The British Grenadier

The story is confined to one village and largely to one building. Frank Moon, landlord of the British Grenadier, is a Falklands veteran who served as a colour sergeant in the Welsh Rifles, was decorated for leading his troop out of an ambush in Armagh, and owed his own survival to Frank carrying him out of the bombed ship Galahad. The man who owes him is Nye Pritchard, who appears later in the day. Frank is suspicious of his second wife, Stella, and of their son Freddie's parentage. The night before, he accused her in front of the regulars, went for her and was stopped, and he walked out and did not come home.

The episode opens with Dalziel already in the pub, having been telephoned by Stella, whose first husband, Terry, was a friend of his. Frank returns, the row resumes at the bar in front of the regulars, and when the village policeman, PC Nobby Clark, arrives to check a report of a gunshot, Frank shoots him in the road. Clark dies later of the wound, which turns the case into a murder inquiry, and Chief Constable Raymond orders that Frank must not be told. Frank takes the pub's customers hostage: Dalziel, Stella, the elderly regular Harry Barstow, two elderly women who came to complain about parked cars, the barmaid Lesley, the antiques dealer Patrick Drury, and a young man, Kieron Cumming. Freddie is not in the pub. Frank's stated demand is to know which of the men has been sleeping with his wife, and he wants his son.

Outside, the police set up in the church hall over the road. Raymond takes command on the ground, with Inspector Sillitoe, only recently back from suspension over a shooting in Molton, as firearms adviser, Pascoe as lead negotiator, Wield supporting him, and Novello compiling the profile. Frank's service record is pulled, and his old comrade Nye Pritchard is found and brought in. Pascoe opens a telephone dialogue and Freddie is located and brought to the hall.

The day goes wrong in stages. Frank's first sortie with Stella ends with him shot and wounded, and he is told the shot came not from the police but from a television crew at the scene. Rosemary Grainger, who has high blood pressure and no tablets with her, is allowed out in exchange for Frank being allowed to speak to Freddie by telephone, and Brigid goes with her, which reduces the hostage count. Nye goes inside to talk to Frank. Harry Barstow dies in his chair of natural causes, and Stella tells Frank that the death is his doing, which is the point at which the negotiation stops being a negotiation. Kieron Cumming, who has been in love with Stella, tries to intervene with a shotgun and is shot dead when the police storm the building.

No source consulted states whether Frank is killed, wounded or arrested, and the episode does not state it on screen either, so his fate is left open in the published record. The episode is the last of Series 4 and the one that closes with Dalziel still inside a siege rather than outside it. It is also the reason the following series opens with Dalziel recovering from gunshot wounds, though no source consulted identifies the moment in which he is hit.

The structure is a single-location standoff with a live television crew among the hazards, and the interest is in how many ways an operation can fail without anyone making an obvious mistake. Pascoe negotiates and gets nowhere, the firearms adviser is a man with a fatal shooting already behind him, and the man at the centre is a decorated soldier who has decided what his wife has done and will not be talked out of it. Warren Clarke's Dalziel spends most of the episode as a hostage, which is the reversal the story is built on: the man who runs every operation in the series is inside a room he cannot control, watching a negotiation he cannot direct.