Love Knot

A body is dredged up from the bottom of the Clyde, and Taggart and Jardine are called in to find out whose it is and how it got there. The river gives up its dead the way rivers always do, slowly and without ceremony. The answers take them out of Glasgow entirely, up into the Scottish Highlands, and the case changes character as the scenery does. Whatever happened to this person started in the city and finished somewhere a lot lonelier.

The journey up country is the episode's real business. The leads carry the pair past a countess and through a series of Highland doorways where the locals know exactly how much to say. The countess, played by Jenny Runacre, arrives trailing glamour and suspicion in equal measure, and the episode is clever enough to keep her at arm's length until the end. But the further they travel, the clearer it becomes that the body in the river was the last stop on a longer road, and the road runs through people with money and land and good reasons to keep quiet.

Glenn Chandler wrote it, Peter Barber-Fleming directed. Mark McManus is DCI Jim Taggart and James MacPherson is DS Mike Jardine, with Jenny Runacre as Countess von Aschenberg, David Robb as Jack MacFarlane and John Michie as Robby Meiklejohn. Nicholas McArdle is Chief Inspector Fraser, Shauna Baird is Susan Bryant, Ewen Bremner is Jason, Hugh Ross is Richard Smiley, and Iain Anders is Supt. Jack McVitie. John Michie, years away from joining the regulars as Robbie Ross, is already good value here.

Glasgow follows the case out of town, and the episode gives the city a proper day out. The dredged-up body is a cold opening image, and the Highland sections carry a wintry elegance that suits the story. The ending sorts the suspects out without a single shout, which is its own kind of confidence. An atmospheric hour with a decent puzzle underneath.