The Great and the Good

A schoolgirl is drugged and raped, and the prime suspect, Oswald Cooper, has an alibi backed by three pillars of the local community. It is the sort of wall that would stop a lesser enquiry in its tracks. Then Cooper is murdered, and the wall starts to crumble. Lewis and Hathaway find themselves inside a web of deceit that reaches back twenty years, in which the dead man was used by that respectable trio to cover up a long run of sordid secrets.

The case takes a personal turn for Lewis as the investigation goes on, and the episode is careful to let that happen without forcing it. The suspects gather around the Donnelly family: Beatrice, Magda, Keiran, with Jessamine and Gavin Matthews nearby. Everyone has a version of events that protects someone else, and Lewis has to decide which of those versions is worth trusting.

But a child's suffering sits behind the polite interviews, and the episode never lets the audience forget that the clever men at the centre of the plot were protecting themselves at her expense. The sordidness is reported straight, without dressing up, which is worse.

Colin Dexter and Paul Rutman wrote the script, and Stuart Orme directed. Laura Rees plays Beatrice Donnelly, Daniela Nardini is Magda Donnelly, Sean McGinley takes Keiran Donnelly, Kwame Kwei-Armah plays Danny Adebayou, Jason Watkins is Oswald Cooper, Emily Bruni plays Jessamine Matthews, Richard McCabe takes Gavin Matthews and Laura O'Toole appears as the Doctor. Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox lead, as ever.

There is a particular nastiness to this one, the rape of a child giving the mystery a gravity that the polite settings keep trying to smooth over. The episode never lets that go. Twenty years of lies eventually have to be paid for, and the payment falls due in the present, exactly where Lewis is standing.