And as for you, I can just about handle you driving like a pissed up crackhead, and treating                          women like beanbags! But I'm gonna say this once, and once only, Gene. Stay out of                                        Camberwick Green!

Sam lies ill in bed, suffering from apparent hallucinations that cause a surreal episode of cartoon Camberwick Green on his television - but featuring plasticine versions of himself and Gene Hunt as the main characters. He then receives a call from Chris at the police station asking if he can return to work to help investigate a couple of kidnappings. Sam looks up and sees Chris now appearing on his television as he participates in the conversation.

Still delusional, Sam runs to work and is bombarded with imagery that suggests he has suffered an apparent overdose in hospital back in the present day world. Arriving at the station, Sam witnesses a distraught man called Simon Lamb threatening to hang himself unless a convicted murderer named Graham Bathurst is released from prison.

For Lamb, soon freed from his noose, has had his wife and daughter abducted with the kidnappers threatening to kill them by the afternoon if their demand is not undertaken. Bathurst had been found guilty of murdering a teenage girl called Charlie Witham, with Lamb claiming to have vaguely known both.

Sam struggles at work, constantly sweating, but demands that Gene talk him through the previous investigations that led to youngster Bathurst’s conviction. It becomes clear that Gene was very heavy-handed and desperate to find someone to blame for the murder. He coerced Bathurst into confessing by making threats about longer prison sentences unless he complies. Chris then speaks to Sam about his own part of the investigation, including the initial discovery that Bathurst was seeing Charlie. During a visit to the dead teenagers school, he was told about their relationship by Stella Lamb - the girl being held by the kidnappers. Sam thinks this is the reason why the Lamb family has been targeted.

The coppers pay a visit to Graham’s mother and find his brother Mitch hiding away. Gene believes that he must be behind the kidnapping but Sam maintains that his only crime is being Absent With Out Leave from the Navy. At the police’s behest, Simon Lamb launches a radio appeal to the kidnappers, which prompts a distressed phone call from captive daughter Stella. In a bid to ensure the release of Bathurst, Lamb tries to confess to killing Charlie but his hysteria is ignored. Annie starts to believe that there were major flaws in the murder investigation and a lack of focus on the details. Ray refutes this, explaining how the forensic evidence of an oily rag he found meant that they had caught the right man.

Sam learns, via a phone call from the present day, that he will temporarily slip into a deeper state of coma due to new medication to fight the overdose. Moments later the lights in the office fade to black suddenly. Sam awakens on a couch in a darkened room and sees his police colleagues on the television discussing the case. Gene is suggesting they search Lamb’s bins in case the kidnappers had sent him an earlier warning that he didn’t pick up. He also says that Sam is still out cold. Sam keeps watching on the television, with the action flitting from Lamb’s house - where the male coppers are investigating - to Annie’s work back at the station. Chris finds a photo at the house where it appears that Stella has been cropped out of a photo with Simon Lamb and his wife.

Annie finds a letter of complaint from Charlie’s mother about the police’s handling of the case and pays her a visit. It transpires that her husband Don wrote the letter, believing that there would be more impact if it came from the mother. She then says that Don felt the recent kidnappings were ‘natural justice’, which alerts Annie’s suspicions, as does the fact that he’s a photographer and an expert in manipulating images. Annie visits Don’s shed and finds the two kidnapped women. The photographer then turns up and tells her that it was Simon Lamb that killed his daughter. As the policewoman tries to escape, Don threatens her with a gardening implement. Gene and the others then turn up at the house in the nick of time and apprehend the culprit.

Sam wakes up to be comforted by Annie and tells her how good he feels. After a hug, he asks her out to a Roxy Music concert. She teasingly says she’ll think about it… Chatting with Gene, Sam randomly finds out that the oil from the rag was tung oil, a substance used by Simon Lamb on the night of Charlie’s murder. They head over to pay him a visit…

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