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Private Notes
A terminally ill baby is abandoned in Brussel's busy Northern rail-station. An anonymous inquiry for it starts the team's hunt for the ruthless Yugoslavian human traffickers, who sell often stolen children for adoption. Ambiguous parts are played by would be-parents and naive idealist Claude Adams. The case also allowed the new CO, Luitenant Gino Capellen, to introduce undercover cop Kristien Rosier while veteran Sylvain is incapacitated by multiple leg-injuries.
A woman found strangled in a Brussels furniture shop stockroom is identified as an ex-employed rural housewife, reported missing by her husband, Rudy Burgraeve. He refuses to question her whereabouts, even when forensics finds proof she recently had sex and a champagne dinner. Her shopping buddy Marleen De Kimpe helps the team digging into family secrets, and turns out to have been her 'colleague' in Etienne Helon's escort service. Finally son Benny, a law-student living generously in a Brussels apartment, features in more surprises.
Captain Capellen's attempt to divide the old team nearly succeeds in breaking up gay Willy Martens and his straight partner Reggie Bax. Matti Tomassetti is jealous when she realizes her husband, car salesman Vic, spends time networking at parties with his boss's sexy friends Wim and Yolande Zimmerman. When Wim is reported missing and the corps in his burnt-out car carries his papers, Matti's suspicions and illegal 'tenacity' arouse major procedure problems. Retired dog act circus artist Richardke's refusal to testify what he saw is key to this case and a related next crime.
Brussels antique-dealer Fischer cries for help after being robbed by two masked men. Willy and Reggie arrive in time to start a gunfight, but can't arrest either robber. The captain uses this as another excuse to side-track the gay detective in therapy and sharpshooting training. Passerby Tom Duprez, who tried to help Fisher, was coldly shot dead by Guy Renquin, who later terminates his junior Eddy, who got wounded badly but is denied medical help. Dodgy former P.I. André Lamotte saw everything, finds the fence and demands a hefty informer's free from the police. Tom's pa, rich lawyer Duprez, uses his connections to breath in the team's neck and pays André, who is found executed the next day. The team can only connect Lamote with pregnant prostitute Claudine Delcroix, who proves as dumb and mean.
Ex-con Luc Paulus firmly resents any comment from her teacher Hilde De Bont about his good-for-nothing daughter Katrien's alcohol abuse and other oddities such as lots of cash. Tibo resisted his lover Nadia's saucily abusive demand to abuse police authority to lean on Paulus. Shortly after, his skull is smashed fatally. The team suspects former jail-mate Martin Coopman, now his partner in a window cleaning business, who actually fired him recently. Then they discover family and intimate secrets, yielding more suspects to be eliminated by alibi or forensics.
Reputable lawyer Piron and his junior apprentice Struye competently win a case by exposing arrogant detective John's procedural errors. The next night, Struye is murdered at a crime scene. The prosecutor wisely guards the delicate case's ethics and invites the bar association's chief to supervise the confidentiality aspects. The team discovers various tensions within the law firm, such as the secretary having switched lovers to Strye from the junior partner Claes, and Piron's own possibly dodgy past.
Electrician Eddy Vosberg is found hanging, a poorly staged 'suicide'. The team soon realizes he ran up crushing debts as a compulsive gambler. His family knew, but it's unclear how they tried to square loyalty with the interests of the family electric appliances business.
During a drug trade stake-out, Willy and Reggie mess up again during improvised urination but accidentally discover the corpse of retired cinema usher Agnes. She was shot with a Word War II gun. She was the never accepted daughter of a soldier and a posh Brussels family's matriarch who never even tolerated her name. Yet the team works out several members knew about her and/or had contact. Facsism-sympathetic antiquarian Dieter van Hoeck competently researched her past and proved her pa wasn't a Canadian liberation soldier but a Nazi subaltern during the occupation. Finally Agnes had a turbulent, kinky-secretive love-life.
(Part 1 of 2) Old veterinarian Urbain Van Overbeke, one of the most influential men is his Brabant cattle village, is murdered and dumped in a canal, expertly cut into pieces with professional equipment. Young vet Frank Leuridon was after Urbain's clientèle and is rumored to have an affair with his daughter Dominique. Farmer Ronnie Ceulemans threatened publicly to kill him for officially disapproving his cattle, which he administered illegal hormones supplied by Frank, who insists they are health-safe. Ronie poisoned Urbain's horses with laurel in the night of the murder.
When all the carved-up parts of Van Overbeke's corps are finally found, the autopsy mysteriously shows no violent or other specific cause for his fatal heart failure. The team discovers Frank Leuridon had an adulterous mistress but still no alibi. Her alcoholic husband MD Weyns's violent reaction gets Tibo injected with a fast-working and -broken-down poison, which fits the autopsy. Van Overbeke's private life proves relevantly sanctimonious.
