Episode 206 — Mates Rates

When Adam discovers that a car he has just purchased is part of a stolen car racket, his loyalty to his job and friends hangs in the balance.

While out on patrol Adam and Dash are called into a local chemist where a woman has been caught shoplifting. Adam arrests the woman, a widowed single mother who has stolen a ventilator for her sick child. Adam charges her; but Tom, seeing the need for 'country policing', decides to dig a little deeper and eventually orders Adam to withdraw the charge. Adam believes that Tom is treating him unfairly — always has and always will.

One of Adam's new friends, Bryce, manager of the flash car dealership Spin Motors, arrives at the station and invites Adam to lunch. Tom humiliates Adam for the second time that day by voicing his disapproval of Adam's friend's social visits. Adam's had enough — he decides that he is going to start living life for himself. So when Bryce offers him the deal of the century — an unbelievably cheap HDT Commodore — to replace his clapped-out car, Adam agrees to buy it.

Adam loves his new car. The world's his oyster and he is being drawn in closer than ever to Bryce and his new, upwardly mobile group of friends. At last he feels he belongs, that he's appreciated. Suddenly they are his new 'family'.

The Heelers are then called out to a fatal car accident. The car involved is a 'rebirth', a stolen and converted vehicle illegally registered and sold to an innocent buyer. And this rebirth is discovered to be connected to Spin Motors. When Adam is questioned about where his new car came from, he denies that it came from Bryce. But Adam's nervous — after all, the Commodore came extremely cheap. So he approaches Bryce and asks if he'll consider reversing the sale. Bryce is fine with this until…

Adam and Dash are called to another shoplifting incident. It's Bryce's mother and Adam does his best to let Mrs Richards off with a caution — in Adam's eyes much like the action Tom took with the previous shoplifter. When it is discovered that Mrs Richards is a repeat offender Tom reprimands Adam once again and tells him to charge her.

But this is all secondary to the real problem now facing Adam — Bryce will not reverse the car sale unless Adam 'pulls strings' for his mother to clear her charges. Adam's hands are tied: he doesn't have the authority to help his friend out. In his growing anxiety, Adam checks into the history of the Commodore further and his worst fears are realised — the car is a rebirth.

Meanwhile, the investigation into Spin Motors is heating up and Bryce is under heavy scrutiny — the prime suspect of the dodgy car dealings. Adam is torn between his loyalty to the job, his colleagues and a delicate situation with a mate that could plummet him into financial ruin and humiliation, and may well cost him his job.

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