Funeral Rites

The body of a satanist private eye is found burned in a disused railway tunnel, on the day of the equinox. Taggart and his new partner Mike Jardine take the case, and the occult flavour of it is hard to shake: black magic and voodoo in the air, and a killer whose motives sit outside the usual run of greed and jealousy. The date matters to the story, or at least it matters to the people telling it, and the show lets that ambiguity stand. It is a gruesome way to start a season.

Running alongside the tunnel inquiry is a smaller, nastier story. Colin Davidson is an arthritic dentist whose chief project is killing his invalid wife Maggie, and she keeps escaping his attempts by a hair. His efforts are careful and repetitive, the same plan tried over and over, which makes him almost comic until you remember what he is trying to do. The two threads sit together oddly well: ritual horror in one case, shabby domestic cruelty in the other, both of them circling families and faith. It is the rare episode where the smaller story is the scarier one.

Glenn Chandler wrote it, Alan Macmillan directed. Mark McManus is DCI Jim Taggart and James MacPherson is DS Mike Jardine, with Annette Crosbie as Maggie Davidson and Paul Young as Colin Davidson. Vincent Friell, Jimmy Chisholm, Ron Donachie, Colin Gourley, Isabella Jarrett and Gavin Brown make up the supporting cast. Father Martin, played by Colin Gourley, keeps the faith question in play without the episode ever taking a side.

The supernatural business stays atmosphere rather than explanation, and the police keep their feet firmly on the pavement. And it helps that Annette Crosbie, better loved as Margaret Meldrew in later years, makes Maggie worth rooting for. The episode is a solid hour of gloom, and the gloom is earned.