Lost on the Range

Lost on the Range is a missing-horse case in which the obvious suspect is innocent. A riding stable owned by Helen Davison is vandalised, and Vincent Batten, who owns most of the horses there, asks CBS for security to satisfy his insurance company. Then Sultan, one of Batten's stud stallions, is stolen while Rocky is watching the stables, and CBS look like amateurs.

Harry offers a free security survey of Batten's house to make amends, and volunteers Ken to look into the vandalism and the theft. During the survey he sees Batten's business manager, Jordan, loading a Land Rover with water and horse feed, and follows him with Laura to a derelict cottage. Jordan is meeting Batten's wife, Greta. They are having an affair, and Greta knows that her husband would divorce her if he found out.

Ken is suspicious of Meia, a stable girl who lives with a group of Travellers nearby. Her father, Bull, is their leader and resents that the Travellers are always the first to be accused of any crime. At night Rocky catches Meia prowling round the stables, locks her in a stable, and she escapes through the roof into the arms of the police.

Ken and Rocky find a bottle of medicine in Bull's caravan. Meia says Helen gave it to her for her own horse, Nell, which is lame. She is charged with stealing Sultan, and Rocky and Bull go out to search the countryside for the stallion.

Harry and Laura learn more. They find Jordan and Greta plotting to run off with Vincent's money, and Greta gives Jordan a document, "our little insurance policy", which he hides in the stove of the derelict house. Harry takes it and finds a report from a racing forensic laboratory. A horse Helen trained years ago tested positive for drugs, and although the owner took most of the blame, Helen had to give up training for a while.

The pieces fit. Sultan has become impotent, and Helen and Vincent are in the plot together, defrauding his insurer by pretending that the horse was stolen. Vincent forced Helen to take the horse by threatening to reveal the report, and she was meant to kill it but could not.

She takes Ken to a derelict barn where she hid the horse, but it has gone. When the insurance loss adjuster arrives, however, Sultan is back in his stable: Rocky and Bull had found him in the barn. Vincent and Helen are arrested for fraud, Helen promising Ken that she will tell the truth from now on, and Meia is released.

Paul Mari wrote the episode and Laurence Moody directs. Angharad Rees plays Helen, Terence Rigby is Vincent, and Bryan Pringle is Bull.

The strength is the combination of Rocky and Bull. The detectives suspect the Travellers, the Travellers are accused by the police, and in the end the horse is found by a Traveller and a biker who had every reason to feel sorry for each other. The weakness is the fraud itself, which resembles the infertile horse in Don't Buy From Me, Argentina. The episode is carried by its sympathy for Meia.