Entry Wounds (2)

A brain surgeon is murdered, and the investigating officer is Hathaway, now a Detective Inspector in his own right. He needs help, and Chief Superintendent Innocent knows exactly where to find it: Lewis is retired and living with Dr Hobson, and he is coaxed out of that comfortable arrangement to work the case. The retired life, it turns out, was never going to survive a phone call from Innocent. The death, it soon becomes clear, is rooted in the surgeon's own operating theatre, specifically in a botched operation on a badly injured teenager named Nabeel.

The hospital closes ranks around the failure. Staff who were present have their stories straight, and the boy's parents are left weighing their options while the institution protects itself. The simmering stand-off between the family and the medical establishment is abruptly broken by a second murder, and the investigation suddenly has two bodies and a wall of professional silence to work around.

But the surgery itself becomes the crime scene, which gives the episode an unusual claustrophobia: the operating theatre is where a life was lost, and the hospital's silence is a second injury to the family. The second murder suggests somebody is closing off loose ends, and the pressure on the team rises accordingly.

Colin Dexter and Helen Jenkins wrote it, and Nicholas Renton directed. Kara Tointon plays Erica Stoke, Aden Gillett is Tom Marston, Thusitha Jayasundera plays Ayesha Nooran, Ace Bhatti takes Rizwan Nooran, Michael Karim plays Nabeel Nooran, Francesca Zoutewelle is Jess Tallison, Anna Carteret plays Gillian Fernsby and Clare Holman takes Dr Hobson. Laurence Fox leads as DI Hathaway, with Kevin Whately's Lewis alongside.

The medical setting gives the case a different texture, the crime hidden inside an institution built on trust and routine. The episode is sharp about how easily professional solidarity shades into obstruction, and the parents' grief keeps the stakes personal. Some secrets, it seems, are kept under surgical scrub.