List of New Tricks Episodes - Series 9 (2012)

Jack Halford announces that he's quitting UCOS. As the team try to figure out why, they receive a case from Whitehall intelligence operative Stephen Fisher concerning an unsolved murder dating back 160 years. While the team reluctantly attempt to solve the case, Jack receives several mysterious phone calls from someone named Elizabeth Green. Though Gerry, Sandra and Brian originally suspect the caller is Jack's girlfriend, further digging from Brian reveals that Jack has in fact been contact with the Elizabeth Green Hospice, in connection with a terminal illness.

In their first case without trusty colleague Jack, the team reinvestigates the disappearance of PE teacher Jason Bowe when the remains of a body are discovered near the elite public boarding school where he taught. Unfortunately, their snooping could not have come at a worse time for the staff, who are preparing to welcome a local MP to open their new computer centre - but what they do glean tells them the dead man seemed very much a loner. However, it soon turns out he got on much better with his students, forming close and inappropriate relationships with several. But could his behaviour have rattled someone enough to kill him?

Sandra reopens inquiries into the suspected suicide of a Foreign Office diplomat, whose body was found in a frozen London lake after she had suffered the personal tragedy of a miscarriage and the professional embarrassment of having a government laptop stolen from her home. The woman's fiance and twin sister both believe her death is connected to sensitive information held on the missing computer and blame her boss for her downfall - and when Sandra clashes with the man himself, it only makes her more determined to pursue the conspiracy theory, despite Strickland's advice to tread carefully.

Retired detective Steve McAndrew arrives from Glasgow to help reinvestigate one of his original cases, when the DNA of a young girl who went missing in 2003 after a university disco is found at the scene of a petrol station robbery in Clapham. It's clear that the inquiry is a very personal one for McAndrew, and although his taste for whisky, an eye for an attractive lady, an odd hobby and some dubious methods when it comes to police work rubs the team up the wrong way, his methods soon pay dividends.

The body of a missing computer expert turns up in a hospital morgue under a false name, so the team reopens the investigation into his disappearance. The dead man worked for the Metropolitan Police, giving him access to a great deal of sensitive information—added to which, he was in contact with a group of online hackers. As the seasoned detectives unravel the mystery, Brian struggles to accept Steve as the new UCOS member, forcing Esther to intervene.

The death of a teenage tennis star occupies the team when it is suggested her suicide jump two years earlier was anything but. They soon find several people with motives for her murder, including her coach Nick and agent Anthony, but it seems the one with the most to benefit from the girl's demise was her great rival Fawn Brammall - a shy and subdued player who proves difficult to question. Meanwhile, Gerry wonders if he did enough to encourage his own daughter's sporting ambitions and Brian hatches a plan to turn his dog into a movie star.

Sandra and the team unearth the ten-year-old case of a poet from Belfast, dubbed as “the most exciting poetic prospect of the new millennium”, whose burnt body was found in the scrapyard of a known gangster and drug smuggler. Gerry becomes convinced the victim's links with the criminal fraternity led to his demise, and declares he’s taking an administrative role in the investigation, because he’s “allergic to poetry” - but Brian is in his element, and has a different theory - maybe the secret of his murder lies in his verse?

The detectives investigate the murder of an East German immigrant, but all they have to go on are his mysterious final words, which translate as `blue flower'. As they piece together his remarkable story, Sandra tries to gain the trust of his estranged daughter. A chance meeting with a woman whose son was killed in a road accident nearby sends the detectives in the right direction - to a recycling plant where Max had been employed to sort waste paper. It turns out that prior to the demolition of the Berlin Wall, he had connections with the Stasi, but what’s not clear is whether he was working for them - or against them.

Strickland's Whitehall pal Stephen Fisher is targeted by an assassin, so the UCOS boss enlists the team to find whoever was responsible. He reveals that 30 years earlier, he and Fisher were involved in a covert MI5 operation to break into the house of a journalist believed to have information on an IRA arms deals. But with several of the original agents having died in suspicious circumstances, he believes someone is out to kill them all - and when a connection is made between a gangster and MI5, it seems the threat may be coming from within the security service itself.

Gerry and Steve travel to Glasgow, where a new UCOS section is being set up. While there, they agree to assist the investigation into the 1993 unsolved murder of James Soutar, the wealthy owner of a string of betting shops. Cathy Sinclair, one of the beneficiaries of the bookie's will at his death, had a care-home upbringing in common with Soutar, but she claims to have no idea who he was or why she was left £15,000. McAndrew has a personal stake in the case - the original investigating officer was corrupt cop Frank McNair, who had an affair with his wife, and their paths soon cross. The London-based officers' questions begin to unsettle someone and a campaign of victimisation against them begins, but it's a revelation from McAndrew's girlfriend Charley that reawakens a long-dormant scandal and clears the path to a solution.