Brotherly Love (1)

A prostitute is found murdered, and the arrest comes quickly: David Harvey, a Catholic father of four who denies everything. Fitz is called in, but he is carrying his own grief this time. His mother has died, and the funeral brings him back together with his brother Danny, from whom he has been estranged for years. And the reunion is wary and tender in the same scene, giving the episode its quietest moments.

Beck returns to the squad after four months away for therapy, and the reunion is not a happy one. Penhaligon has to work alongside the man she is privately certain raped her, and she has no forensic evidence to back the belief. Every scene between them carries that weight. The squad is a powder keg with a case on top of it. Beck's return after his breakdown is watched closely by everyone who knows what Penhaligon suspects. The squad treats Beck's return with a careful, professional blankness that is worse than open hostility. Then, while Harvey sits in custody, a second prostitute is attacked, and the case starts to tilt.

McGovern wrote it, Roy Battersby directed it, and the episode juggles the dead women and the squad's own wound, with Fitz's family running underneath. Mark Lambert's Harvey, Ruth Sheen's Jean McIlvanney and Polly Hemingway's Denise Fletcher give the victims' side of the story real faces. Rodney Litchfield's taxi driver and Ron Donachie's Barney keep the edges of Manchester populated. The second attack while Harvey is in custody is the detail that breaks the case open, and the episode holds onto it. The episode sets up its three strands carefully and trusts them to tangle.

The man in the cell may be innocent. Whoever attacked the second woman is still out there, and everyone can feel it. The first part ends on that uncomfortable fact.