04x26 - The Coop
TW: Animal abuse
June and Taffy have stopped for their dinner whilst out and about as it would be too long to get back to the station. Alec Penny drives past so June quickly tells Taffy to look busy. Alec isn't buying it for a second! The two officers go around the corner and find a man flying a large model helicopter in a car park. Taffy leads June to a quiet corner so they can sit and rest their feet for a few moments whilst they eat. June worries that Alec might come by but Taffy insists he's strictly a main road man and not to worry. Besides, if anything tasty kicked off he'd be the first to remind everyone that he's a grandfather. Taffy thinks they should put him out to grass.
June reminds the man flying the helicopter to keep it away from the roads and he tells her that there's a bad smell coming from the shed over in the far corner. He uses the helicopter to lead the way!
Taffy thinks they've been had but June follows her nose to the smell - there are dead chickens that have been dumped in the shed. They suddenly don't fancy their chicken and chips! It gets worse the deeper she goes as there are more dead and almost dead chickens in the sheds further back. Taffy wants to get out and call the RSPCA but June insists it could be a legal issue and wants to keep looking.
Alec bollocks a van driver for poor driving after he almost knocks a woman over on a pedestrian crossing. Both he and the woman he almost ran over tell him they were distracted by a toy helicopter crashing a little distance away.
Before Taffy and June can call it in properly, the owner appears and holds them at gunpoint as being trespassers. Taffy keeps retching from the smell, especially when the owner shuts the door to the shed. June tries to talk them out of being shot so they can go free. The man claims there's nothing wrong with what he's doing and he insists that they'll still nick him for something when she claims she's just a beat bobby who was only walking by and that she doesn't see a problem. Then, June changes tact and starts to ask him about eggs. She spots one and asks if she can get it out as she's never seen them be newly laid before. She reaches inside and asks him to help as she feigns not being able to reach it.
When that doesn't work but the man appears to be coming onside, June then gently asks if the chickens that have died have died from a disease or not. The gunman asks what she means because he can't see any dead ones. She says there are lots of them and invites him to come closer so she can point them out. As he moves, Taffy leaps on him and tries to fight him and unarm him but doesn't manage to, ending with the gun pointed at him. June's tone sounds more exasperated than anything when she berates him. "The door, Taff. Why didn't you go for the sodding door?"
June tends to Taffy who is bleeding from the nose and panting for air. The gunman shouts at June to shut up when she tells him the MET will be down there soon.
Alec reports the toy helicopter having crashed and tells CAD he's dealing with that. Tom asks Yorkie to contact Taffy and June to find out where they are and get them to go help Alec as the mother is furious and wants to press charges as it could have hurt her children when it crashed.
The man won't let them answer and confiscates their radios. (Why doesn't she press the button when undoing Taffy's for him off his uniform and make a 'secret' message by saying what is happening but 'naturally' so as not to spook the man if they don't have the panic signal that they had on the later radios?) June tries to ask the man his name and when he won't give it she starts calling him Bob even though he says his name isn't Bob! It works though as she finds out he's called Ian.
Ian insists he loves the birds and Taffy scoffs, telling him he grew up on a farm and what Ian's doing to the birds is cruel and sick. Ian admits that yes, there are some problems with them and not many are laying at the minute but he'll get it sorted! They ask him when he last fed them, mucked them out, when they last saw a vet, and tell him the lighting should be on a time switch. He shouts at them to shut up and tells them they're asking for it. "It's the animal rights mob! They sabotage anything!" he shouts.
Taffy shouts at him that he's lying and Ian runs over and points the gun at Taffy. June has to talk him back down again. After 45 minutes Tom tells Alec to head over to the last sighting of the two officers to see what's going on.
Taffy tells June that he needs some air but Ian refuses still. He tells them he wanted his birds to be free range and that he had the best coop in Essex. His boss sold the business and turned it into a camp site so he had to go into business for himself and it's not working out.
Alec gets onto the car park where Taffy and June had been and drives around trying to locate them. He finds the chicken corpses and ventures further inside...
Ian tells June that chicken farming has gone too mechanical now and there's no room for 'natural farmers'. He then tells them he gave his wife a 'little tap' when she got tetchy and she divorced him. He moved to London because nothing was happening in the country and his dole was stopped because they said he was unemployable. They wanted to send him on a special scheme so he went and set up his own business 'unofficially' as he didn't want the 'ministry poking their noses in!'. He claims he was then sold a batch of ill chickens and it ruined everything as it spread throughout the entire group of chickens. He starts ranting that the seller likely did it on purpose because he was an animal libber so wanted to shut him down.
In the middle of his ranting, Alec opens the door and Ian shoots at him though thankfully he ducked in time. He shouts at him to get up and he does but he drags him further into the shed. After some chat, Ian allows them to pick up Taffy and carry him out into the fresh air but before they can complete it, Alec's radio sounds. Ian loses it again and orders them to cuff themselves to a cage. He claims by the time someone comes looking for them he'll be gone.
Tom sends Ken and Tony to look for them - thinking it's a black hole for radios at first. (You'd think he'd start thinking something else too just in case given what happened to him!). They park by Alec's car.
June keeps shouting that Taffy is ill and Ian is killing him too but he insists they cuff him to a cage as well.
Tony and Ken start shouting for the missing officers and Ian gets unnerved and tells June et al to tell their bosses to back off but they point out they can't because he has their radios and he doesn't know where he threw them. He shoots through the roof as a warning instead. Ken and Tony dive for cover and call it in. Taffy is really struggling to keep breathing now.
June picks a chicken up and starts freeing them. She tells Ian to give them a chance as otherwise they'll be harmed when he comes up against the armed police. As he goes to help them get free she traps him under cages and grabs the gun, getting it off him.
They arrest Ian but sadly it's for cruelty to the humans and not the animals as it should be. Alec leads them all back towards the car. "Come on... I'm going to buy us all a takeaway!"
(The chickens used in the episode were all fine. The 'dead' ones were rubber chickens with feathers stuck to them (which took the props people ages apparently) and the real ones were free range and had just been through a round of 'mating' which apparently means that the male pull the feathers out of the female ones (apparently all a normal part) so they looked naturally bedraggled. )
