Death of a Hitman

A woman asks Bulman to find out why her son died. That is the whole brief. But it is harder than it sounds, because the answer turns out to be complicated in the way that only a mother's questions can make it. The title points the way: the dead boy was a hitman, and hitmen rarely die of natural causes. The why of it has to be dug out from under shock and silence.

This is grief work as much as detective work, and the episode treats it that way. Bulman and Lucy McGinty move through the community like people who know the difference between a lead and a rumour, and Thorley Walters' Bill Dugdale hovers around the edges of the case in the manner of a man who has seen this sort of thing before and never liked it. The supporting cast keeps the episode rooted in a place where everybody knows everybody, which is exactly the soil this show grows best in. The camera stays at the height of the people involved, which is the right choice for a story this close to home.

Murray Smith wrote it, Bill Gilmour directed. It is a patient hour, willing to sit with the mother's pain rather than rush past it to the next clue, and that patience is the whole trick of it. The pacing is gentle, but the stakes never are. Don Henderson plays Bulman's careful courtesy toward a grieving woman without ever letting it tip into softness, which keeps the episode honest. Siobhan Redmond's Lucy carries her share of the legwork and the listening.

The episode knows that the dead boy's profession makes the mother's grief complicated, and it refuses to tidy that up. Whatever the answer turns out to be, it is not a clean one, and the show does not pretend otherwise.

That is probably the most any investigator can offer: the truth, with the shine taken off it.