DC Duncan Lennox    played by George Rossi

First appearance    The Fat Lady Sings (27/11/98)

Duncan Lennox came to Sun Hill from Epsom nick and his motives for wanting a transfer to the East End were at first a mystery to his new colleagues in CID. A bulky Glaswegian with an ironic sense of humour, he quickly made his presence felt - particularly with the women in the Station, whom he treated with a combination of appreciative chivalry and old-fashioned sexism. Duncan managed to combine an air of profound laziness with sudden bursts of enthusiasm if he scented the chance of a good arrest, when he pursued a case with dogged determination.

There was nothing he enjoyed more than nicking a villain, and he thoroughly annoyed his victims by treating them with immense affability. Thirty-nine years old, with twenty-one years' service behind him, Duncan could be irritatingly smug about his experience of the Job, an inveterate tease and, when roused, witheringly accurate in his put-downs - but his ready wit won him friends and allies in the Station. He was not as impulsive as some and often acted as the middle-man preferring to see both sides of an argument.

The chink in his armour was his wife, Shona, whom he treated with a healthy degree of respect and secretly adored - until she had an affair and left him. Shona was a highflying career woman, working for one of the larger financial institutions, and it was her salary rather than Dunc's that paid for their Docklands Riverside apartment. When Shona said jump, Dunc's only question was how high - a fact that his colleagues came to understand when they realised that it was her job that dictated the move to Sun Hill. Duncan was beginning a life on his own and slowly beginning to realise that he was up for standing on his own two feet.