One Day a Lemming Will Fly (2)

Cassidy is arrested, and then he is let go, because the evidence was never there. The crowd outside has already tried to do the job itself: Timothy's father gets to Cassidy first, and Cassidy survives the encounter shaken, under Fitz's protection. From then on he is Fitz's responsibility, and the pressure starts immediately.

Fitz wants a confession. Cassidy gives him one, and then something stranger happens. Fitz realises the confession is flawed, that Cassidy could not have done the killing, and Cassidy refuses to take it back. The man would rather carry a guilt he does not own than watch the city tear itself apart looking for him. He insists on sharing the weight, and he makes Fitz carry it with him. The confession is nonsense, and everyone in the room knows it except the man making it. The more he insists, the more the episode belongs to him.

Christopher Fulford's Cassidy is the quiet heart of the episode, a man broken by what happened to his pupil and by what is happening around him now. Eccleston's Billborough needs an arrest, any arrest, to be seen to be doing his job, and when he makes one it earns him Fitz's full fury. Tim Healy's Mr Lang gets his moment too, and it is as hard to watch as anything in the story. Trevyn McDowell's Leslie and John Graham-Davies's Francis Bates keep the edges of the story populated. The arrest Billborough makes is the wrong one, and everyone involved knows it.

McGovern and Simon Cellan Jones answer the first part's questions and leave a worse taste behind. The truth was in front of everyone the whole time, and nobody could hold onto it. And that is a harder ending than most shows would risk. It is the ending the first part promised, and it lands.