Kissing the Gunner's Daughter: Part Two

Wexford has to face an unwelcome fact in part two: he is looking for a serial killer. It is a rare thing in Kingsmarkham, and the word sits awkwardly in the mouth of a man used to domestic tragedies and single corpses. Worse, the killer seems to know it. The investigation is being taunted from the other end, with flowers left at locations, each carrying a bizarre message aimed squarely at the police.

The episode turns on those calling cards. Every flower, every message, is a small piece of theatre, and Wexford has to decide whether the sender is showing off, breaking down, or setting a trap. The serial killer element changes the shape of the case: the families at Tancred House were not the whole story, and the web of motives, greed and revenge from the first part is now strung between strangers. Sean Pertwee's Det Sgt Barry Vine joins the enquiry, and Sasha Mitchell's DC Carla Maynard, Steven Mackintosh's Nicholas Virson, Anne Reid's Joyce Virson, Jacqueline Tong's Bib Mew and Bernice Stegers' Joanne Garland crowd the suspect list.

Jacqueline Defferary's Daisy, the survivor of Tancred House, remains at the centre of Wexford's attention, and Louie Ramsay's Dora and Christopher Ravenscroft's Burden orbit the pair. Matthew Jacobs wrote it, and Mary McMurray directed. Broadcast on the 22nd of November 1992, it is the second of four parts, and the killer's games keep the enquiry off balance from start to finish, so that even the routine scenes carry a threat.

The gothic tension is dialled up deliberately. Flowers with messages, a killer who wants an audience, a small town that has never needed to think in these terms before: the episode makes the most of the unfamiliar territory. Wexford is hunting someone who is enjoying the hunt, and part two ends with the flowers still arriving and the pattern still incomplete.