John hoped to handle a case alone, but even 'on holiday' Gently rushes in just behind him at the pier where a badly battered corpse beaches up, after a severed eye, followed by his sailing yacht, which belongs to German pharmaceutical company founding owner Gunter Schmeikel, who was reluctantly followed by son Wilhelm and his wife Trudi to visit old Jim Hardyment's pig farm, where Gunter rather enjoyed being POW-quartered as shot-down Luftwaffe pilot. Testimonies contradict, but it seems people there at the fatal timer include Wilhelm, with our without his wife, publican Malcom 'Chick Shavers' Fairey, ringleader of Germany-haters who pissed in Gunter's beer, Jim's adopted farmhand Jimmy, who suspects Gunter having sired him with in-living Molly who committed suicide shortly after his release, and national park ranger Robert Stratton, a passionate birdwatcher stuck with a halfwit second wife and daughter, who lost his first family in Nazi bombing. Gentley duly worries that John's debt make him a corruption risk.
—KGF Vissers