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Sacked after an affair with the boss's wife magazine writer Tom Ronstadt returns from London to Bacup where his sister Nancy is caring for their father Sam,a former journalist,now suffering from Alzheimer's.Forced to stay and help Nancy, Tom finds it impossible to communicate with a father with whom,even in better days,there was plainly friction.Tom goes for a drink with old school friend Mike Eldridge,who is unaware that Tom slept with his wife Mandy,after picking her up in the pub where she works. Tom tells him he left home as a youngster when his father severely attacked him for opening a file he was working on,marked' Metzler'. Metzler is now head of the local council. Nancy and Tom discover that huge sums of money have been paid into Sam's account and it would seem that Metzler was trying to bribe him to keep a secret. Tom's investigations are interrupted when Mike,learning of his one night stand with Mandy,punches him.
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Tom learns from a newspaper archive that Metzler was a doctor at Greenlake psychiatric hospital in the 1970s. He seeks out Wendy Smith,his father's former secretary who is cagey but tells him that J. Cleaver,who has paid the money into Sam's account,was probably a patient at the hospital. Hoping that familiar faces may jog his memory Tom takes his father to his old paper's charity dinner where Sam is cordial to Metzler but Richard,a colleague of Sam's,confirms to Tom that his father was indeed investigating Metzler for malpractice. When Sam gave up Richard assumed it was for lack of evidence. Tom resumes his relationship with Mandy after Mike moves out of the house and,after his car has been rammed and two policemen threatened him to return to London he receives an envelope. The document inside confirms that Tom's real surname is Cleaver.
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After Tom has shown Nancy his discovery they return to see Wendy,who sent the envelope. She reveals that Sam and his wife Edith,believing themselves unable to have children,adopted Tom. The siblings manage to get Sam to say that Metzler gave them a baby but Mandy's mother,a former nurse at Greenlake,believes that a ward orderly named Ricky Tulse,not Metzler,was the truly sinister figure who encouraged vulnerable patients to have sex whilst he watched. Tom tracks down Tulse,dying of cancer,who admits,before killing himself,that he is Tom's father,having raped his mother. He claims that Metzler was aware that patients were being sexually abused and their babies sold - Metzler being the man who paid Sam the money. Tom now has his evidence to bring down Metzler,do what is best for Sam and start a new life back home with Mandy and Nancy,following his exile.
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