Vera: Old Wounds has to do with the body of a young woman who disappeared 30 years earlier.
The skeleton of Carrie Telling is found by bikers. She disappeared during the time miners were on strike, which was a time of great unrest.
Vera and her associate go about digging up old friends and also attempt to retrace her steps. One of her friends is Michael Tennant, a member of Parliament. A credit card went missing from his and Carrie's boss, and Vera thinks it might have been to fund an abortion.
Vera locates Carrie's mother, who is no longer with Carrie's father. She points Vera to a boy Carrie liked, Terry Manttan, who has been in and out of trouble.
When there is another murder, Vera realizes that the murders occurred because someone is trying to hide something Carrie perhaps knew.
I'm American, and I do not have the background to discuss this episode as the other commenter does. He says the episode suffers from revisionist history -- leftist revisionism, he calls it, where the miners wore the white hats and the police the black.
I suppose it depends on who you talk to, but I'm well aware of conflicts taken out of their time that suddenly are seen from a different point of view.
Vera has a lighter personality this season, as I have noted before, and with her old partner gone, she is trying to get her new one in line. He has time issues, showing up late, and sometimes speaking out of turn and getting the fish eye from her.
Nevertheless, they work together well, and you can tell she likes him. When he doesn't act surprised that a former investigator made passes at everyone but her, she says, "I didn't always look like this." He responds, "You were much too intelligent for him. You saw through his game." He's right - I can't imagine anyone trying to mess around with Vera.
Good episode, and not an easy one for Vera to work out.