Dead Ringer

The skeletal remains of a dismembered body turn up under the floorboards of a Glasgow house. That would be a full case on its own, and the episode barely lets it sit. A nine-month-old boy is snatched from a multi-storey car park, and the demand comes with a figure attached: £50,000. The clock starts running for real.

The kidnapping gets under Taggart's skin for reasons the script is smart enough to explain. The stolen child is the nephew of a man Taggart once accused of murdering his wife, an accusation that never stuck and never quite went away. So he wants this one fixed, and he wants it fixed at a speed that puts him at odds with the baby's parents and with his own superior officer. The parents want none of his help, and his superior would like him to slow down. Taggart's answer to both is to keep going, which is not quite a plan, though it is the closest thing he owns.

The floorboards case sits underneath the whole thing, waiting for its turn, and the two threads tie together before the end, which is more than the victims' families get. It is a rescue story wearing a murder story's coat.

Glenn Chandler wrote it, Laurence Moody directed. Mark McManus is DCI Jim Taggart, with Alastair Duncan as DS Peter Livingstone and Tom Watson as Superintendent Murray. Supporting them are Colette O'Neil as Josephine Peebles, J.G. Devlin as Bill Lynch, John Carlin as George Cunningham, Jake D'Arcy as Ronnie McIsaac, Bill Leadbitter as Alan Tulloch, Alexander Morton as David Balfour and John McGlynn as Mike Balfour.

The ransom figure feels of its time, and so does the panic. But the episode earns its tension the honest way, by giving Taggart something personal to lose and the boy's family a reason to resent every bit of help they are offered. That contradiction is the best thing in it.