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- While investigating with Grün Bochum's part in a wider crime wave of identity theft to have online orders -mostly luxury goods- fraudulently delivered at addresses, like food at Nikolas's former primary school teacher Waschke's home, Heldt finds it fits many cases in that neighborhood since three months, actually supplied over Darknet. Heldt wonders why 'cheap' food and stakes out a delivery, so he can observe 15 year-old paperboy Adrian Schlosser, whose mother Nina 'manages' his even less caring stepfather's DJ-career, leaving Adrian to look -well- after kid brother Leon (eight). Heldt gets state attorney Ellen Bannenberg to take them in her home rather then call in child services during his investigation, to see if Adrian also dealt in luxury contraband. The knave points at ex-con pizza deliveryman Michael Gruber, who is caught smuggling drugs, but clearly only the courier.
- Nikolas Heldt stops at night in the forest at the car of shocked Antonia Lange, who is convinced she hit someone, but no victim is to be found, only in a nearby wood, in bathing robe, locally TV-famous 'bath tub king' Erwin König, with a fatal head wound and evidence of another crash, no shooting. König's daughter-employee Stephanie remains icy. Recently fired mechanic Ralf Klose hated the choleric despotic ego-tripper but has a crush on Stephanie. Heldt sleeps at Antonia's who suspects a stalker, notices Klose lurking around at night, and later catches a surprise visitor. Lacking solid proof, Heldt gets rue stickler Mario Korthals to trick Klose and thus discovers entirely different crimes, yielding new motives and suspects. Autopsy shows the victim died in salted water.
- After informant Anne Lerch was shot at home, commissioner Nikolas Heldt only hears her puzzling dying last word (later found squirrel in Spanish) and is kidnapped himself, chained in a decommissioned swimming pool, but still as determined to find out about 'the lawyer' who ordered his parents' murder, with due suspicion. Interior minister Uwe Herbst shows great interest and promises state attorney Bannenberg a promotion. Even chief commissioner Grün agrees to bend the rules when Achmed comes up with a way to clone Heldt's cellphone, allowing Karl-Heinz "Carlo" Funke track Nikolas down, in time for truth time, which he has to add the last puzzle piece to.
- Heldt and Bannenberg compete in a team-building-seminar in a rustic castle against Duisburg and Essen police-judicial detective duos, in bad mood two days after their joint Westphalian human traffic bust was sabotaged by an unknown mole. Grün and Mario Korthals resent being left behind at the precinct, fearing Heldt will wreck Bochum's reputation at the prestigious event, so they resort to legally dubious reactivation of an undercover bug. Only Heldt quickly warms to the old-fashioned who done it murder game, solving a murder staged by seminar host-director Kleine (who plays the victim), "Butler" Moritz Hackforth and "cook" Natascha Meisterjahn. Essen's brutish commissioner Kathrin Hardt and state attorney Dr. Sebastian Pringel start no less enthusiastic as Duisburg commissioner Erik Schubert, whose attorney Winterbauer is medically excused. Pringel however son starts courting amused Ellen, Heldt fails to hide his jealousy, the men sharing a room and hold a mild prank war.
- After a night in the castle, romantic notably for Ellen and Heldt, who sneaked out of his shared room, seminar director Kleine alias Baron von Protznitz is missing as 'victim', but actually also in reality, all participants, cook Meisterjahn and Butler Hackforth (both hired actors) finally want to end the game fast. Despite some rivalries, state attorney Sebastian Pringel and commissioners Kathrin Hardt and Erik Schubert applaud Heldt working out the clues to the murder mystery. Kleine is found really stabbed in a storage room. Ellen claims nearest jurisdiction and commissions Heldt to officially investigate the castle, which is locked down as murder site, so nobody can leave. Heldt first finds the impoverished real baron von Protznitz, who noticed an outsider car. While the castle is searched, which proves dangerous with two criminals, an external one as well as a traitor, who ruthlessly traps several people while finding himself in danger. In Bochum Grün and Mario Korthals's parallel research is surprisingly fruitful, which turns out necessary.
- As the team is after a robbers scam which cleans out homes of wedding couples while they are in the town hall registrar ceremony, no doubt tipped off from there, Heldt goes undercover as the groom with beat cop bride Angela Mertens, who seeks to redeem herself back to field work but needs an appendectomy the night before each time, so Ellen must take her place as his bride. The conspirators are found and a confession obtained against from registrar Claudia Meisner against double-unfaithful married lover René Schwartz, but there's a bloody ending, until Heldt wakes up from the nightmare back at his bachelor party in Carlo's pub. Then the whole day starts over, despite him remembering no significant changes seem possible, hence the whole cycle starts over again almost as a time loop, or an excessive déja-vu.
- Only Heldt sympathizes immediately when unsavory Iggy reports the disappearance of his fellow homeless street mentor, Horst Wilmenrod, after the pair spent the night in the local 'ghost house'. Believer Mario Korthals looks into the history of the house, property of wheelchair-ridden antiquarian Harald Waldheim and his daughter Carolin, Grün laughs at such superstition but is chicken-dared by Niklas to help stake-out the house anyway. Iggy invites himself, eager to illegally 'assist Heldt' in the case, the more worrisome as former literature professors Dr. Wilmenrod 's blood is found in the basement, and proves himself knowledgeable in street life and furniture, which is also found in the house, but fake antiques. They even see the 'white female specter', allegedly Haral's daughter Elisabeth Waldheim, who committed suicide there in 1950. Harald Waldheim has a record of harshly warding off 'disrespectful' intruders, Carolin wants it torn down. Grün, Ellen and street worker Tanja Mützner dig into Iggy's past and that of Horst, who proves more concerned for his disciple then Iggy held possible.
- Heldt eagerly attends a private gym's kick-boxing event and meets a girl there, but she becomes the next in a series of presumed kidnappings. Possible leads, won by several undercover team members, point at the dodgy organizer, match-fixing, theft and scorned lovers.
- Trying to raise cash by garage sale on Carlo's pub doorstep to buy a rare comic, Heldt is shocked to be turned down as some of the cash is counterfeit, probably part of a large scale problem in Bochum and the region, even over several states in Germany. *State attorney and lover Bannenberg depresses him by announcing, unilaterally, she accepted a promoted with move to Passau in Bavaria. He remembers having go a fake note from silver spoon schoolboy Alexander Nehrsbach, who points at his denying arts teacher, would be-artist Hanno Schultz, who is deep in debt. Mario Korthals works out the exceptionally professional paper comes from Alexander's father's mill. Observing the knave leads to pub keeper Doris Kloppke, Mario's former flame and aunt-guardian of Alexander's near-orphan buddy Dennis. Schultz disappears and everyone is most edgy until Heldt ties everything together.
- The precinct gets an uninvited visit from AI's dreaded "Fränkin" Herzel to investigate complaints against 'abusive' detective Heldt, allegedly bribed in the prostitution scene according to an anonymous tip. Heldt went there only to get client Steve Grimsel's wallet returned discretely by madam Friederike Willms, so as to keep his girl friend unwitting, but was inadvertently slipped 500 Euro cash in his pocket, on video. The team's efforts to clear him can't prevent Heldt's suspension due to amassed indications, notably of drug trade, so he risk arrest. Achmed motivates him to fight back, tracing the false leads to former cop Arne Dehnitz, and hooligan Alex, whom Heldt recently arrested with home-made bomb. How does it all link?
- Heldt duly doubts that state attorney Bannerberg's brat Emily (12), who walked home trough the quarter she was most forbidden, was targeted when a probably stray bullet is found in her math book. While overprotective self-blaming mother Ellen orders a checkup on all fiends she recently made into enemies, and focuses on the one with opportunity, Heldt takes Grün to the neighboring popular garden quarter, where the shot must have come from. It provides alternative suspects, such as the rowing grumpy neighbors Ruhrpott-Rentnern Sieling and Domscheidt or hippie couple Jan and Marion, on account of means and/or motives.
- Shortly in succession, four female lawyers report being the sleeping victim of a nocturnal visitor who marked their bellies 'I was here' while they were drugged but performed no sexual acts. Heldt worries Ellen may be next and initially looks into the first three's cleaned-out ex-husbands, who became friends. The fourth case is falsely confessed by the ex-con who may well have been framed the earlier time his victim claimed rape. After a wild night with Grün, whose wife jealously threw him out fearing his midlife crisis meant he seeks sexual variation, Heldt wakes up naked in a wheelbarrow by the precinct. Links are found to a yoga gym and between the 'abused' women.
