Instruments of Justice

Sean Brady has turned Queen's evidence against the crime boss McLintock, and on the way to court his car is ambushed. A policeman is left seriously injured, and Brady runs. The prosecution is left with a hole in its case, and Taggart is left with a problem of his own: he authorized the route, and Internal Affairs is taking a hard-edged line about it. An ambush on the way to court is an attack on the system itself, and nobody needs to say what that means for his career.

There is a new boss now, and he must take his orders from her even as he nurses doubts about the guilt of the man at the centre of the whole affair. It makes for an episode where the investigation is almost the least of Taggart's worries. But the scrutiny comes from inside the building this time, and the chill it produces is personal. The rest of the team keep at it, but the spotlight stays on their boss.

Glenn Chandler and Russell Lewis wrote it, Richard Holthouse directed. Mark McManus is Taggart, James MacPherson is Jardine, Blythe Duff is Jackie Reid. Finlay Welsh is Sir Ian Rattray, Sarah Collier is Lady Sarah Rattray, Duncan Bell is Alan Forrester, Tommy Boyle is Sean Brady, with Iain Anders as McVitie, Harriet Buchan as Jean Taggart and Robert Robertson as Dr Stephen Andrews. The Rattrays give the case its establishment polish, and the contrast with the ambush scene is pointed.

The tension here is departmental as much as criminal, and that is a nice change of air. Being suspected by your own people is a different kind of cold, and the episode handles it without shouting. The case around Brady almost becomes secondary, which is the point. It leaves Taggart fighting on two fronts, and neither front is forgiving.