The Hit Man

An old friend of Taggart's gets out of prison, and the bodies start piling up. The team has no time to decide whether that is coincidence. But someone is busy muddying the waters nicely, and from the very start there is a whiff of fishy business around the whole affair. An old friend out of prison is never just a social call, and Taggart knows it better than most. Nobody in the family is telling the whole story, and the team can feel it.

A member of the Catto family is threatened by a man posing as a vicar, who tells her to carry on with 'the deal'. Tommy Catto's funeral provides a pause, a moment of ceremony, and then another murder follows it. A funeral in a murder case is usually a staging post rather than a full stop, and this one is no different. By the end of the night Taggart's prime suspect is Jimmy Catto, though the evidence is stubborn about proving it.

Mary McMurray directed, with Glenn Chandler and John Milne on writing duties. Mark McManus leads as Taggart, James MacPherson as Jardine, Blythe Duff as Jackie Reid. The Catto clan is played by Robert Carr as Tommy, Clare Grogan as Mary, Julia Wallace as Agnes and Fiona Tong as Ailsa, with Ian Hogg as Jimmy, John Salthouse as Macnally and Tam White as Malcolm Steen. It is the kind of family drama that gives a police investigation its shape.

The family stuff gives the procedural work some weight, and the suspicion hanging over the Catto name is earned rather than thrown in. Old friendships and old debts have a habit of catching up with you, and the episode knows which way that wind is blowing. It keeps the team guessing to the last, right up to the final scene.