- Half a year after he precipitously left the country to pursue a private investigation on Mallorca, Nikolas Heldt returns to resume his life. However the Bochum PD already replaced him with eager gentleman commissioner Ian Kramer, yet Interior minister Herbst wants the unconventional hero reinstated due to glorious results in Spain, Heldt even turned down a federal police job. Their new case is a masked home-robbery, the MO of serial criminal Dorn, whose lawyer now successfully petitions for a revision, during which several forensic errors occur. Heldt assumes it must be doctored and focuses on Dorn's only jail visitors, a criminal psychology student working in ICT and Dorn's fiancee, a serial convict dater.
- The precinct drops everything to search for missing schoolboy Elias Müller (ten), who is found unharmed in the car-booth of family father Richard Menden, whose alibi checks out. Cool cop Nikolas bonds with Elias over superhero comic "Laserman" and gets the enterprising knave to admit he staged his own abduction as cry for attention from his ever-absent workaholic father Markus Müller, who goes missing the next day. .Meanwhile Grün must tell bankrupt, fatal car crash victim Paul Klausmann's brother Robert and fresh widow Carla it was a poorly cover-up suicide, hence no insurance payoff. Checking Markus Müller's dodgy business and Swiss banking actually ties up both cases.
- Retired maverick commissioner Harry Fahrenhorst's death renders Heldt, Mario and Grün too gloomy to seriously investigate a decomposed corpse found in a large pond rather then reminisce. 'Strangled' by his necktie, pallbearer Heldt drops the casket, thus literally discovering not Harry's corpse but sand bags. Despite state attorney's instructions to leave this to another squad, they rather look into the cemetery, form where a ghost hunter points to the funeral undertaker. This turns out to receive a startling amount of nocturnal visitors, from a Gothic couple 'partying' with fresh bodies to the posthumous beautician and Harry's doting voluntary assistant in countless freelance investigations, recently including his neighbor Gregor Lenz's 'missing' wife.
- Horst Moltke dies in the precinct just after whispering to state attorney Bannenberg "Martin Walden must inherit all!" '*Widow Simone Moltke is appalled by his death, as turns out poisoned, but mainly that the inheritance falls to their manipulative relational therapist. Failing to find a suitable female cop partner to go undercover, Heldt and Ellen enjoy playing 'troubled spouses' more then the proper date they never had. While Heldt and Ellen spy on staff and fellow couples, Grün and Mario examine Walden's session videos. The place proves infested with lies, infidelity and even drug trade.
- Carlos's bar and its 'savings club' are the latest victim in a series of robberies and muggings in Bochum, which caused affected small business people like Lisa Mensinga to form a vigilante posse and hire as security posts Neonazi Jörg Kabel 's biker gang-linked firm, which culminates the hostile atmosphere against immigrants, even Ahmed. The police disapproves of self-justice, but Heldt's nocturnal trap only gets Mario lightly wounded, inadvertently sabotaged by the 'militia'. Iraqi asylum seeker Armir's teen son Amir must be arrested for stealing sneakers and keeping cash found in it, but provides a lead to Hardy Nesser's rival biker gang, while his father's affair with local Estafania proves a romantic rivalry lead. Commissioner Detlev Grün relives his biker youth to prove the part of bike shop owner Andreas Bruhn.
- Heldt is excited when the arrival of a new drug type from Vienna occasions the detachment on such case of his Austrian kindred hero, major S. Mayerhofer. Alas, the reputed maverick police detective they pick up at the airport turns out a gentleman to captain Grün's classical taste. Worse, the hunt for Oliver Dominic's drug mob keeps going pear-shaped, until both men realize after a confrontation with the Viennese original Kafkaian red-tape how they're being sabotaged and welcome a fir rescuer.
- Team Heldt investigates director Günther Tilski's porn production firm, which tricked even detective Mario Korthals into unwittingly downloading illegally "Lauras Geheimnis", triggered by innocent sites on gardening and so on, as Ahmed finds out. Reputed Tiberius Stranach's law firm offers all victims a hefty settlement to avoid prosecution. Stranach and client Tilski plead ignorance. Heldt and Grün each tackle the case in their own style. The trail leads to anonymous hacker "Mighty Goliath", who is head over heals for porn lead actress Laura Lasziv. Cracking the case now requires finding the middle man/men and Stranach's angle.
- Heldt sympathizes with laborers demonstrating against their Bochum plant being closed down due to production transfer to Asia, enough to try the male version of Ukrainian nude protesters, handcuffing himself to the entrance briefs-only. Alas, he's thus unable to react timely when an alarm is given about a break-in, at first sight hothead vandalism, but student Lena Herzog is found fatally skull-smashed. Heldt must find out about the protesters, yet to his horror leftist students are hard to find nowadays. However, more personal motives are found, and a memory-stick full of dark firm secrets.
- As undercover croupier, Heldt helps clean up an illegal, tax-evading poker circuit, but at least two big fishes escape. Contacted independently by Jutta Krüger and Marlene Krüger to find their missing husbands, Grün and he find both are married to the same bigamist, Jens Krüger, who faked a job for each of them. His real income came from gambling, so when Heldt discovers forensic expert Dr. Hannah Holle has also shifted into poker, he gets her to organize a trap tournament at Carlo's. Break-ins at both homes duly point at imminent danger.
- After another -discrete- romantic night in Ellen's office, Heldt is in a jolly mood. Grün wonders about it and rivals with him, so they jump each at one of two new cases, apparently unrelated. Heldt looks into local radio talk show host Toto Emmerling, who claims amnesia after beating into hospital with concussion just after his last show before moving to Costa Rica. Grün looks into the escape from jail, shortly before his scheduled release, of diamond robber Daniel Keller, whose loot was never found, and suspects he contacted his -denying- brother and presumed cahoot Achim. Heldt takes Toto's place to lure the anonymous puzzling female caller from his last show, and stumbles onto a links with the Keller case.
- Heldt's trusted informer Achmed is convinced that the near-fatal fall of his construction site workmate Matze Hellwig can't be accidental. Forensics indeed find sabotage. Heldt must consider insurance fraud or firm secrets, but is most inclined to suspect bigot macho laborer Tobias, who hates his many immigrant colleagues and flirts rudely with Matze's Rosa.
- Seeing the golden pocket watch on a skull-smashed, next dumped corpse in a construction pit makes forensic doc Hannah Holle faint: it's her thirty years-missing college days flame Jonas Becker, whose innovative ideas inspired the interdisciplinary progress of the science. Heldt's team allows her to escape dismissal from the case for personal implication due to 'crucial knowledge' at her fervent request. . *Jonas's and Hannah's former mentor, professor Weingarten, points out his scholarship now went to obnoxious Oliver Tusch, who has an alibi. Jonas' father Herbert Beeker never accepted his gay persuasion, which at the time would, if made public, compromised his mayoral ambition. Having helped with an 'informal autopsy', Heldt must save Hanna when she gets too close to the truth.
- Grün sadly finds his retired predecessor and mentor Erich Kisters, formerly nicknamed 'the elephant' thanks to his memory, who is caught burglarizing near-neighbor Stefan Winkler, is and Alzheimer patient, who recently turned too unpredictable for his loving wife Agathe to handle since med student Bastian Hallerbach since moved in next door, whom Erich attacked instantly. Kisters wanders off shortly after into a clinic, searching for a girl using a newspaper picture of Emma Watson. Heldt suspects the senior may be working on some confused recollection and enlists Mario Korthals to go trough his 25 years of cases for links with current persona. Grün even remembers they failed to solve the kidnapping and non-return despite ransom payment of Swedish millionaire's daughter Eva Gunnarsson in 1992, an exchange student at the local university, where Bastian Hallerbach, not even born at the time, is studying to become a third generation doctor, and 'his' DNA was found. Heldt stages a memory restart.
