Death Benefits

Julia Fraser is the wife of a police sergeant, and she is murdered while he is on duty. During the search of the house, the officers find a list of names. At first it looks like nothing at all. A list of names is only as good as the person reading it, and nobody can work out who that person is. But then the people on the list start meeting with a worrying run of accidents, and the only connection between them is that single piece of paper.

That is a nasty little hook, and the episode plays it straight. Taggart and the team spend their time trying to work out what the list means and who might be next, reading the pattern before the pattern catches up with them. The accidents look random, the way accidents are supposed to look. It takes a police sergeant's wife to die before anyone thinks to join the dots, and every name on the list becomes a clock ticking somewhere in the city.

Glenn Chandler and Barry Appleton wrote it, Alan J.W. Bell directed. Mark McManus is Taggart, with James MacPherson as Jardine, Blythe Duff as Jackie Reid and Iain Anders as McVitie. Robert Robertson is Dr Stephen Andrews, Anthony Cochrane is Dr Crawford, Harriet Buchan is Jean Taggart, and the Fraser family circle is completed by Ken Hutchison, Alexander Morton and Susie McKenna. It is a cast that keeps the domestic edges of the case sharp.

There is something quietly chilling about a piece of paper deciding who lives. The episode knows it, and it lets the idea sit. The answer, when it comes, makes you want to go back and check the early scenes, because the evidence was sitting in plain view the whole time. Only hindsight makes it obvious, which is exactly how real cases feel.