Some Lie and Some Die: Part Three

The final part of the story finds Wexford and Burden following the trail that has been building since the body turned up in the quarry. Every clue they uncover points the same way: towards Zeno, the rock superstar whose name has hovered over the case from the start. The investigation becomes a methodical sifting of the music world's edges, where the reliable witnesses are outnumbered by the people who simply enjoy the attention. The killing was a brutal one, and the script keeps that fact present even in the quietest interview scenes.

The episode is a procedural in the proper sense of the word. There are no grand set pieces, just patient police work: uniformed officers feeding in reports, interviews with those who knew the dead girl, and the slow business of deciding which story is straight and which is misdirection. Wexford and Burden take their time, and the hour is better for it, letting the suspicion around Zeno build the way suspicion should, gradually and in the right order. The clues linking the crime to Zeno are uncovered one at a time, and the script never lets the audience get ahead of the detectives.

George Baker and Christopher Ravenscroft keep the engine running, and the supporting cast does its part: Louie Ramsay's Dora, Diane Keen's Jenny Ireland, Peter Capaldi's Zeno Vedast, David Lyon's Leonard Dunsand, Susie Ann Watkins' Nell Tate, Joseph Long's Godfrey Tate, Dave Hill's Det Chief Constable Freeborn and Gemma Jones as Mrs Peveril. Matthew Jacobs and Ruth Rendell wrote it, and Sandy Johnson directed. The hour went out in October 1990 as the story's final part.

The ending confirms what the case has been pointing at all along, and it lands with the satisfaction of a puzzle properly assembled. The victim was young, the star was untouchable, and the truth took three parts to arrive. Some lie and some die, the title promises, and the episode delivers exactly that, without ever letting the celebrity glamour soften what the girl in the quarry went through.