- Bird-watching off duty from a forest observation post, commissioner Grün must call in he's sitting on a bomb, which is defused just in time. While evacuating anglers Axel and Kai Uwe at the nearby trout fishing pond, Heldt is commandeered by neighboring kiosk owner Simone Milowski to find half-wit pond employee Andreas 'Andi' Wolters, who was analyzing the water, and tells instant buddy Niklas his guardian Hartmut Haschek, the pond owner, and he normally shared coffee that observation platform at the time of the explosion. Heldt assumes Hartmut was the target, but he' killed in a car crash after a cardiac arrest shortly after. Hartmut's cousin and heir Michael 'Mike' Haschek, so reneges on his promise to 'unherit as charge' Andi, whom Ahmed finds dumped on the street, so Niklas seeks a better guardian while putting him up at home and in the precinct so-long. Tricking uncooperative top law firm partner Tiberius Stranach finally puts Heldt on the right trail, albeit barely in time.
- An anonymous call announces a car booth bomb at Bochum precinct. Heldt spots and stop just in time the suspect car and presumed perpetrator, chemist Derja Afridi, an Afghan Taliban-widowed refugee employed by paint firm Kraft Farben. It's a fake, possibly a ploy to shut up Derja, whose uncooperative supervisor Luca Wollenhagen and devoted management secretary Luise Krugkamp consider her a threat to the company reputation as toxic product whistle blower. Heldt poses as dirty cab form owner to dubious local reporter Thorsten Geilandt and illegally uses Achmed's hacker talent. State attorney Ellen, already uneasy about their illicit affair, turns on Niklas, who grills the family management.
- Heldt eagerly volunteers to investigate at local SciFi convention Kap Kaminski the apparent prank out of control between the Licht brothers. But on top of a glued mask, follows an attempt at lethal arson, which the first victim couldn't commit. The only obvious alternative is autistic Steffen Kemper, who rarely speaks or takes off his Major Thomas costume, hoping his father will return from space, but Heldt hopes to communicate trough the boy's drawings and digs into the brothers' own fiery youth.
- Someone is stealing works from collector-crazed photographer sisters. Heldt's police team and prosecutor Ellen Bannenberg have a hard time finding the link, except nerdy insurance detective Gernot Pütsch and her husband Stefan's gallery. Heldt smells a scam, confirmed when near-victim Heinrich Tiemann ends up admitting to his old friend, commissioner Detlev Grün, he's blackmailed with his family's safety, while others tragically lack that in the finale.
- Three months after a bomb wrecked his bar, Niklas remains worried- sick about his disappeared mate, its owner Karl-Heinz "Carlo" Funke, son in no mood to help Mario plan his promotion celebration. Grün and Bannenberg are reluctant, failing proof, to press Heldt's theory Carlo's was burned like five other hospitality business by the local racketeers queen Sofia Cassano. The apparent latest victim, cafe keeper Klaus Risse, was brutally beaten into hospital by her thuggish henchmen Matteo and Angelo but dares not speak up, only his clueless wife Ilka spills the beans, so Ellen impersonates her as lure. Heldt, who pursues Carlo's case pseudo-officially, catches his mate in flagranti buying from a drug dealer, yet keeps quiet to his team, confiding only into Achmed but is soon seen trough. The team works out the embarrassing truth, also about Carlo's desperate action.
- Heldt's beloved vintage car in a parking lot clash with hare-costumed Britta Clemens , whom he must hospitalize with a stick-induced head wound. The lonely rest home orderly was taking therapist Frederike Faust's 'cuddling course', which the team screens, first focusing on married, apparently unfaithful florist Tobias Weiss, whose alibi checks out. Britta lent hers savings to 'patient' Falk Schmidt, a serial wedding scammer's alias, so Niklas and Heldt set an undercover trap, but Brita's helpful neighbor Arne Seehusen inspires another angle.
- As punishment for the chief's ruined painting, Heldt must assist instructor Manfred Sievers in regional police academy, but goes about it his own unorthodox way, yielding divided reactions from the cadets. Maverick Muslim Layla Chalid, whose bacon he saves, terrifies even him with reckless initiative, which soon finds her electrocuted unconscious. Heldt couldn't resist 'tailing' Grüns and Bannenberg's case, addict Jablonsky's fatal OD with a new synthetic drug never spotted in Germany before, which heavily leaned-on cocaine dealer "Wild Willy" Wilke helps trail to novel dealer Achim Rentschel, who runs a bowling hall.
- Walter Krattwinkel, who runs Bochum's most popular curry sausage snack-bar, is found fatally stabbed inside at night. To son and heir Sasha's horror, the top-secret family sauce recipe on which their success depends is missing from the safe, and he never got to read it. Heldt tricks first Grün, then Ellen into helping him reconstruct the recipe from a bit Ahmed never got round savoring, but even the crime lab's analysis of ingredients doesn't get them near enough. Meanw grump Walter made potential enemies on a daily basis so Heldt goes the extra mile to check them out, even if that means going undercover with the despised industrial competitor, who bid to buy out Walter and plotted with the sausages supplier, who wanted out of an exclusivity contract.
- Bochum's family brewery heirs Sebastian and Sybille Heinrich are blackmailed for a million Euros cash, to stop poisoning their new citrus-flavored "Funky-Lemon", just launched with grand marketing, which their future depends upon, but now even the production is interrupted preventively. Heldt and Grün supervise the ransom delivery, but catch only a dog-obsessed tramp who probably found the bag by coincidence. Heldt looks into the family firm, where Sebastian's old-faschioned stepfather Erwin Heinrich was shoved aside, and tails recently fired brewer master Ernst Sawitzki, who didn't just bend over. he even stumbles upon a takeover plot.* "Carlo's" hätte sich daran halten müssen. Doch Mario Korthals schmuggelte vorher eine Flasche aus dem Lokal und gab sie seiner Mutter. Daraufhin landete diese im Krankenhaus. Bei ihrem Sohn führt ihre Abwesenheit zu ungeahnter modischer Emanzipierung.
- Achmed coincidentally notices the clients f his favorite kiosk across pub "Carlos" being held hostage by a gorilla-mask and alerts Heldt, who grudgingly sees the case assigned to a lame commissioner and cocky SWAT captain Schneider. Achmed identifies the kidnapper's voice, demanding a weirdly low and precise sum, as painter Klaus Fehrichs. Heldt refuses to standby aside and finds out the hostages also hide things.
- An armored car carrying the shopping huge mall's lottery prize is cleverly raided. Guard Gunnar Polt is fatally short, his mate Sven Mielke having broken safety protocol to avoid missing an foxy Internet date. A presumed accomplice's corpse is found, Nikolas's mechanic friend Thomas Marowski is somehow involved. The team soon suspects an inside job, Mario having found out a cellphone was hidden among the cash to trace it and sets a trap, which proves dangerous. Niklas finds the mall detective dirty and more.
- Chief commissioner Detlev Grün actually called the bomb squad when his student niece Lena Herzog, whom he visited on Ruhr-Universität Bochum to appease doubts about his marriage, found an abandoned sports bag in the Chinese garden girls toilet. Heldt is delighted to look into the fossil it contained, while none was reported stolen or missing. *Palaeonthology professor Habakuk, a creative has-been star, is excited it's the "Missing link" for his thesis, mammals like birds descend from dinosaurs, but it's stolen and he knocked-down during a false fire alert while he proudly presents it, after a dismissive sneer from department chief Professor Sattler, in a lecture attended only by Heldt and three students, making them the main suspects. Lena must probe the students: Daniel is Habakuk's doting assistant, Chinese guest student Hong and Vincent, disowned son of an industry captain, are found involved in trading stolen fossils and fakes, which Dr. Holle founds the 'missing link' also is. Professor Sattler is charmed by gentleman 'senior student' Grün's erudition.
- Achmed is hospitalized with a major concussion inflicted by the nocturnal intruder in retired Otto Böhring's repair cafe where they work their handyman magic among other volunteers, the premises where vandalized, probably in search of something. Only single mother Jannika Montag's pendulum clock, brought in last evening and of little value, is reported stolen, but Heldt's team soon finds various items, allegedly beyond repair, were 'disposed off' by furtive Internet sale. Volunteer Ralf Wester is an ex-con, former cellmate of bank-robber Rudolf Kraska, whom the stolen clock belonged to in jail, which also links to someone less obvious.
