Road Rage: Part Two

The second part opens with the discovery of a girl's badly decomposed body, and the first name in everyone's mouth is Stanley Trotter, a local cabdriver. The evidence is thin, but suspicion settles on him the way it settles on whoever was nearest. Before the inquiry can find its rhythm, the wider case comes crashing back in. Dora is released by the terrorists, and the relief is real. Then Roxanne Johnson's body is found, and the relief does not last.

The quieter blow is Ryan Barker. The young man who seemed to belong to the ordinary side of the story has apparently gone over to the people behind the kidnappings, and that news lands almost as hard as the rest. It is the kind of loss that stays with a detective. Wexford now has a murder inquiry and a terrorism case to run while his family recovers from the worst days of their lives. Burden and Jenny Burden are in the thick of it with him, and the rest of the town follows it all through the local news.

George Baker and Ruth Rendell wrote it, with Bruce MacDonald directing. It went out the night after the first part, on 9 November 1998. George Baker is D.C.I. Wexford, Louie Ramsay is Dora, Christopher Ravenscroft plays Det. Insp. Burden and Diane Keen is Jenny Burden. Timothy Evans plays Ryan Barker, Natasha Estelle Williams is Roxanne Johnson, Nigel Pegram takes Owen Struther and Patricia Garwood plays his sister Kitty. Owen Scott is Paul Curzon, and Debbie Middleton appears as the newsreader.

The episode earns its tension from the pile-up of disasters rather than any single twist. A wife brought home, a dead girl, a young man gone to the other side. Even for Wexford that is a lot to hold, and the story is honest about the strain. But it does not pretend that keeping your cool means not feeling any of it.