Bribery and Corruption: Part Two

Part two opens with Nicholas Hawthorne's father in a coma. He survived a suicide attempt, and the police have made him their prime suspect in Emma Sorensen's murder. It is hard to argue with their logic. He was her lover, the affair ran through part one like a fault line, and he has a motive with no alibi worth the name. The family sits under the weight of suspicion and grief at once. The household has been pulled into the investigation's orbit, and everyone in it is a witness to something.

The official investigation works its leads around the coma victim, but young Nick Hawthorne and Annabel Lynes are not prepared to wait. They run their own inquiry, pulling at threads the police would rather leave alone. Annabel is the one who finally casts light on the mystery, and the pieces everyone else missed start to fall into place. The household is a closed circuit of secrets, and the police keep circling the man who cannot defend himself. What began in part one closes here, bribery and corruption included.

Guy Meredith and Ruth Rendell share the writing credit, with Mike Vardy directing. Tim Woodward plays Nick; James D'Arcy is his father, Nicholas. Ravi Kapoor is Det. Sgt. Khan, Paul Freeman returns as Julius Sorensen, and Des McAleer plays Edwin. Abigail Cruttenden is Annabel Lynes, with Janet Dale as Delia Myerson, Cara Konig as Sonia, Fiona Mollison as Emma Sorensen and Hugh Simon back as the restaurant's maître d'. It aired on 24 January 1997.

What pleases is that the case gets solved by persistence. A handful of people, close to the tragedy, put the evidence together from the corners of their own lives and beat the official machine to the truth. The two-part story has been about a family with too many secrets and the slow machinery of the law, and it ends with the truth arriving from the least expected corner.