- As administrative punishment, lout Heldt is assigned to dreary customs routine checks escort. However he stumbles upon art smuggle from Turkey. The case is complicated by the customs' refusal to cooperate. Heldt resorts to clever and sneaky tricks to access evidence. Meawnile diner manager Carlo is finally home.
- Commissioner Heldt is excluded by chief Grün from the current counterfeit medicine investigation and ordered to read up on old cases. Bored, he jumps even at the unpromising case of a death threat email to stickler bailiff Raimund Gerber, who soon after proves the victim of pranks and is shot in the shoulder. Heldt checks up on Gerber's gut suspect, law student Timo whose computer was seized, but moves on to Gerber's fired colleague Dieter, who bent the rules corruptly. By the way, Heldt stumbles upon college paper 'ghost writing' and a counterfeit drug circuit.
- Due to his wife's illness, commissioner Detlev Grün is the third jury member in the final round of Bochum's annual inventors competition. Vanessa Kochlowski startles with a drone who recognizes and paralyzes picture-input-identified persons, but is goes berserk and electrocutes another juror. Heldt is delighted with competing teacher Lars Zieler's nostalgic 'big boy' tent and mentality, but can't ignore he had motive (the prize) and opportunity. So did Sven Lattbeck, an incorrigible small fraudster suddenly swimming in cash. Heldt however also focuses on respectable third juror Mathilda Großkreutzer.
- Truck mechanic Erol Yildiz survives a nightly shooting. In the nineties, punker future cop Heldt belonged to the pauper motor gang "Rats", wealthy Yildiz to the bitter rival "Bochum Boys", their hostilities he's not eager to share with his team partners. People from their past turn up in the investigation. Nikolas's first love Nathalie, now running a local barber shops chain, is unhappily married to former "Bochum Boy"- Stephan Wenger, Heldts worst teen gang enemy. Heldt's former gang buddy Felix "Fifi" Osterloh now runs his father's car shop, where the possible crime weapon was stolen from the locked gun chest, and employs as car salesman ex-con Mirko Schalkowski, kid brother of Bochum Boys president Tom Schalkoswki, which angers wife Lana, who had an affair with Wenger and is Yildiz's ex. Yildiz may well have been confused at night with Wenger, so motives most be reconsidered, while even Ellen is surprised by lover Nikolas Heldt's dark youth trauma.
- Patrizia Sendel's corpse is a found by a pro playing a cop on a parking lot belonging to the fetish scene, unlike laborer Georg Sendel's wife. She was dressed way beyond their means, part of a lifestyle she also lacked any breeding for, despite Internet sales of worn lingerie. Heldt finds she even attended the city's exclusive country club, without the normal discretion around hunky 'pro instructor' Simon Scheuffele. The case is countered by supervising judge Decker who was client with both. Heldt also finds proof plumber Georg must have found out about his wife's flirt. A recording devise proves useful to set a trap.
- Heldt and Ellen Bannenberg were to meet a witness in a mall, but are stuck in the elevator, which was expertly sabotaged by mini-bomb. Before they are liberated -just about to kiss- petty robbery was committed by a masked man, which the bomb signature links to Wolfgang Golotkowski, whose fingerprints are found, and his former cellmate, a mall employee. Police cadets Tim Eschkern and Layla Chalid even use unorthodox Heldt methods to trap them. Heldt senses this isn't all the plot even before shopping back on site inspires him the real coup was digital, the robbery an elaborate diversion.
- At the Blauregenweg garden party, popular hedonist Olaf Liebermann is poisoned but not fatally by snail pesticide in his beer, his wife suspects an earlier ladder accident wad none either. Heldt moves in as patent lawyer Nikolas Richter in mentally unstable neighbor Franziska Lagura's roof quarter while her investment banker husband Frieder is constantly in London. Heldt's soccer fan club "Never steig ab" mate, local midwife Claudia Liebermann, also reports a sabotaged lawn-mower. The yuppies who succeeded regular residents are extremely competitive fashionista health freaks. Foxy control freak Jule Kuchenbecker is married to dentist Jens. Single Sophie Wilkens distributes vanilla sugar from her pharmaceutical R&D lab, as to Franziska and Olaf. The fiend strikes again.
- Driving to the precinct, Heldt notices on the roof of the psychiatric hospital Günther 'Günni' Lawniczak, his favorite comics-shopkeeper, costumed as he believes to be a superhero. Playing along as the fitting sidekick, Heldt prevents him from 'flying off' to certain death, aided by social service year volunteer Samantha Kühlwein and Dr. Ava Nasrim, who treats his bipolar condition and supervises him as participant in a manic-depression drug study. Heldt realizes Günni's inseparable attache case full of first editions was robbed empty. The team suspects Günni's shop employee Falk Lückow, who was drug debts, and ex-girlfriend Irina, who rowed when she accompanied him to the clinic. Günni's memory proves too fragmentary. The team must go undercover as s costumed superheroes, to crack the unfortunate ploys.
- Under narcosis from an experimental drug, Heldt, who collapsed while arresting most wanted Danish mob boss Bengt Olsen, but operated for appendicitis, hallucinates in hospital, starring an atypical white-costumed angel and conscience version of Detlev Grün. Nikolas can't even convince Ellen, Dr. Holle and the real, strict Grün of irregularities in hospital which he believes to compromise a conspiracy to hide Olsen. Heldts treating physician Dr. Veronika Stöckel is inclined t believe dragon head nurse Gudrun it's a drug side effect requiring a lower dosage. Meanwhile the team works on the disappearance of Katharina Willich during a business trip.
- Yuppie Johnny Käfer's home party gets out of control after paramedic Matthias Sattler's colleague Martina Neumann refuses to let guest Carsten Hesse claim priority for his merely high girl Mandy. Martina is found fatally fallen down a staircase, with fresh marks from a struggle and push, the punch bowl contained LSD but didn't cause the fall. After he gives Heldt's team -with Leyla joining-in as eager intern, filling in for Mario- a guest list (well, Internet aliases) the guests are trick-invited to a follow up-party and screened. Brewery employee Hesses's family past proves most interesting, but also a surprising third person's traumatizing professional frustrations.
- Heldt investigates a shooting in a park on a disguised woman, who gets away. At his steady pub, owner Carlo presents Nikolas, who smells a rat, to his first and last great love, Anne Lerch, finally returned after the murder on Heldt's parents 20 years ago. Indeed she may have been the target, although a motive isn't obvious for notary Florian Reben's clerk, engaged a few months ago. State attorney general Böger shuts the investigation down to protect a top-secret one, but even Grün refuses to bow out except in name. Carlo dismisses Heldt's theory as 'jealousy', yet encourages him to finally asks Ellen on a date, which she accepts. However it gets canceled as Nikolas manages to ties the ends, including a mysterious hired killer whose robot hand rekindles Nikolas's worst memories, with dire consequences.
- Heldt 'infiltrates' the teen schoolmates of Sina Maibaum (15) who attempted to kill herself after a mean social media campaign against her and finds the relevant circle is Marleen Kranzler 's popular hip-hop dance course. Cool lawyer's son Tom Reindl is leaned on to admit his part, but no evil mastermind. Sina's buddy Christine is found sickly jealous, like musical lead rival Lucy. Heldt's real priority however is an offer from the federal prosecutor to meet hired gun Anne Lerch, who can tell him who paid her to shoot his parents, but demands a lot, including her illegal savings, so DA Ellen's help is needed as well as his 'protector', state interior minister Uwe Herbst, who plays his own dirty game, which leaves Heldt missing on his unofficial private mission.
- The Internet post of a homeless man being put of fire is on the popular channel of reputed student prankster Florian 'FloFame' von Haben, who convinces Heldt he would never be so cruel and tasteless, probably an attempt to sabotage him. So they check out his eccentric local rival at at Mediajuice agency's studio, stuck-up Beauty-Blogger Luca Limoni, who also denies, but holds a deep grudge having been Flo's butt in his precious signature haircut. 'Ingrate' Flo's former manager Ralf Elmau is also suspect, so Heldt volunteers for makeover by Luca before he can set a trap.
- Stefan Zoller's poorly staged hanging-suicide in Bochum left him comatose, prisoners and staff remain suspiciously silent to Grün and Korthals but Heldt volunteers to go undercover posing as a posh Italian Amalfi-mob middleman Tom Becker. In Zoller's cell he finds heroin of a lethally high grade and is roughed up by Russian jail dealer Viktor's henchmen. Heldt refuses to be withdrawn, despite the danger, seeing the unexpected transfer of ex-Interior minister Uwe Herbst, murder but his biological father, who plays a confusing part in the further investigation.
