Endeavour learns he'll have to take on a young new apprentice, but the pair barely get time to say their hellos before being thrust into an investigation as a number of sadistic murders accompany the auction of a Faberge egg at an Oxford college.

The railway takes centre stage as Endeavour investigates the disappearance of a local woman - with initial fears linking it to the unsolved murder of a teenager, killed several years earlier. Endeavour puts the missing woman's last known movements under scrutiny, while Thursday is absorbed in the investigation of a lorry hijack which he suspects is linked to local gangster Eddie Nero.