Episode 3

PC Kirsten McAskill pulls Tommy Lee Royce and Lewis Whippey over during what should be a routine stop, and Tommy takes control of the situation the only way he knows how. By the end of the first act the young officer is dead, murdered suddenly and without warning, and the valley rocks with it. Ashley Cowgill and Lewis panic: Tommy's actions will lead straight back to them, and their panic is the first honest thing anyone in that circle has felt in a long time.

Catherine Cawood begins seeing her dead daughter. Kirsten's death has loosened something in her, and she tells Clare she blames herself. It is a hard scene, and Siobhan Finneran's Clare takes it without flinching. The episode never explains the blame, and that is the right call: grief like Catherine's does not come with tidy reasons attached. Elsewhere Nevison's wife Helen pushes him to involve the police in finding Ann. He refuses. Ann is in too much danger, he insists, to risk official channels. He might be right, which is the terrible part. Keeping her hidden was what got her taken.

Kirsten's death is the first time the series spends one of its own. The show has killed before, but never a young officer with her whole career ahead of her, and the loss changes the arithmetic for everyone left behind. Catherine carries it into every scene she has from here on, and the episode is better for not pretending she can shake it off.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, Euros Lyn directed. Sophie Rundle gives Kirsten a bright, uncomplicated warmth that makes the waste of her all the clearer. Sarah Lancashire is Catherine, Adam Long is Lewis, Charlie Murphy is Ann, James Norton is Tommy, with Shane Zaza, Amer Nazir, Ramon Tikaram and Luke Williams around them.

The violence here is sudden and unearned, which is exactly the point. Nobody in this valley is prepared for what Tommy Lee Royce does. Least of all the people who thought they could use him.