- Corporate restructuring shark Michael Ramme's home has been vandalized and tagged "You'll pay" by a masked intruder, so the family gets police protection. Brat daughter Larissa, on leave from Swiss boarding school, turns out a buddy of state attorney Bannenberg's equally rebellious daughter Emily, who claims she and Heldt 'dumped her' being forced to move to Passau, so Nikolas stays around a while. On the beat cop's night shift, an intruder kidnaps Larissa, leaving Emily gagged. Sacked employee Simon Stehr is proven the vandal, but no more. Heldt and Ahmed rightly suspect mother Alexandra Ramme of fraud with the ransom, the first of several shocking revelations, not only in the case.
- Achmed's uncle Berat Özer is hospitalized, poisoned by an overdose of tranquilizer in the signature dish "döner" of his pitta bar. While daughter Elif Özer and cousin Yusuf Celik, promised 'engaged' since childhood, run the business, Heldt's prime suspect is neighbor baker Cordula Melker, who believes her beloved dog on diet 'poisoned' by Berat feeding it, which isn't even the case. he also canceled his meat orders with recently paroled ex-con Harald 'Hacki' Lüschen for selling laced pork as pure lamb to the Muslim.
- An ominous morning call warns Heldt his day won't be easy. Next, anonymous "Simon" blackmails his boss Grün for 7 million euro ransom and keeping Heldt blindly in line for eight hours, having kidnapped and bomb-taped Grün's wife Barbara. The only one who may help them to such fortune is Nikolas's biological father, jailed ex-interior minister Uwe Herbst, whose secret bank accounts were never confiscated by EOKS agent Henrik Stein. Heldt visits Uwe Herbst in jail and must accept his condition: a meeting with Nikolas's half-sister Chloé Maibaum. As feared, even secret protection from Ahmed and Mario can't prevent a major mishap.
- At the backyard of exclusive deli "Jacobi", Tobias Brandt incurs a serious neck wound when attacked while raiding the dumpster with his college girlfriend, art student Rike Neumann, who uses the (wrongly dismissed' foot for protest collages. His life-threatening organ failure then next day can't result from the blow, nor food poisoning, but someone injected poison into chocolates. Team Heldt fear a fatal trap. Rike mentions their aggressor wore a pirate suit, fitting Tobi's social media enemy Uwe Zeckowski, who also raids dumpsters but only to eat being a working poor. Deli clients Ellen Bannenberg and Detlev Grün find fancy owner Maike Jacobi excessive protective of her waste products. Heldt thinks of another possibility and sets a clever trap.
- Heldt awakens in a huge, private "prepper" bunker, while his colleagues and state attorney-lover Ellen Bannenberg frantically worry where he went. He had checked up on a list of inconspicuous citizens in a case of illegally acquiring military grade weapons, presumably for Neo-Nazis. Educator Harry Meyer picked up a shipment, but Heldt realizes he only stood in for his sick neighbor, Armin Raschke, whom he found practicing survival skills in the wood but was knocked out by. Heldt is 'recruited' for deluded Raschke's nuclear winter practice, with his estranged wife Bettina Wendt and nerdy Marius Dahl. Manfred Neuhaus's fingerprints on illegal arms import from Poland put the team on the trail of his extreme right wing movement. Heldt must deal with Armin Raschke, the only one who knows the entry code, helped by Bettina but jealously detested by Marius Dahl, who turns on the cop who takes his place as Armin's confident.
- Heldt's colleagues and best mates give the games-lover an original birthday present: they all enter Bochum's original, never-solved escape room aboard a converted airplane "Flug des Todes" (Death Flight). Mario Korthals, Dr. Holle, Grün, Ellen Bannenberg, Heldts and buddy Achmed are costumed as pilot, stewardess, air-marshal, first- and tourist class passengers, joined by two outsider: engineer John Kuhl and hairdresser Tatjana Klug who won her ticket by accident. Security-agent Patrick Lessig checks them in, warning to trust or believe nothing, but Achmed soon collapses from claustrophobia, the compartments are locked. After successfully preventing the simulated crash, the team is told s fiend took over control and seeks lethal vengeance. It turns out this threat has layers, only partially part of the game, with a legacy hacker posing the gruesome threat, as forensic deputy Monthomery simultaneously finds out by identifying the knocked-out and replaced escape room executive.
- Convenience shop "Rollo's" is rudely robbed, leaving retired regular customer Eugen Merkroth, who helped out in the owner's absence, badly wounded, yet nothing seems stolen, so it was probably meant to hurt managing owner Roland "Rollo" Dombrowski disguised as theft. Soon released from hospital, Eugen and xenophobic regular customer Carsten Redder tell Heldt about ruthless competition, notably with price-beating Iraqi refugee Haias Al-Omar, around the corner. Al-Omar blames Rollo for recurrent vandalism and racist slur. Heldt finds Rollo an angel of mercy for sick wife Susi and locals, who gather at his shop as a community center. Grün finds out Rollo has troubles with petty criminal Marvin Röschoff. The whole affair proves a tragic misunderstanding.
- Tanking on the way home Heldt is just in time to control an exploding amateur bomb brought into the station by state of the art robot. *Grün fearing a test run, he and prosecutor Bannenberg focus on a lead to chemistry student Alan Barsani, who has a geocaching game alibi. Heldt believes it and makes a mode cars racing circuit friend, car crash-crippled Manuel Unterberg. Other club members like dubious cleaning firm manager Dierk Jager also make plausible suspects, but Heldt must face his buddy's accident's tragic shadow back to his single mother's home where he was forced to move back in due to his wheelchair.
- Young Lukas Grauer is shot during a hold-up in Rüdiger Kopp's pawnshop when a staff member attack the robber during is till then non-violent robber's exit. The victim's ruthless rich mother Judith offers a fat reward, which attracts would be-bounty hunters. The owner is caught at fraud, slick Joachim Pöls's robbers gang is linked and the Grauer family involved in old grudges.
- A pimp is shot, lightly wounded, with the gun used decades ago to kill Nikolas Heldt's parents before his eyes at their disco when he was eleven. The weapons was scheduled for proof after years in evidence conservation, but the only one never processed in the forge. Heldt is taken off the case, but immediately resorts to his massive vacation stack, in vindictive killer mode. He kidnaps and smartly tortures Bochum's prostitution baron, Lutz "Luzifer" Büttge, who swears his innocence convincingly. First diverted, then helped by Heldt's buddies Achmed and Carlo, Grün and Bannerberg's official investigation also trails to retired cop Hannes Hentschelmann, now a drunk, once beat cop and the only to believe knave NIkolas, a known prankster, crying his parents were bleeding to death, but too late.
- Dutch commissioner Jan Kramer helped prepare a case against elusive Dutch corrupt contractor Ruud van Breukelen, but is rests on the testimony of terminally-ill accountant Klaus Conrad, who goes missing just before the trial. Prescutor Ellen Bannenberg and Grün must temporize while Heldt finds Conrad, but he's knocked down, yet finds the encrypted accounts, which weird super-nerd Arthur Brenner must crack. Klaus is killed just when Heldt finds him, but the corruption parties list changes everything.
- Eager to dump the painstaking identification of an adult male skeleton dug up in the woods on Mario, Heldt jumps on the claim from acquainted maverick senior Alfred Sieling who belied having photographed, while bird-watching, what may be the stabbing of his annoyingly-noisy, eccentric neighbor, painter Arno Limpinski, whose in-living muse Zoé Knaup only reports him missing after pushy gutter reporter Ulf Hund prints his sensationalist version. While commissioner Grün assesses Arno's excusive gallerist-dealer, Heldt treats Julia Tietz to a picnic and stumbles upon a complex of identity questions which ties the cases. * . etwa verknallt?
- After an alleged boogieman attack in the forest, the team realizes Bochum suffers a wave of crimes allegedly involving mythical creatures from local Ruhr folklore. Grun refuses even to think along such ridiculous lines, but Mario Korthals loves checking up on such fairy-tales. Heldt consults the authority, retired Prof. Erik Thalberg, who runs the folklore museum, but also discovers its late benefactor, an industrial tycoon, also funded a more naive society of 'saga hunters', whose president, to be determined by 'fitting competition', basically gets access to his entire fortune. The team now tests and tricks the contenders.
