Episode
The Bill: Pond Life
Overview
Meadows recruits Quinnan and Rawton to receive a notorious sex offender, Ray Ballantyne, from another division. However, the DCI's hopes of keeping the Ballantyne's identity a secret are quickly blown by a press leak. As a protest takes place outside the safehouse, Hagen receives a call in CAD that a local boy, Andy Donnelly, has gone missing. TSG are drafted in to take Ballantyne out of the house and back to Sun Hill, as the protest escalates into a low-scale riot. Meanwhile, Page and McCann interview Donelly's friend, he gives a vague description of a man seen with the missing boy that matches Ballantyne. As the protest shifts to Sun Hill, Ballantyne is interviewed about his involvement, and he confesses to seeing Donnelly and comforting him. As the boy is tracked down after hiding in an abandoned train, he makes a shock confession about his home life. Back at the station, as Rawton struggles to find a hostel for Ballantyne, a dramatic twist brings a final resolution to the case.
Details
- Series
- The Bill
- Season
- Season 15
- Episode
- Episode 7
- Air date
- 1999-02-04
Episode context
Pond Life is Episode 7 in Season 15 of The Bill. It aired on 1999-02-04.
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Episode 6: No Love Lost
Boyden, Ashton and Santini head out for a night in a club, and Boyden bets his PCs that he can pull any girl in the club. Approaching an attractive young blonde, he ends up taking her home. The following morning, Boyden attends an assault on the girl's stepfather and discovers she is only 15. The case soon escalates when the girl's younger sister claims she has been abused by her stepfather's friend, and when Boyden's conquest runs away, she tracks him down and demands he provide her an alibi for the assault. When Boyden refuses, the girl is arrested for trashing a pub, and uses the interview to mention her night of illegal passion with the Sun Hill lothario. As CIB interview Boyden, Hagen is tasked with taking the girl to a children's home, but she cons her way out of the car and runs off. An off-duty Boyden then goes after the girl, but is unprepared for a discovery during his search.
Episode 8: Murder, What Murder?
Garfield assists the River Police when a decapitated body is pulled out of the Thames. As he clears the scene, he recognises a member of the local press as a journalist he worked with on a recent case (Deep Secret S14), Carrie Winkler. While he doesn't divulge info on the body, Winkler shows him a suspicious camera in her paper's archive block. When Garfield declines to remove the camera, Winkler does, leaving a furious DC with the National Crime Squad confronting Deakin about an intricate surveillance operation to catch a notorious armed robber meeting with his banker to access £15 million of unrecovered cash from a series of robberies. Garfield is surprised when he identifies the body of the man through a pacemaker found post-mortem, but his next of kin are left delighted by the news, as the man was an abusive drunk. When Winkler resumes the NCS surveillance without permission, she reveals the robber's money man is registered to Garfield's body.
More episodes from this season
Episode 5: The Wrong Horse
Garfield and Hagen volunteer to protect a jockey due to give evidence against a crooked bookmaker. On offer is a weekend away at the races and a stay in a posh country hotel. While Garfield decides to eye up some of the local totty, Hagen finds herself as the unwilling victim of the jockey's romantic attentions. During the race, the rank outsider manages to come from the back and secure victory, much to Garfield's delight as it nets him £400. However, Hagen is suspicious, and that night at the hotel, she finds the jockey in the company of the man he is trying to prosecute, with a large amount of money changing hands. While Garfield seduces a friend of the local trainer, Hagen confronts the jockey.
Episode 9: Age Of Chivalry
Burnside is seconded to Sun Hill to catch a pair of serial rapists operating in the area. As Burnside tracks down a known sex offender, he grills him for his whereabouts, but a call soon comes in that there has been another attack. Consulting the victim, who got a good view of the suspect, Burnside leads to an undercover team to a restaurant and the victim identifies a waiter. As the man continues to shut down questions in interview, Rawton consults the man's parents, and they identify a work colleague who they feel is a bad influence on their son. Discovering the man's car matches the description identified by a victim, a claim is made that blows the case wide open. When the pair are bailed they slip surveillance, and one of them is found seriously assaulted.
This episode was broadcast out of production order - using the newer closing titles and fonts not officially introduced until later in the series
Episode 4: Walking On Water
Meadows is furious when a joint operation with Area Drugs to arrest local dealer Danny Rickman is blown out. Stamp and Quinnan attend a library where the attendant has discovered an emailed suicide note. When the IP address identifies the informant for the failed drugs raid, Meadows investigates it as a potential murder. The man's wife is quick to mention his terminal cancer diagnosis, but his daughter claims her step-mother was talking to him about euthenasia. Daly is suspicious when he spots Beech with Rickman, but while Beech and Meadows explain it was an authorised visit, Daly can't shake his suspicions that his colleague is up to no good. As Daly pursues Beech to a meet with Rickman, his cover is blown, and despite Beech revealing Rickman's driver is having an affair with the informant's wife, they end up coming to blows and Daly ends up in a riverside accident. As Daly tries to prove Beech is corrupt, his nemesis tries to track down the informant's true killer.
