The Falls

A retired obstetrician named Joseph Devlin is found dead in his own home, tied to a chair with his wrists slit. On his lap sits a miniature coffin, the sort a local museum keeps behind glass, and inside it a smiling effigy of a child. Devlin had spent the previous evening at dinner with Sir James Hogarth, his closest friend, which tells you something about the circle Rebus is stepping into.

The killer leaves clues like calling cards. And the trail leads to David Costello. It is Phillippa Balfour, a university student working at the museum, who puts the name forward: she has started receiving threatening e-mails from Costello again, a man who stalked her once before. When Sir James's ex-wife turns up murdered in exactly the way Devlin was, the pattern firms up into revenge. Rebus has a darker theory on top of it, that Sir James had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, but proof stays out of reach.

Natalie Dormer plays Phillippa Balfour with a nervy energy that suits the part, and William Ruane's Costello stays one step ahead of the viewer as well as the police. Richard Johnson is Sir James Hogarth, Jennifer Black is Gill Templer, and the rest of the cast fills the edges: Tony Donaldson, Andrea Hart, James McAnerney, Eileen McCallum. Ken Stott's Rebus and Claire Price's Siobhan Clarke do the legwork, and Daniel Boyle and Ian Rankin wrote the script, with Matthew Evans directing.

The coffins are the creepiest prop the series ever used, and the episode is smart enough to let them do the talking. Costello's revenge, if that is what it is, has a logic to it, and the incest angle hangs over the whole inquiry like a bad smell no one can quite locate.

It is a quiet, nasty piece of work, and it suits Stott's Rebus down to the ground.