The Field of Blood

Episode 1

The Dead Hour: Part 1

58 mins

1984:- The miners are on strike and in Glasgow NUM leader Red Willie McDade is suspected of hiding their assets so that the government cannot freeze them. Paddy Meehan and George McVie, reporters for the Daily News, arrive at the scene of a disturbance with police in attendance. However an Irishman assures the journalists that everything is all right and gives them money to leave. The alleged victim, left-wing lawyer Vhari Burnett, declines to press charges but next day Paddy learns that Vhari was murdered. Later the corpse of another lawyer Mark Thillingly, who supported the miners,is pulled from the river. Suicide is assumed, his widow claiming that he had been depressed and behaving oddly before his death. Paddy hands the police the money the Irishman gave her on which are found the finger-prints of Irish gangster Lafferty, though he is not the man Paddy saw at the house. New editor-in-chief Maloney arrives, announcing redundancies to stream-line the paper and make it more populist. She warms to Paddy but criticizes editor Devlin to her. After Vhari's sister Karen disappears, kidnapped by thugs who beat up her brother, Paddy and a reluctant McVie are about to go through Lafferty's dustbin to find evidence to link him to the Burnetts. McVie stays in the car and Paddy, hearing a screech of brakes, turns to find the car has been set on fire.