DS/DI Clare Stanton

DS Clare Stanton first joined Sunhill CID in September 1999, in the episode Millennium. She'd already been a Detective-Sergeant for three years and before arriving at Sunhill she worked in Finchly CID, but moved to take care of her mother who had a stroke.

Clare's confident, headstrong and definitely likeable. Her head's never in the clouds, as she's very down-to-earth. You know where you stand with her. She's got a great sense of humour as well as being fair and just. She can subtly manipulate situations to her advantage, as she demonstrated with DSs Don Beech and Geoff Daly in Millennium.

Clare may be friendly and likeable but she almost always keeps her personal and professional lives completely separate. She's commiyted to her job and never lets anything faze her. Eventually her job begins to affect the rest of her life. Particularly when she begins to have secret affair with DS John Boulton (Russell Boulter).

What her colleagues, including John, at Sunhill don't know, is that she's working for the Complaints Investigations Bureau (CIB) as a mole. Her target is corrupt copper, DS Don Beech.

Unfortunately, after more bumps than a rollercoaster, John works out that Clare's not being completely honest with him. A friend of his used to work with Clare and tells him that there was a rumour that Clare had been selected for a "special job", as she was so ambitious. The Clare he knew sounds like a completely different person. In fact noone had heard about her mother having a stroke.

After a surprise proposal and a passionate night, John gets a phone call from Don Beech. John goes to meet him, but a fight occurs, in which John is killed. Clare is determined to catch Beech, and begins to earn herself a reputation for being obsessed with the case, especially when she openly disagrees with Superintendent Hodges' methods and priorities. She decides to start doing a few things her way. Don flees the country, but Clare vows that that isn't the end of the matter.

About a year later, Clare followed Beech to the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia. Still angry over John's death she shot at Don when he was beginning to escape on a boat in Sydney harbour, after an investigation into his activities downunder and Clare's extraditory mission collided. The boat exploded and Clare returned to UK believing Beech was dead, and wishing that he had been arrested and brought back to be convicted instead.

Clare left the Met after finding that it brought back too many memories. She got a job with a security firm and began to have an affair with one of her superiors, Simon. Six months later, she was asked to investigate a robbery in which one of their clients lost some documents. While recovering the lost items Clare saw, by chance, Frankie, Beech's Vietnamese girlfriend from Sydney. Convinced Beech is alive she begins to share information with an ex-colleague, DS Peters, hoping to catch Beech once and for all. After following up an anonymous tip-off which led her to a cemetery, Clare was kidnapped and held hostage by Don.

The story continues on ITV...