Glory Days - Part 2

The first part ended with the death of the coach driver, Ben Hawkins. The BBC's summary of this part gives the police reading as Dalziel's, that the driver is killed to keep him from giving the police any information about the crash, and the published summaries agree that the driver's death is a second killing rather than an accident. The Wikipedia synopsis says he was thrown from a hotel window.

The enquiry then has a disappearance to deal with as well as a murder. The listings synopsis for the part states that Martin Bendelow's niece is apparently kidnapped, and that the police have something else to worry about while they pursue it. The Radio Times summary for the part gives the same movement in the family rather than the club, with surprising skeletons tumbling out of the Bendelow closet after a second murder takes place. The press strand concludes with the death of Naomi Chappell, the journalist, in a hit-and-run. Dalziel's working theory, that someone is removing anyone who could disclose damaging material about Martin Bendelow, is then supported by the second death and by the third. The BBC's series guide describes the last stage of the investigation as a hunt for recorded material, with the killer hunting for a DVD of incriminating footage while Dalziel closes the net on his prime suspect. The material on the disc is not described in any published summary consulted.

The published summaries place the solution inside the Bendelow family and describe it in general terms only, with the listings synopsis saying the police realise the solution is to be found in a complex family situation involving parental neglect and an incestuous relationship from long ago. No source consulted names the killer, and none states how the incriminating DVD is recovered, who was on it, or how the case is closed, so the ending is not recorded here.

The story is the fourth of Series 10 and the second night of the football case. Its interest is the shape of the motive, because a killing that looks like a dispute about a football club turns out to sit inside a family, and the material being hunted is a recording rather than a document, which is a detail the series uses elsewhere when the evidence is something somebody made rather than something somebody wrote. The journalist's death is the point at which the case stops being about a crash, because a reporter killed in a hit-and-run after asking questions is a different order of crime from three people dead on a level crossing.

The episode is also one of the clearest examples in the run of the two-part format being used to hold a family secret back until the second night, since the first night is entirely about the club and the crash and the family only becomes the subject once the police start looking at what was being kept from them.