Episode 10: Slinging Mud
Deakin is approached by a station cleaner who claims to have found £5000 in used notes under Proctor's desk. Proctor refutes knowledge of it, but timing couldn't be worse, as he is due to testify in a court case later in the day. The case is run by Meadows, but first their witness is subject to intimidation, then Meadows is stunned by late evidence of a bank account in his name containing £86,000 in laundered cash. Knowing another CIB enquiry could be detrimental to his career, bringing back memories of his demotion 7 years earlier, he enlists the help of his department to blow open the allegations and save his career. When a link is made to their prime witness, they enlist her help to identify the man at the centre of the conspiracy to frame Meadows and get the suspect cleared of charges.
Episode 3: Follow Through
Daly and Rawton are seconded to a women's prison run by a friend of Brownlow's after an inmate is savagely assaulted, and things soon escalate when doctors reveal she isn't expected to survive the attack. Suspecting a drugs smuggling operation inside the prison is at the centre of it all, Holmes is sent undercover to get on side with the prime suspects, Rita Davis and Jo Merton. Holmes uncovers a scam by Davis to steal phone cards from inmates to sell them back. Holmes identifies a prison officer she thinks might be responsible, but further investigation reveals she has been blackmailed by Davis to smuggle phone cards in. Holmes has Davis transferred to another wing, allowing her to get initiated with Merton, who brings her onboard with the drugs scam. As she prepares CID for a raid to catch the next shipment, she identifies the real prison officer involved, who is immediately suspicious of Holmes getting initiated so quickly. Will she be exposed before her colleagues can intervene?
Episode 11: Under Duress
Boulton and Rawton attend the scene of a house fire, and not only does the chief identify the building as a brothel, he points at evidence that the girls were held hostage by the building owner. Hollis and Page attend when a girl is apprehended by shop security for stealing a jacket, and she admits to being a Turkish refugee who has been held against her will to work in the brothel. However, when Boulton identifies needle marks on her arms, he plays the brute to identify a friend of the girl's Maya, who he suspects started the fire to rescue the girls. Identifying a yellow sports car with black writing at the scene, suspected of being Maya's getaway car, and he soon calls around local brothels to identify a rival pimp who took Maya in. He identifies a pair of Turkish brothers, and when Rawton visits a potential witness, she finds herself in unexpected danger.
Episode 2: Chasing Shadows
Boyden recruits an SO10 officer to go undercover in order to expose an illegal poker ring running out of a local Turkish café. However, when they raid fails, the officer goes missing. As Meadows takes over the investigation, he identifies a Turkish national he failed to arrest during his days at AMIP, and discovers he has been flagged by the Drugs Squad for an importation operation. However, Meadows leads a raid on a warehouse and blows the Drugs Squad's surveillance operation. Joining forces, they discover a scam in which a deliberate crash was caused in Germany so an apparent good samaritan could have "a mate fix the car" in order to hide drugs in the chassis and smuggle it into the UK undetected. Realising the scam has been rumbled by the SO10 officer, the team fight to track him down before he's silenced.
Episode 12: Sleeping With The Enemy
Skase and Lennox enlist the help of Burnside as they investigate a series of robberies at local business conventions. Burnside is reluctant to admit why but he identifies their suspect through a tattoo described by a victim of theft, a former prostitute using the alias Victoria Smith. He later admits to Holmes she tied him up and left him in nothing but a raincoat while she robbed him during an undercover op when Burnside was a newly-promoted DC. Lennox and Skase go undercover at the latest convention, and while Skase pulls, he is forced to abandon his attractive companion at the revelation she is an innocent who was actually attracted to him. Lennox has better luck, but when he and his companion go back to the hotel room, she drugs him and steals his laptop. When the woman is found in hospital, having been attacked by one of her victims, Burnside launches a raid to arrest her and Smith.
Episode 1: Long Term Investment
Deakin's surveillance on convicted kidnapper Frank Tully's release from custody is immediately blown out when Tully spots them, revealing his already released partner in crime told him he was also under surveillance. Deakin then confronts his partner, Richard Hackett, demanding information on a missing ransom payment from a kidnapping 8 years earlier. Deakin sends Holmes undercover as Hackett's girlfriend, but when they set up an observation, Tully pulls a gun on Hackett and Holmes after discovering there is no money in their safety deposit box. Tully is arrested when Hackett reveals the gun is empty, and suspicion turns to bank manager Roger Carlson, who decided to go on holiday the day of the raid. However, when all he is found with is a small bag of heroin in customs, they discover he may have been framed for someone else to steal the money without Hackett or Tully's knowledge.
Episode 13: Badlands
DS John Boulton is determined to catch a pair of brutal thieves, and he is certain that local crook Mick Glover is one of them. Ignoring protests from Uniform, who already have Glover under surveillance, Boulton leads a disasterous raid on Glover's flat, which puts PCs Quinnan and Garfield's informant Janie in grave danger. When Quinnan and Garfield find Janie's flat on the Jasmine Allen estate vandalised, Quinnan pursues the suspects, but finds himself seperated from Garfield, who can only watch in horror as his friend is beaten and stabbed by a gang of youths.