Knots and Crosses

Daniel Carr walks free on a technicality, and the blame for it lands squarely on Rebus. A murder trial falls apart, the victim's father is furious, and Rebus finds himself under internal investigation, accused of wringing a wrongful confession out of Carr. The man running that investigation is Clive Dawson, once his best friend. Then Carr turns up murdered at the same spot where his alleged victim died, and the mess gets worse before it gets better.

Carr's obnoxious brother is killed too, and the chief suspect is Brian Robertson, a dealer whose estranged son was Carr's original victim. And to make matters worse, Carr's sister and Robertson's law-abiding son have fallen for each other. The families circle each other like they are waiting for a verdict, and the real knife work is happening elsewhere. Dawson himself stays honourable, but his female assistant has been primed by the slimy prosecutor who botched the original case, and her brief is to discredit Rebus. It is only Siobhan's loyalty and a run of anonymous letters that keep the inquiry on the rails.

Sam Heughan plays Peter Carr, in the kind of early role that his later fans will enjoy hunting out, and Brian McCardie is a properly nasty Brian Robertson. Graeme Rooney is Bobby Robertson, Therese Bradley is Margaret Robertson, Lindy Whiteford is Barbara Carr and Jessica Graham is Susan Carr. Nicholas Farrell is Davis Haigh, the prosecutor with form, and Charlie Willis Jeffery is the QC. Ken Stott and Claire Price anchor it, and Roger Gartland directed as well as co-writing with Ian Rankin.

The romance between the two families gives the episode an ache that the violence alone would not manage, and the anonymous letters keep the mystery turning in the background.

It is a sour little story about justice going wrong and people paying for it, and it ends the series with its head held high.