- Achmed's wallet is stolen with Heldt failing to catch the agile thief, but returned at home, lacking only the cash and with a note "SORRY", as happens to various victims all over Bochum, Ahmed even poses for a newspaper article. While Grün, Ellen Bannenberg and Mario Korthals chase a masterly document forger, Heldt trails the honorable thief to superior amateur regional football team SSV BANZHAUSEN, where his nocturnal trap works. The endearing thief is Brasilian Rafael, aged 17, whose family lost their 10 000 Euro savings for a fake opportunity to enter lucrative European pro football, leaving the 'shamed' knave homeless. Heldt helps Rafael escape while student Adam Krämer's fake ID to drink under age helps his team trap the master forger, who ignored this evil use of his work by the fake talent scout, whose identity shocks all.
- Heldt can't prevent young Sabrina Bergmann being pushed down a metro stairs, into IC. Heldt is determined to find the culprit, convinced unlike Grün, she was a deliberate target. Security video footage only shows a FC-Schalke-logo on the fiend's hoodie. One such is seen in the car of her overprotective, choleric ex-con brother Michael, who is most furious about her relationship with older ice parlor partner Benjamin Schmitz. Heldt sees them row even at her sickbed. Sabrina demanded distance from both, having been in her brother'' custody after an abusive childhood and foster care. Laura Schmitz, Benjamin's ex-wife who co-owns the ice parlor, also has a jealousy motive. Michael is in anger management therapy and the club badge is found different. Grün checks out Sabrina's employer, fancy hotel-restaurant "Goldene Taube" manager Gerhard Kaiser, whom she threatened with sexual harassment charge, as other men before, and hotel supervisor Stefan Grotte, whom she blackmailed for stealing luxury wine. Laura Schmitz was jealous of Ben's younger lover. Finally Heldt sets a trap.
- Commissioner Nikolas Heldt starts his career in the Bochum police criminal division in a long-running human trafficking case, using unconventional methods to catch mob baron Felix Bricheaux, for which stickler chief commissioner Detlev Grün wants him suspended. State prosecutor Hinrichs protects him but dies from a cardiac crisis, his successor Ellen Bannenberg grants the suspension during in internal investigation. Felix walks from court after key witness Natalia Sokolowa, whose skin Heldt saved, fails to testify. Heldt gets Bannenberg to help find out what hold Felix has on her, guessing rightly it's a child.
- Heldt's 'fatherly' publican and family friend Karl-Heinz "Carlo" Funke is found next to the corpse of his landlord Erich Baumann. Unlike commissioner Grün, Heldt is determined to prove his buddy's claim of innocence despite a violent money row the evening before. Autopsy shows poisoning by exclusive claret, hidden behind Carlo's cooler. Heldt examines dodgy third chess player Sven Lattbeck, and neighbor Dr. Paul, and is suspended, the clock ticking. Although evidence piles up, Heldt keeps examining the neighbors, with some risky help from Ahmed and unexpectedly from prosecutor Bannenberg, who even fakes a syndrome to distract Dr. Markus Paul, the resumed drug provider, while relationships to Spanish cleaner Estefania prove key.
- Chinese restaurant owner Wao Huan is found murdered at a pigeon launching spot, with next to him baseball-carrying falconer Monika Hamm, who claims she came to confront grumpy old pigeon amateur Heinz Ritter, who made many enemies. * Heldt sympathizes with native German widow Rita Wao, and traces a pigeon found in the kitchen to pro-dodgy Sven Lattbeck, who plots to tamper with the electronic arrival recording. Heldt finds longtime disappointments most relevant.
- Heldt's swiftly saves from a bus high-pregnant Simone Petri who fainted, believing to have spotted her fiance Andreas Bender, whom two cops failed to prevent from jumping to his presumed death from a bridge seven months ago, hours after allegedly beating to death gaming designer Christian Kaul in a fight. No corpse was found, yet the rest of the team prefers to concentrate on the recent wave of arson attacks o t local courier service. Despite an unfortunate first meeting, Heldt and foxy new profiler Julia Tietz soon grow closer, with her joining his Bender-investigation, finding evidence the suicide was staged, as his mother believes, maybe even the murder. Heldt finds crucial links to Frank Jochems, Christian Kaul's surviving Software firm partner, who is presenting his new video game, about rival religions, and to the pregnancy.
- Chemistry teacher Walter Weiss's corpse was posthumously acid-affected in Dr. Specht's Freiherr-von-Liebig Gymnasium (state school)'s lab. Alumnus Mario Korthals and forensics can only work out he produced and sold popular, academic performance enhancing pills there. Commissioners Heldt and Grün go undercover as his successor viz. gym coach, trying befriending viz. disciplining pupils. Questions include the meaning of a mysterious coded list from the lab. Brilliant primus Sven Lugner proves most helpful in all matters, his classmates Jana Lose the cheap bitch and silver spoon rival Tabea Marquard make plausible suspects. Grün coaches a school staff support group to wins the confidence of wining sissy teacher Vera Hinze, who has a beef with Walter.
- Trick or treating in Bochum in Halloween zombie costume with DA Ellen's brat daughter Emily, Heldt stumbles upon the corpse of Martin Sachs, asphyxiated at home wearing a pumpkin head in costume. The fired security agent at Dr. Renate Leiphold's genetic manipulation firm Bereschit AG branch actually died from excessive pumpkin toxin in two helpings of soup, made from the firm-modified hybrid that allowed him to break the winning streak of horticultural society champion Michael Brehmer, which he was unable to taste as terribly bitter as an early symptom ('ageusia') of his MS. * Forbidden his usual dodgy tactics against the legally well-shielded firm, Heldt traps Laura Wimmer's vandalizing environmental activist group to enable him intruding, yet needs more clues closer to Sachs's home.
- Heldt is ex Julia Tietz's only hope to find out who stalks her without her looking paranoid. Pretending they jointly prepare a seminar, Heldt checks Julia's three pending cases, but finds neither convincing. Alkohol addict Arndt Recker is charged with domestic abuse. Cocky student Lukas Ahrberg, whom only widowed father Thorsten Ahrberg can control, risk juvenile time for ear-boxing a bitch teacher. Arrested pimp Frank Struck's accomplices may be pressuring Julia to clear him. Receiving roses, Julia admits there's another suspect: court employee Jonas Pauser, whom she dumped but can't shake off, yet isn't capable of nasty moves. Heldt's attempt to scare his 'rival' off gets noticed by Ellen, who puts the whole team on the case. Julia can't control herself at Lukas's court hearing, where a manipulative incident inspires a more convoluted suspicion, to which a trap is set.
- While Heldt in away for a mandatory police ITC seminar, secret lover Ellen, ITC buddy Mario and section chief Grün examine nocturnal Molotov arson in the practice of reputed plastic surgeon Dr. Jochen Seligmann and his devoted gay husband and sub-standard assistant Christoph Schober, who was jealous of fired predecessor Astrid Enders, who ended up with a better job. Botched-up patient Wolf Neuhaus has an alibi. Mario Korthals must try to go undercover as potential patient to meet regular queer customer Harald Pfeiffer, and sneakily get access to the practice computer files 'Heldt's way'. Ex-model Ellen's teen brat daughter Emily commits to teacher Carolin Stammheimer's school campaign against 'beauty obsession, which links uncomfortably with the arsonist, who isn't done yet.
- Achmed's girl Carlotta's car was joyridden during car-sharing and returned by missing-reported teen Melanie Brahms. Alas, confrontation with her mother Judith shows Melanie's identity was stolen by minor car thief Lucy Kolenda, using an app on Melanie's smartphone which she 'found' in a ruin and acts as if she only rebelled to work-absorbed single father Markus Kolenda, understandable to single mother state attorney Ellen Bannenberg. Heldt, Grün and Mario find the whole story an elaborate hoax, enabling to be released. A pawn shop security video links them to Melanie Brahms as accomplice to various scams in Bochum.
