Price to Pay (2)

The second half of the story finds Jane Tennison exactly where she always wanted to be, and it is not going well. The suspect is already identified, her team is openly hostile, and every fresh piece of paperwork seems to contradict the last. She should have led a murder inquiry years ago, had her male superiors not passed her over time and again; the irony of finally getting the big case only to watch it rot is not lost on her.

As Jane digs, the errors stop looking like mistakes and start looking like a design. Conflicting facts point to a cover-up inside the force itself, and the question shifts from who killed the girl to who is protecting whom. One killing, or the latest act of a serial killer? Either answer makes somebody senior very uncomfortable. The pressure comes down on her from every direction, and she refuses to back off. She has waited years for a case like this, and she will not let it be taken from her. Every time someone tries to sideline her, she comes back to the file. The hostility in the squad room is one thing; the silence in the paperwork is another.

Lynda La Plante wrote it, with Christopher Menaul directing again. Helen Mirren's Jane is backed by Tom Bell as DS Bill Otley, John Benfield as DSU Michael Kernan, Craig Fairbrass as DI Frank Burkin, Jack Ellis as DI Tony Muddyman, Mossie Smith as WPC Maureen Havers, Ian Fitzgibbon as DC Jones, Andrew Tiernan as DC Rosper, Philip Wright as DC Lillie and Richard Hawley as DC Richard Haskons.

Nobody ever warned her that the inquiry itself might be the problem. By the end, the case is no longer simply about who killed the girl. But it is about what the force has been hiding, and whether Jane survives finding out.