Kissing the Gunner's Daughter: Part One

The story opens with a terrible small irony. An off-duty police sergeant, D.S. Martin, tries to be a hero during a bank robbery and is shot dead, carrying a replica gun he had taken from his young son. A toy, a moment of bravado, and a family destroyed. The episode files the incident away, which is the first sign that this is a story told on a long fuse.

One year later, Wexford is called to Tancred House. Davina Flory and her family lie shot dead in a pool of blood. The only survivor is seventeen-year-old Daisy Flory. There are no other witnesses, and the two possible suspects have vanished into thin air. Then a blackmailer is found dangling from a tree, and the case, which already had too many bodies, adds another. Wexford slowly uncovers a web of motives, greed, illicit sex and revenge, and every thread leads back to the night at Tancred House.

Matthew Jacobs wrote it, and Mary McMurray directed, and the cast is in strong form. George Baker's Wexford works the scene with his usual patience, Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden at his side, and the supporting players do fine work: John Warnaby's Augustus Casey, Angela Crow's Mrs Griffin, David Jackson's Mr Griffin, James Ryland's Andy Griffin, Charles Collingwood's Restaurant Manager and Rosalind Thomas' Charge Nurse, with Deborah Poplett's Sheila and Louie Ramsay's Dora at home. The first of four parts went out on the 15th of November 1992, and the opening hour does what a long story must: lay the groundwork without giving the game away.

The hour is built on the mystery of the vanished suspects and the young survivor, and it ends with the case wide open and the body count still climbing. The sergeant's death a year ago feels like a coincidence, but this show has never trusted coincidences, and the pool of blood at Tancred House is only the beginning.