enters the flat, and attempts to talk Archer into giving himself up. With W.P.C. Ackland posing as a Meals-on-Wheels driver, Galloway, Roach and PT17 officers storm the flat and shoot Arche

DI Chris Deakin has a word to DS John Boulton about his team's informants. Boulton has done pretty well, but DC Tosh Lines hasn't recruited a snout for months. Under pressure, Lines tries to recruit Karen Walsh, the wife of the victim of a recent attack which he'd investigated, but she refuses to grass on her husband or his associates. Lines puts pressure on the Walshes' landlord Pat Beresford who he believes was responsible for the attack, and is delighted when Beresford contacts him offering information.