- Heldt pays little attention to antiquities dealer and 'seeer' Esther Habeck, who comes tell him she'll soon die by s hand, an inevitable accident he's not to feel guilty about. Driving her home, Heldt says another stone being thrown through her window, soiled in pig's blood which forensics traces to Grün's favorite butchery, Könnicke, where adolescent heir Maik hates being forced to help his widowed mother Anna keep the third generation family firm going. Heldt gets him to confess, apologize and be forgiven, but Esther Habeck insists Heldt's fate remains to kill her, as his nightmares now seem to confirm. Mario Korthals's new 'preventive policing' software SKALA predicts more antiquities robberies, so Heldt must stay on her case, complicated by valuable tobacco boxes she sneakily bought for pittance from the Könnickes.
- Heldt and Security firm chief Michael Nickel's arrival when the alarm is triggered in Bochum's auction house chases the clever yet clumsy masked robber after a shot to stop chase by Auction master Stefan Mahlburg. Heldt doubts an insider job after spotting a thug at the Nickel house, who seems to scare gun owner Michael's teen son David more, and finds indirect indications the knave must be involved, yet fails to win his trust the boyish way. A second, successful robbery attempt ends in a fatal shooting.
- The trucking firm boss sees no reason why his long distance driver Jacek Nowak was beaten to death, and his all-knowing secretary goes missing. Heldt befriends also Polish trucker Birgit Kempowski to learn more about the staff and the business, including tariff-cutting and 'private freight'. Achmed, Nowak's former cab colleague, pays a heavy but necessary price the crucial clue that Jacek supplied him with popular 'tax free' Polish "King Pap" cigarettes, and competition in the illegal trade is truly murderous, yet some personal staff links are equally crucial to the plot.
- *The Bochum public and Heldt to some extent sympathize with an elusive 'Robin Hood' robber known as 'red pullover' who distributes some of the lot from am-rmored transports. He's too wlel informed, so an inside job is presumed. Heldt however belives the clumsy latest job by firm IT man Dennis Storz is separate and works on a theory it's a similar robber from years ago, who was recently released from jail. Die Leute lieben ihn, doch Staatsanwältin Ellen Bannenberg steht unter Druck .
- The Bochumer precinct ICT is taken hostage by a hacker, who threatens to reveal sensitive files, so cyber crime specialists Sanjay Kapoor and Björn Seibert from Düsseldorf takes charge from station administrator Ulf Becker, who already ordered IT lock-down. Heldt was the one who naively opened a trap attachment. Mario Korthals is nearly badly wounded next morning in the archive when a fire bomb destroys a file folder, Hole's new forensic assistant Linda Montgomery can pull him out just in time, but is also an obvious subject. Ulf Becker is shot-wounded while the backup server is stolen, so Grün enforces a physical lock-down with the culprit inside. Heldt sets elaborate traps to find and for plausible hackers, organizing a breakout helped by cab buddy Achmed.
- When Heldt attends Bochum's first-ever happy divorce-party, this time in central Bochum's "Endlich frei!", he helps a woman who was nearly robbed. It turns out here's a wave of party goer-victimizing crimes, so suspects include her ex, a car thief, a drug trader, Tine Schütz who organizes such parties all over the Ruhr area and various nightclub staff.
- Heldt's car breaks down on the way to a course imposed by captain Grün, so they drop it at slick welcoming mechanic Tobias Wachowiak's cheap garage. Continuing in his loan car, they must stop for the non-fatal crash of Meike Behling to hospitalize her, and hear the breaks were sabotaged before finding Tobias fatally crushed under Heldt's car. Gardening for Meike's generous grandma and landlady and questioning her suspiciously absent boyfriend Thomas Pischzek, Heldt can't resist meddling in Grün's questioning of Tobias's ex Michaela and catching her picking up cash from the garage. A long-running fraud connects both cases.
- Heldt returns to his native neighborhood when baker Manni Gießen, a family friend since Nikolas was a troublesome urchin, was pulled out just in time from his bakery, where he was sedated before arson, by apprentice and protege Kevin Patschulke, a paternal lush-abused knave who works out his frustration in a wave of vandalism but swears he would never hurt anyone, least 'second father' Manni. Heldt thus also bumps into his closest youth buddy Markus Koslowski, now a fancy real estate agent, against whom Carlo still warns. Baker's wife Marion is found out having an affair with her sissy beautician. Heldt looses some illusory good memories to work out the truth.
- Eco-farmer Harmus Lemcke dies from bee-stings, being allergic and locked-up in is barn. Heldt feels sympathy for the prime suspect, unconventional beekeeper Sabine Pelzig, who rowed with him, claiming he started using pesticides due to bad harvest-caused financial troubles. Harmus's in-living near-deadbeat, eco-skeptic big brother Matti arouses Heldt's suspicion, but also the farm's dispute eco-label.
- On disciplinary filing and research duty to prepare the precinct's contraband auction, playful Heldt and his toy robot stumble upon a message in a game machine from ex-con inventor Johannes Korritke, who was recently electrocuted to death working on it. *Narcotics branch big suspects mysterious Freddy Q. to have killed him, perhaps for an invention to grow weed undetected or for the gambling machine, which Achmed helps check out, not as expected. So Heldt teams up discretely with Dutch drug detective Jan Kramer, his stand-in during Nikolas's three years on Mallorca. Korritke's past points to Bochum video arcade "Daddelkönig". while Kramer focuses on allegedly reformed ex-con dealer Markus Wilkens, but Freddy Q.'s identity proves a major complication.
- Investigating the crippling fall from his balcony of pushed abusive husband Otto Renz, which is later confessed by wife Martha, Heldt gets convinced some vigilante is 'punishing' husbands with loose hands in several recent cases. Superior Grün dismisses his 'conspiracy theory' to concentrate on a counterfeiter gang. * Heldt pushes on 'informally' and as hard-handed pimp Kevin Kruppka is run over with his own car, concludes the MO indicates someone with police experience. Beat-cop Klaus Starcke's patrol was on site repeatedly, but failing to drink his junior partner Miriam Herres under the table reveals another angle. Reformed prostitute Dolores Mullak is saved just in time and finally gives Nikolas a lead concerning the murder of his parents.
- Heldt flees Ellen's balcony half-naked to avoid her daughter Emily discovering them, as their affair is grounds for a forced transfer. Heldt nearly runs into cycling schoolboy Konstantin Hillesheim, whose bike breaks are found by Dr. Holle to be sabotaged, first nor last 'accident' befalling the gentle nerd. Konstantin rivals straight AAs-classmate Leonie Meinerzhagen, or rather there impossibly ambitious helicopter parents, Yvonne Hillesheim and Gero Meinerzhagen, for a spot in the most prestigious private school. Yvonne even made Konstantin falsely accuse his gym teacher Miroslav Wosch for 'abuse', who got suspended, just because he gave poor grades. Konstantin is hospitalized, poisoned in the school mess, which the corrupt principal Dr. Brigitte Niemöller personally supervises, bribed by Gero Meinerzhagen. Yet Heldt comes up with healthy childish motive.
- Local football (soccer) fan-club "Never steig ab" (NSA)-president Gerd Schäfer's skull is fatally smashed with a victory cup, the meager club treasury robbed, yet fans like Heldt believe it was about the also stolen NSA-flag, which was a classic target of rival pranks. Heldt thus suspects the bitterly-rivaling Schalke-04-fan-club, and bribed colleague Mario to infiltrate posing as new fan. Pouting state attorney Bannenberg however instructs Grün to consider other suspects, also within Heldt's fan club.
- Agreeing a serious of shop vandalism crimes 'without witnesses' suggests extortion, Niklas's nose (and rapport with his robbed tattoo artist) and Grün's file study point to backward quarter Hustadt and local ex-con Guido Prowaznik, who confesses only seven of ten cases. NIklas realizes the suspect description green bomber jacket also fits his in-living stepson Tony, whose street gang, allegedly reformed by street worker Sebastian Borchert, may well have copied Guido's MO. Heldt risks his budding affair with state attorney Ellen Bannenberg to protect Tony against precipitous severity while clearing the case his way.
- The prosecutor is appalled that her partner Stefan opens his next gallery exposition with the local 'gangsta' rapper, but the real horror is when he's fatally shot by masked underground rival 'CrayZee'. Heldt pushes his team to adopt hip-hop in order to investigate. Their rivalry proves rooted in competition for fame and profit, leading to the production team, and the potential scandal from a still unpublished text. However Heldt digs on to a contraband cover-up.
