Best Boys (2)

An accident hands the police Stuart Grady, and suddenly the case splits in two. Grady is in custody, and Bill Nash is still loose, and the relationship that was supposed to be the point of it all is now spinning out of control. Fitz is pitched between them, trying to hold a line that neither man is interested in. The pair's story has been heading here since the smile that started it. And the accident that gives the police their break is almost incidental, which is how these things usually happen.

Nash does not run. He turns on Grady's past, and the target he picks is the family that took Grady in as a boy, with particular attention to the little boy in the house. The threat is precise and personal, and it gives the episode its engine: a manhunt on one side, a family in the firing line on the other. The little boy is the episode's clearest image of innocence, which means the audience knows exactly what Nash intends before anyone on screen does. The scenes with that family are short and unbearable, which is the right ratio.

Annette Ekblom's Diane Nash sharpens the edges of the story, and the squad closes in with Penhaligon, Temple, Skelton and Wise all doing the careful work of catching a man who has stopped caring what he destroys. Will Knightley's pathologist and Jane Wheldon's Janet Emery keep the procedural side honest. Abbott's script and McDougall's direction keep the two halves of the case pulling against each other. John Simm's Bill is the episode's ghost, talked about more than seen, and that makes him worse. For Fitz, the case is a distraction from a marriage that is quietly falling apart at home.

Grady is locked up, and that is the least safe anyone has been all episode. The danger has simply changed shape.