A contractor lays bare a skull-smashed adult male skeleton under the precinct's old floor. Crabtree's records search allows Murdoch to conclude the victim is constable Finch, missing since the day the floor was poured, wrongly presumed having found a better-paid job and simply left. All who worked there are thus suspects, including then constable Brackenreid, so Chief Constable Giles, then the precinct detective, hands the case exclusively to Murdoch, who comes up with a crafty photographic ID method. Crabtree and he are shocked to find a crucial photo negative was stolen by one of the interviewed suspects and find it was probably something to do with 'telegraph boys', male street prostitutes who were extorted protection money or beaten by cops, or in concealed cases paid in kind. At the price of his own illegal secret in a bizarre gentlemen's agreement, Murdoch gets a false confession.
—KGF Vissers