- Old-fashioned bug-buster Henner Bocht and two kid bystanders are injured when his trick is blown up with remote control. Although he won't hear of it, prime suspect is former trainee and now market-leader Seiffert, who uses modern equipment. Heldt also looks at the clients, including a senior tenant refusing to move out and fancy heirloom chef Nadja Liebknecht whose reputation was ruined by a cockroach report but hides an even juicier kitchen secret, and Mario helps find a pattern.
- The Bochum PD looks into the Ruhr region's recent wave of recycled copper thefts after night watchman Kovacic was knocked down heavily in Willi Magnus's garage. For lack of a camera or proper witness, Heldt hopes a recent tag may be placed by an unwilling witness, and manages to infiltrate that scene by challenge. The DA isn't amused when the minor 'graffiti artist' Melek rather sprays her office then informs, yet Nikolas makes good use of her and works out how the gang works, just in time to react when another theft is about to turn even more violent.
- Prosecutor Bannenberg wants to lock up Bochumer mobster Magnus Winschewski at last. Commissioner Heldt must save her from a killer at a trap she naively walked into, then is ordered to move in her home as bodyguard, and bonds surprisingly well with her fatherless brat daughter. The crook's lawyer gets him off on bail, but Heldt works on his fiancée.
- Plastic surgeon Martin Sobotka was poisoned in his Buchum villa. His safe is empty, his last caller and Internet date Michaela Weber claims Sobotka handed her his precious coins collections to estimate and catalog to be exposed indefinitely in a museum. Given her husband's suspicious end -no court case however- Heldt suspects a 'black widow' and convinces commissioner Grun to postpone his wedding anniversary to play the perfect prey under alias Herr van Verde. Flirting with a uniformed cop makes Heldt ruin a precious prop and sneaking off to illegally search her home allows repeating the venomous trick, but it's not sufficient to prove murder. Martin's maid pawned a stolen coin and fails to hide her saucy alibi. Grün suspects dissatisfied patients, some of whom sued Sobotka.
- Heldt, Mario and uniformed colleagues witness at their favorite coffee stand, held by Daniela Mühling, how her teen brat niece Martha collapses and must be hospitalized for a synthetic party drug overdose. Petty student dealer Marcel from her school gives enough hints to raid the improvised lab, from which the well-prepared pro escapes, but was bitten by Mario's sniffer dog 'Junkie'. Heldt is sure the painful cry was from local cocaine baron Wild Willy Wilke, but his slick lawyer Anwalt Teppenborn opposes comparing the teeth marks. Before a court order can be obtained, Junkie is abducted while Mario walks him in the park. While team Heldt races to rescue the canine key witness by identifying an ex-con suspect, Daniela, who minded her sister daughter for a few weeks, deals too badly with her guilt over Martha's fate.
- Cleaning firm of the year CEO Enno Dürkamm is fighting for his life in hospital, having drunk water from a detergent-poisoned bottle. The ward-winner exploited his staff ruthlessly and recently dumped his original employee Horst Falter. He isn't getting much more sympathy from bright loner stepson Ennos Till, who feels Enno ruins the business, just from girlfriend Silke Krauss. Single mother cleaner Anja Reberlein's fingerprints are found on the 'weapon'. Heldt works out the firm's employment actually constitute exploitation of illegals, but how and by whom?
- At night, commissioner Grün runs over race prize dog "Flinker Difar", whose owner Sylvia von Gunten demands 125.000EUR damages, insurance investigator Frank Kaiser's company covers the other half. Heldt helps find out the canine died hound earlier, maybe murdered. At the dog's fancy funeral, Heldt spots suspects like blogging do rights activist Malte Üding, but he has a biology frat alibi. Heldt looks into competitor Hermann Huber, and crazy gambler Karl Bukowski, Sylvia's kennel trainer Willy McCloud, the rumor of a sheikh paying well to tip off which dog to buy.
- Heldt has mixed feeling being the hero of a local club of Bochum hobby-detectives, who analyzes unsolved police cases, whose incompetence could compromise his cases. Then they call on him, as their president, mall detective Markus Mehrling 'Sherlock Holmes', went missing. Members Eveline Willholz 'Miss Marple', Sina Cohrs 'Veronica Mars' and Walther Rotbucher 'Matula', are after the same local serial robber as team Heldt, appalling Grün who fears incompetent lay meddling. Latest victim Cordula Walden chased the robber at night. Heldt and forensic Dr. Holle concentrate on similarities with a similar Bochum 1989 theft wave.
- Standing in for Ellen Bannenberg at PTA school trip session, Heldt witnesses a hooded assault on Emily's teacher Andrea Müller. She's contested as chaperon given her open membership of "Transgender Bochum", mainly by attorney Norbert Preuss, father of pupil Marius, the prime assault suspect, whom Andrea rightly presumes innocent. Andrea's former straight partner Sabine Weber hated her transition, but is cleared. The hoodie logo leads to Mike Stankowsky's gym, which sells it exclusively and is used by both Preuss boys. Andrea is nearly ran over by Norbert's car. Graffiti "Das Müller muss weg!" champion the campaign to chase Andrea as unnatural role model.
- Detective inspector Heldt attends a circus magic show starring his childhood idol "Unglaublichen Harry", but witnesses him nearly drowning in an aquarium during an escape artist trick. Heldt doesn't believe in an accident and starts investigating magician Harry's equipment, rival, past and love-life, all yielding possible motives.
- Likeable wine merchant Christian Giezelski is nearly run over by a car passing his home. Heldt and Grün can't sympathize, as Christian's wife Nina took their daughter Hannah to a woman's shelter, claiming persistent abuse. Her buddy there, Doro Laus, provides a false alibi and later makes a false confession. Christian and Nina's brother Florian argue her mental stability requires custody of Hannah being vested in him alone. The cops also look into nosy neighbor Kerstin Schiesser and Christian's vindictive former business partner. Suspicions keep shifting in this case.
- Heldt and Grün investigate the failed berry-poisoning of Felix Unger, the activist leading a campaign from a mobile-home with his pregnant partner Mira Trost in front of the villa of real estate investor Mark Groller, who tries to get rid of all tenants in a building, with senior Magda Lohmeyer holding out as stubbornly, despite sabotage more then undoing the unpaid handyman Ruben Freundlich's regular repairs. Local TV reporter Ina Petermann covers the case eagerly. Mark Groller regularly files complains against unwilling (ex-)tenants, his wife Kerstin hates the youngster vandals who bully their son at school, and resorted to bribery. Felix was poisoned with a plant from the villa in an anonymous cheese cake. Magda, donated her life savings to savior Felix, whose campaign and private finances prove fascinating.
- Reputed family therapist Dr. Claas Sandner is comatose, hit by a brick thrown into his home practice. *Heldt's team lists possible motives. Wife Sibylle Sandner only fakes concern, their rascal teen son Jonas openly cares only for his mechanic apprenticeship at Bruno Zahn's bicycle repair shop and calls his father a neglectful hypocrite. The doc got a court order against former patient Elke Palass who lost custody of her child after he certified her unfit, but Sandner's colleague Dr. Thomas Mücke, who lost his therapeutic license for handing in a ghostwritten doctoral thesis, claims Sandner sold fake affidavits. Jonas has a long petty crime record, leaning only on protective Bruno. Digging for dark family secrets, patient - and bank records make Grün, Korthals and Heldt focus on foxy Nelly van der Weck's sperm bank Storch, where the Sandners couple was client 15 years ago.
- A day after an abysmal performance at a police staff party, Rodolf 'Rudi Rastlos" Kern is found in his harden, fatally pierced by some missing giant needle. His daughter Sara reports two attempt in vain to steal the safe. Neighbor Jürgen Boll tolerated the terrible voice in his choir, former boss Alfred Königstein kept booking hi even after retirement. Late model beat cop \Walter Mertens's daughter Angela, also in uniform, keeps popping up. All of them harbor secrets potential motives.
- Several robbery-murders occur, the only link apparent being a cab company. Heldt is appalled to hear his buddy Ahmed, who drives freelance, is set up as suspect, but works out a connection with false testimonies and suspects an unfair competition motive, so he goes undercover as lure.