To Say I Love You (2)

The spree stops being a spree and becomes a murder. Sean and Tina kill D.C. Giggs, and before they do it they send the police a video announcing their intentions. There is a theatrical streak to the pair that makes everything worse: they want an audience, and now they have one. It puts the whole squad on the back foot.

Fitz recognises Sean from a previous run-in, which gives him a hook. He lures the two of them out, and the plan works better than anyone expects. Tina finds him in a bar, intending to kill him, and instead gets caught and arrested. Sean slips away into the night, and the danger simply moves somewhere else. Half the problem is gone, and the scarier half is still loose. Sean has gone to ground, and everyone knows what he does when he is cornered. The bar scene is brief and brutal, the way Tina does everything.

Penhaligon offers Fitz a bed for the night, and he turns her down, which is the kind of small decision that carries weight in this show. Ian Mercer's Giggs is gone, and the squad has to keep working around the hole he leaves. Christopher Eccleston's Billborough keeps the machine running, and the episode tracks the exhaustion of people who have just lost one of their own. The episode does not pretend the squad is coping, because it is not. And the video Sean and Tina sent is the kind of detail that stays with you, partly because it is so calm.

McGovern and Wilson keep the pressure on from the video to the bar. The police finally have one of them, and the relief is thin. It feels like the interval, and nobody is sure what comes after it. The second part leaves the pair split and the audience braced.