Shake Hands Forever: Part Three

The suspect is about to slip away, and Wexford has one clue to his name: a woman's hand print. That is all the case has given him, and the final part of the story is a race against time built on the strength of that single mark. He pulls every string he can reach, calling in his nephew and a trusted colleague, and slowly the pieces start to justify the hunch he has been carrying since the beginning.

The episode does what final parts should do: it pays off the stubbornness of the previous two hours. Wexford proves he was right, but being right is not the same as being finished. There is an accomplice to catch, and the clock is running. The chase gathers speed as the hour goes on, and just when it looks as though the net has closed, the story produces one more surprise that Wexford, for all his thoroughness, did not see coming. Rendell liked to remind her readers that solving a case and surviving it are different things.

The familiar faces are all here for the last lap: Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden, Tom Wilkinson's Robert Hathall, Patrick Drury as Howard Fortune, June Ritchie's Nancy Lake, Michael Byrne's Charles Griswold, Geoffrey Beevers' Mr Aveney, Anthony Douse as the flat landlord, Louie Ramsay's Dora and Sheila Ruskin's Denise Fortune. Ruth Rendell wrote it, and Don Leaver directed.

It is a solid close to a story that has been about the cost of certainty. The hand print, that single unprepossessing clue, does the work that a dozen witnesses could not, and Wexford earns his conclusion the hard way. The final surprise lands in the last moments, leaving the case closed but the viewer still turning the ending over, which is exactly where a good Rendell adaptation likes to leave you.