Ken is asked to investigate the fiancée of Lawrence Varlish. He suspects that she might be having an affair with her hypnotherapist, Geoffrey Phillips. Harry goes to see Phillips, posing as an anxious patient, and soon discovers that Varlish is worrying over nothing. Two suspicious-looking South African men are waiting in the car park of the newly-opened CBS offices. They are anxious to collect something from a boat on the river. Nearby a narrow-boat belonging to a certain Mrs Walters is commandeered at gunpoint by Hobson, a suave man with a painfully cultured accent, accompanied by a Scotsman called Dilkes. They urgently need transport because their own boat has broken down. That night, when Ken is asleep on his yacht, he is woken up by the sound of heavy objects being thrown in to the water. Still half asleep, he peers out of the window but can't see anything and soon goes back to sleep. After advertising in the local paper, Ken and Harry are inundated with enquiries for missing pers
Harry has evidently gone up in the world since he sold Woodcote Park because he now drives a Jaguar XJ6. He is planning to start a security business from offices at a canal basin by the Trent but his bank manager, Mr Statter, refuses him a loan. Ken, Rocky and Laura have moved from Royal Hill and are temporarily working out of a very tacky caravan. Ken is on horseback, investigating water pollution and dead fish at a quarry near Dornford Hall for his clients, the peremptory and patronising Dr Sinclair Lewis, and Simon, a member of an ecological pressure group. They believe that the pollution is due to the dumping of toxic waste, possibly solvents used in the production of ceramics. Suddenly an air-rifle pellet is fired at Ken's horse, throwing him off. A beautiful Polish woman, Irena Tadeusz, who lives at Dornford Hall, rescues him. She tells him about a friend, Brigadier Charles, who was beaten up in a robbery. She is very frightened, so Ken offers to do a free survey with a view to f