Pipe Dreams

It is Murray and Bailey's week. Rachel travels to Bristol with Gill, who is advising on a rape and murder that carries echoes of a case Rachel worked thirteen years ago, when she helped catch a man who had killed four women. He is now protesting his innocence from a cell. Jeremy Leach, serving thirteen years for a murder on the Manchester patch, has a story to tell: the Bristol copycat murder, he says, is the work of Alistair Jackson, the son of his solicitor, a man obsessed with the case.

Gill is having none of it. She suggests Leach is working with an ex-cell mate to frame Jackson and clear his own name. Rachel is not so sure, and the two of them disagree in front of Leach, which tells him more than either intends. Then a fresh victim is found with Jackson's DNA on the corpse, and Leach's version starts to look uncomfortably close to the truth.

Case closed, the two women head home to their own messes. Gill's errant husband wants to come back. Rachel discovers her brother Dominic has been running a rent boy business out of her flat, and learns that the charges against Nick are being dropped. There is no quiet corner left for either of them.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, China Moo-Young directed. Suranne Jones's Rachel and Amelia Bullmore's Gill make a fine double act away from the usual pairing, with Liam Boyle as Dominic, Adrian Dunbar as DSU Rick Wallis, Sally Lindsay as Alison Bailey, Ian Bonar as DC Ed Bennett and the squad in support.

Two women, two cold cases in their own homes. But the Bristol inquiry turns out to be the easier of the two to close, and the episode knows it. It is the best hour of the series so far, and the pair know it. It leaves them wondering aloud what they have let themselves in for.