Rogues' Gallery

It is not a good day at the scrapyard. The first body turns up in the boot of a car that is being crushed, which is grisly enough for anyone's morning. A body in a car about to be flattened is the kind of image this show does not soften, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. But then a second body surfaces in the same yard, and Taggart and Jardine are left pulling on a thread that runs from drug pushers to the world of art and artists. High art and low crime do not usually share a postcode, let alone a murder inquiry.

The case winds through the people attached to both trades, and there are plenty of them: Valerie Sinclair, Neil Gallagher, Peter Latimer, and a supporting cast who all know more than they are saying. Dr Andrews is called in for the practical side of things, and the team keep turning over the same ground, looking for the place where the two worlds touched. None of it is pretty, which is rather the point.

Glenn Chandler and Stuart Hepburn wrote it, Alan Macmillan directed. Mark McManus's Taggart and James MacPherson's Jardine anchor the whole thing, with Blythe Duff as DC Jackie Reid, Joseph Brady as Norrie Walker, Iain Anders as McVitie, Edita Brychta as Valerie Sinclair and Harriet Buchan as Jean Taggart. Peter Mullan pops up as Peter Latimer, and Jack Galloway plays Neil Gallagher. It is the kind of guest list that keeps the case busy without ever letting it settle.

The scrapyard gives the episode a grim edge that the gallery crowd cannot quite shake off. Bodies among the crushed metal, deals done in polite rooms. That contrast carries most of the weight, and it holds up. There is a quiet satisfaction in watching the investigation pull the two worlds together, even as the bodies pile up around it, and the crush of metal at the start is not an image you forget in a hurry.