Season 06 Episode 05

Two cases run on the same day and touch only at the end. Leonard's trial for gross indecency comes first. Bishop Aubrey Gray tells Will that the Archdeacon wanted the matter handled quietly, that Cathy Keating's letter to the newspaper has made that impossible, and that Will must not speak in court for Leonard. He tells Leonard that his position will be terminated whatever the outcome, and that with his licence withdrawn he cannot move to another parish. Leonard had asked Jack Chapman to be his character witness; Sylvia objects to her husband being put in that position, and Jack tells her she may have lost her sense of compassion but he has not. At the hearing Leonard pleads guilty, and the prosecuting barrister, Jeremy Baker, attacks him directly as a hypocrite, a sodomite and a man God could not love. Leonard answers that he has always doubted that God could love him. Will, against the Bishop's instruction and Geordie's warning that he could lose his own position, speaks in Jack's place, describing what Leonard has done for the dying and the despairing of the parish and saying that punishing him would punish his congregation too. The judge, Newport, reserves sentence overnight and then imposes six months, saying he is making an example because Leonard is a member of the clergy. Leonard drops the St Anthony charm Daniel gave him as he is taken down, and Cathy shouts that he will be home before he knows it.

The second case is a robbery in Cambridge. A bank security van is held up; the guard, Wilson Black, is found tied up in the van and a thousand pounds in five-pound notes is taken. A passer-by, Mary Connor, is knocked down and killed as the robbers escape, and her husband Bill is allowed to sit with her body at the station. Will catches the escaping suspect, Malcy Smith, on foot. Wilson describes the attack but cannot identify Malcy in a lineup. A bag of bread and a note with a sequence of numbers are found in the getaway car. The 999 call reporting the robbery came from Lily Bradley, who was leaving the library, was received at 10.53am and lasted twelve seconds. Lily later picks Malcy out of a second lineup. Malcy confesses and says the money was thrown out of the window.

Will notices the knots tying Wilson were not tied in a hurry, and that the twelve-second call does not allow for the sequence of events Wilson described. Confronted, Wilson asks for a lawyer. He and Malcy are both represented by Johnny Richards, a solicitor and one of Geordie's old army friends, who embrace like brothers. Asked who is paying for the defence, Johnny says he does not normally take this kind of work but agrees to show them his correspondence and invoices, and Wilson eventually confesses to conspiring with Malcy to steal the money. Will and Geordie work out the numbers: Leonard's copy of a library book carries the same numbering system, and the sequence is a Dewey Decimal shelf reference. The money is hidden inside a book in the public library, and fifty pounds of it is missing. Lily is questioned, and they conclude she wore spectacles with clear lenses as a prop and used putting them on as a signal, so the second lineup identification was a signal to her accomplices rather than an act of recognition. There are no fingerprints on the book, so nothing links her to the robbery, and she is released. In the corridor Geordie asks how much she paid Wilson and Malcy, reminds her a woman died, and asks whether she has a conscience. She says she is only a librarian and walks out.

Johnny Richards meets Geordie in the pub and gives him fifty pounds to buy a new suit. Geordie recognises it as the missing money and throws it on the ground, and Johnny says everyone takes backhanders and that he has earned it. Will returns to the empty vicarage, finds a letter Leonard wrote before the trial expecting to be sent away, and preaches on friends, family and moving out of the darkness, looking at the place where Leonard should be.

The trial and the robbery are held against each other for the whole episode. A judge makes an example of a curate for what he does in private while a solicitor hands his friend fifty pounds of stolen money in a pub and a librarian walks out of a station having arranged a robbery that killed a woman in the street. The Dewey numbers are the clue the episode hides inside a subplot, since the same shelving system is sitting on Leonard's table while his trial runs, and the last shot is the vicar at the empty space where his curate knelt.